Barbarians at the gate? I’d be more concerned with the morons on the march.
On Friday night, Nov. 5, at an event generously called a “music festival” in Houston’s Astroworld, eight people were trampled to death, including a 14-year old, and an estimated 300 people were injured during a performance by Travis Scott — another vulgar, violent, women-degrading, crotch-grabbing, N-word-spewing rapper known to invite audiences to mob the stage “to rage.”
Unsurprisingly, under the pandering, wrong-headed leadership of Roger Goodell, Scott was invited to perform at halftime of the 2019 Super Bowl.
In the days following the Astroworld disaster, two more concert-goers — including a 9-year-old, whose father claimed the boy was a big fan of Scott’s, which made for additional sadness and dark wonder — died. That made the death toll 10.
On Saturday, the same day as the Oklahoma-Baylor football game in Texas on Fox, funeral services were held in Houston for high school student Brianna Rodriguez, crushed to death at the Astroworld calamity.
Yet, at roughly the same time as this funeral, Fox was presenting its on-site pregame show. Soon the countdown would begin to signal the start of the rush of thousands of Baylor students to a mad-dash frenzy to be among the first to reach the student body seating section — a tradition born of rotten foresight, and sustained despite the deadly evidence just produced in Houston.
Fox didn’t merely report this scene, it participated in it. On-site reporter Tom Rinaldi — an import from ESPN, where dangerous court-storming is approved and enjoyed as a matter of “school spirit” — gleefully counted down, “3, 2, 1” to launch the mob frenzy.
Of course, not to be outdone, Baylor fans after the game stopped the count at 2 and stormed the field with 1 second left after beating Oklahoma.
Why would Rinaldi volunteer to be party to that on any day? Was he unaware of what had just gone down in Houston. Where was Fox’s producer to say, “We want no part of this!”?
As the thousands of students bolted from the starting line — Fox even provided an aerial view of the mob-rush — one runner was heard to shout, “Someone fell down!” The shouted reply was, “You don’t want to fall down!”
Yeah, you fall down, you risk being trampled. See: Astroworld, one week ago.
Soon a fully grown adult from Baylor’s athletic department blessed the student stampede as great fun. Was he unaware of what just went on in Houston or of student stampedes that caused serious, even critical injuries at college football and basketball games?
Baylor fans storm the field after their team upset Oklahoma.USA TODAY SportsDo Baylor’s insurance premiums cover injuries and deaths of students, not just by negligence, but by school invitation?! Do the participants first provide next-of-kin info?
You’d think that Baylor, well before the Astroworld carnage, would have shown a bit more social constraint given the recent scandalization of its athletic department after its football team was accused of 52 episodes of rape. Before that its basketball program featured the shooting murder of one it’s player’s by another Baylor player.
As for Fox, how could it possibly be so blind and mindless to what had just occurred in Houston. It came to no one’s mind? Morons.
How much of ‘true story’ is left out of ‘King Richard’?
I have not seen “King Richard,” pitched in TV ads as the “true story” of how Richard Williams inspired his daughters, Serena and Venus, to tennis greatness.
But based on my long study of the movie industry’s “true story” treatment of other sports events and figures, I’m going to conclude that this one is loaded with significantly selective omissions, including:
Richard Williams’ influence in making Serena, an executive co-producer of the movie, a self-entitled and media-entitled rotten winner and loser — one who gives little-to-no credit or respect to her opponents, blaming losses on injuries, her own bad play and court-side officials.
To a lineswoman at the 2009 U.S. Open, she screamed, “I swear to God I’ll f–king take the ball and shove it down your f–king throat!”
Serena Williams with her father, Richard, at the 1999 U.S. Open.Getty ImagesThough she should have been disqualified on the spot, she was fined pocket change — $10,500 — and refused to apologize, claiming that in no way did she threaten the woman and that she merely engaged in tennis-common dissent with a linesperson.
Yet even John McEnroe, known for his tirades, said he’d never gone that far and that Serena should have been suspended.
Then there was her screaming meltdown at the chair ump in the 2018 U.S. Open while losing to unknown, at the time, Naomi Osaka, a tantrum she absurdly claimed was on behalf of women’s rights, as opposed to on behalf of herself.
Much media bought it, or at least faked it. Yeah, right on, sister! Was Osaka not a woman? Was stealing Osaka’s greatest moment part of King Richard’s inspiration and vision for his daughters?
As for Richards Williams before he was eased out of view lest he further embarrass the Williams sisters and jeopardize their growing sponsorships, he was a steady, unfiltered bigot.
Of Serena’s opponent, Irina Spirlea, after their 1997 semifinal match at the U.S. Open, he called her “a big, tall, white turkey,” and further claimed Spirlea is a racist despite no evidence to back his claim.
In 2012 he said, “Goldstein, Rubenstein and Weinstein are in charge of collecting money from the Jews for me.”
Sports Illustrated explained that quote as just evidence of his “flakiness.” Yep, all bigots should be excused as “flaky,” even if Williams would never suffer racism, real or imagined, if directed at his daughters — nor would Sports Illustrated ever defend as racist as merely “flaky.”
But, like Serena and Venus, Richard has always been a beneficiary of media pandering.
Whatever, Will Smith is already being hailed as an Oscar winner for his portrayal of “King Richard” in a “true story” — even if significant truths are assiduously avoided.
LeBron or Nike: Thoughts on Shuai?
So accomplished Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has been missing for two weeks after alleging she was sexually assaulted by Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier and member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee.
Friday, a spokesperson for China’s government impossibly said, “I’m not aware of the situation.”
Time to call in China expert/apologist LeBron James and his pals at The Peoples Republic of Nike — Nike rules tennis — to get some answers!
Do as we say, not as we sell: The cons never stop. Rob Manfred pulled this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to legislated voter registration changes in Georgia that some claim, with only wishful proof, are racist.
Thus Manfred economically punished Atlanta, which is 50 percent black, awarding the game, instead, to mostly white Denver. Brilliant.
Rob ManfredAPMLB’s new DVD celebrating the Braves’ World Series is now on sale. It stars Atlanta’s own rapper Ludacris — can’t be sports with out rap. Ludacris’s stock in trade is standard rapper slime — the vulgar sexual degradation of women and referring to black men as the N-word.
Not that Manfred, the socially sensitive political activist, would dare publicly recite those lyrics. Just know that Manfred is good with Ludacris representing MLB.
Thought for Sunday’s games: Reader David Oniffrey asks why, after Pittsburgh’s Franco Harris’ “Immaculate Reception” in that 1972 playoff game vs. the Raiders, no one said he “low-pointed the ball.”
