Progress is a funny thing, isn't it?
You think you've taken ten steps forward only to realize you've hardly gone anywhere because after taking three steps, you expected the other seven to follow automatically. Hopeful and as optimistic as we may be, we all know it hardly ever happens that way.
Exhibit A and B, Mississippi and Alabama. While the great American melting pot looks more like jambalaya everyday, a number of people in these two bottom rungs of the educational and cultural ladder believe interracial dating should be banned. Gotten rid of. Made illegal. No white folks should be marrying anybody black. To be specific, 29 percent of those enlightened Republican voters in Mississippi believe interracial dating should be illegal. Another 17 percent weren't sure. In Alabama, 21 percent of their likely GOP voters in Alabama thought the same - this in a state where interracial dating was actually illegal until 2000. (the poll was done by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling)
As usual, loyal and brain-washed GOP loyalists will try to downplay and dismiss this poll with any silly reason they can make up because they, a) are afraid to admit how they and many of their breathren really feel, and b) because they think it's okay for them to believe those silly thoughts.
Why?
Well, it goes back to 1992. How can an entire party of people be angry for 20 years over losing an election? Ask those on the right. Since Bill Clinton came out of nowhere to defeat George H. Bush in the '92 presidential election, they have been hell bent on defeating the Democratic party, no matter what it took. Since then, they have been on a systematic, strategic, selfish and immature moronic mission to kill the donkey. And since then, anything coming from a Democrat or anyone seen as a left-winger is painted as bringing the country down into some deep pit of anti-American hell -- facts and history, be damned.
So now those on the right constantly stamp liberal and social concerns as the bastion of waste, socialism, wasteful spending, voter fraud or any made up ism or fraud they can wave out of thin air. One of their targets continues to be race. In fact, race is the main area they've used to deeply divide this country. They frame anything darker than Barack Obama (oh, heck, him too since he's the product of an interracial relationship) as the main contributor to the nation's doldrums.
All of this to build a coalition of scared to death voters who believe the nation is going to hell unless we rid ourselves of this dark filth, either by deportation, jail, the death penalty or whatever they can come up with. Its led to the renaissance of the politics of scaring the hell out of you and making you believe "they" are the problem and "they" are out to get you, wherever you may be.
That means things are right or wrong, black or white. Us against them. There is no gray.
Some of the results have been an inept breed of career politicians and a bunch of stupid and wasteful laws allowing people to carry guns anywhere you can find air or giving you the right to off one of "them." Ask teenager Trayvon Martin. Oh, you can't ask him because one of those lunatics who believed one of "them" - one of "their" uniforms is black skin and a hoodie - was out to get him. He fatally shot Martin who was armed with the deadly weapons of a can of tea and a bag of Skittles. A Republican-authored law written in Florida just a few years ago allowed him to do so.
So for a lot of people, these are us against them issues. Right or wrong. Black or white. Shouldn't have been in that neighborhood. Shouldn't have worn a hoodie, as Geraldo Rivera stupidly said. Yeah, that's the progress we've made in this great country. Seven steps back to the need for a renewed civil and human rights movement in this country. We again have a bunch of morons hell bent on painting made-up pictures of "them" out to get you. Dead brains and dead kids are now the result. Expect more.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
March Madness and Mockery
How much of a NCAA March Madness basketball fan am I? Well, I took this week - the first week of the 68-team tournament - off from work so I can watch as much first and second round action as possible. Unbeknownst to most, I take off the Thursday and Friday of the first week of the tournament every year. So, I figure since the tournament expanded from 64 teams last year, my time off should expand also.
There is just something about seeing a team like Norfolk State or South Dakota State with just as much of a chance to win the national championship as North Carolina or Kentucky. Well, sort of, anyway.
Honestly, I'm not stuck in some pollyanish state of mind to think that the former teams REALLY have as much of a chance to win the NCAA title as the latter two. The way college athletics are shaped today is that the biggest, most ridiculously rich schools will nearly always get the nation's best athletes, win the most the games and appear on television the most. That means they will continue to get the most money and continue that unfair cycle. It's a neat and tidy professional monopoly that major college and major conference leaders want you to believe is just about a little game, but is instead about billions of dollars for their coffers.
But in college basketball, at least schools like Mississippi Valley State and Belmont College get an opportunity to win, albeit a small opportunity. And what makes this billion dollar industry, March Madness - which is even a trademarked slogan - so great and so well watched is that sometimes the little guys actually do win.
No so for college football. The Bowl Championship Series - which I call the BS Championship Series - is nothing but a small cartel of big schools and big conferences shutting out other schools who just happen to be so not as rich as the others are. The way that works is only a few schools in major college football have ANY chance of playing for the national championship and the millions of dollars that come with it. There is no playoff like there is in March Madness. Why? The NCAA itself runs the college basketball championship and lets nearly everybody have a chance to play in it. In college football, the large and rich schools run the Bowl Championship Series and keep a tight lid on who gets to play for the winning spoils. So unless Middle Tennessee State University or Marshall University somehow find millions to afford athletes, facilities and everything else it takes to make a smaller school competitive, they will be as close to playing the college football championship game as I am.
Either way, the system is completely unfair. But why should you, a non-sports fan who'd rather watch a Tyler Perry play or listen to some philharmonic do Bach, care?
Because colleges, which make billions of dollars each year from the ESPNs, EA Sports, Gatorades and Nikes of the world, are considered non-profit organizations. Yep, those same schools who raked in as much as an estimated $80 million each last year for college sports and pay coaches millions of dollars a year and build gazillion-dollar facilities have to pay little, if any, in taxes on that money because college athletics is supposed to support the charitable mission of education.
Now you see why Alabama doesn't want the University of Central Florida to see any part of the BCS Championship Series? They want to keep all that nearly tax free money to themselves. It makes rich schools richer and little schools little. All in the name of the charitable mission of athletics. RIGHT!
That completely unfair situation is hardly just about a little game, as those who make billions from those same games like to defensively say. This is about reigning in a completely unfair system that makes a mockery of the nation's laws for non-profit organizations. Major college athletics barely supports the educational system they are supposed to represent and is completely out of control. College athletics has become a professional entity that exploits athletes and is more concerned with television dollars and keeping those television dollars in the pockets of a few instead of promoting the ideals of amateurism, sportsmanship and education.
That has got to change. Congress has got to quit kow-towing to partisan interests and actually do something about this sham perpetuated by what is now the minor leagues for professional football and basketball.
If nothing else, give Long Island University-Brooklyn a chance to win a title. Well, at least college basketball gives them a sliver of a chance.
There is just something about seeing a team like Norfolk State or South Dakota State with just as much of a chance to win the national championship as North Carolina or Kentucky. Well, sort of, anyway.
Honestly, I'm not stuck in some pollyanish state of mind to think that the former teams REALLY have as much of a chance to win the NCAA title as the latter two. The way college athletics are shaped today is that the biggest, most ridiculously rich schools will nearly always get the nation's best athletes, win the most the games and appear on television the most. That means they will continue to get the most money and continue that unfair cycle. It's a neat and tidy professional monopoly that major college and major conference leaders want you to believe is just about a little game, but is instead about billions of dollars for their coffers.
But in college basketball, at least schools like Mississippi Valley State and Belmont College get an opportunity to win, albeit a small opportunity. And what makes this billion dollar industry, March Madness - which is even a trademarked slogan - so great and so well watched is that sometimes the little guys actually do win.
No so for college football. The Bowl Championship Series - which I call the BS Championship Series - is nothing but a small cartel of big schools and big conferences shutting out other schools who just happen to be so not as rich as the others are. The way that works is only a few schools in major college football have ANY chance of playing for the national championship and the millions of dollars that come with it. There is no playoff like there is in March Madness. Why? The NCAA itself runs the college basketball championship and lets nearly everybody have a chance to play in it. In college football, the large and rich schools run the Bowl Championship Series and keep a tight lid on who gets to play for the winning spoils. So unless Middle Tennessee State University or Marshall University somehow find millions to afford athletes, facilities and everything else it takes to make a smaller school competitive, they will be as close to playing the college football championship game as I am.
Either way, the system is completely unfair. But why should you, a non-sports fan who'd rather watch a Tyler Perry play or listen to some philharmonic do Bach, care?
Because colleges, which make billions of dollars each year from the ESPNs, EA Sports, Gatorades and Nikes of the world, are considered non-profit organizations. Yep, those same schools who raked in as much as an estimated $80 million each last year for college sports and pay coaches millions of dollars a year and build gazillion-dollar facilities have to pay little, if any, in taxes on that money because college athletics is supposed to support the charitable mission of education.
Now you see why Alabama doesn't want the University of Central Florida to see any part of the BCS Championship Series? They want to keep all that nearly tax free money to themselves. It makes rich schools richer and little schools little. All in the name of the charitable mission of athletics. RIGHT!
That completely unfair situation is hardly just about a little game, as those who make billions from those same games like to defensively say. This is about reigning in a completely unfair system that makes a mockery of the nation's laws for non-profit organizations. Major college athletics barely supports the educational system they are supposed to represent and is completely out of control. College athletics has become a professional entity that exploits athletes and is more concerned with television dollars and keeping those television dollars in the pockets of a few instead of promoting the ideals of amateurism, sportsmanship and education.
That has got to change. Congress has got to quit kow-towing to partisan interests and actually do something about this sham perpetuated by what is now the minor leagues for professional football and basketball.
If nothing else, give Long Island University-Brooklyn a chance to win a title. Well, at least college basketball gives them a sliver of a chance.
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