As IF Times

link Marc Lamont Hill: NBA impasse: Owners & the help – Philly.com.

Hill’s right.   Maybe it’s about time that legions of “black and brown” skinned men he refers to, those that have been taken advantage of from very early ages, should revolt.  It’s long overdue for  the slaves to push back against generations of oppressive treatment.  How this kind of blatant discrimination and selective servitude can exist in this modern time is a disgrace.

As we all know, from a very early age,  games such as basketball  and football are introduced to young blacks much as drugs are offered to teenagers.  By doing so, young minorities are lured away from the easier path of academic study or the more exciting life of a technical education.  They can only look wistfully at their non minority friends as they pursue the glamorous fields of accounting, finance and motorcycle mechanics.

The oppression usually continues right through the college years as they are regularly bombarded with big ticket professional contracts, preferential treatment, cars, lucrative ad deals and of course the never ending adulation of fans and the media.  Their luckier academic counterparts meanwhile are living cushy lives, studying in anonymity and working at menial jobs.

Once the athletes are roped into the life of professional sports, their lives really take a turn for the worse.  They are forced to sign long term playing contracts guaranteeing them wheelbarrows of money stretching into infinity without being allowed to assume any risk for starting a team, building a stadium, marketing or any other organizational risk available only to the white slave masters.  As of the last proposal offered by these rapacious NBA owners, the players were offered only a measly 50% of revenues.  Why Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the ACLU, PETA, Michael Moore etc aren’t expressing more outrage about this is a mystery.   Of course, most of us assuage our guilt by paying hundreds and in some cases, thousands of dollars for tickets just to help out these poor athletes.  If only Jerry Lewis wasn’t so old, he’d be spearheading an annual telethon for them.

To put some perspective on the compensation paid to professional slaves, er athletes, the average salary paid to an NBA player is just over $5 million dollars per year.  Of course averages are misleading since an outstanding star can be paid many times that amount.  This of course excludes endorsements and sponsorships.  For a more thorough view of sports salaries, see http://www.nba.com/2011/news/features/steve_aschburner/08/19/average-salary/index.html

From this website, here are some numbers for player salaries:

NBA: $5.15 million (2010-11)

MLB: $3.34 million (2010)

NHL: $2.4 million (2010-11)

NFL: $1.9 million (2010)

As we can see, the NBA is definitely the most oppressive.

Surely in this inclusive, modern era, we should be able to make professional sports less about oppressing visible minorities.  There should be avenues for young minorities to escape the prison  that is professional sports.  At the very least,  they should be paid more than the scraps that are offered to them today.  If not, one day, someone will get the bright idea of starting their own league.  That’ll teach the owners.   After all, the reservoir of talented ball players is limited.  It’s not as if there are hundreds of thousands of people vying for spots on the plantation.

link Chaz Bono blasts disrespectful Dancing with the Stars judges for picking on his weight.

Meanwhile, back in the real world….

The unabated plunge of society downhill into social conformity and political correctness continues.  Mr. Bono feels hard done by the judges on his performances on the pop reality show, Dancing With The Stars.  Like many people who tune into this show misguidedly expecting to see a contest, Mr. Bono is actually clueless that the show is in fact, populist entertainment.  In populist entertainment, you either get the adoration of the fans, or you get the hook.  It’s like the old Roman Colosseum only with virtual thumbs.

A large part of the audience watches because there is just something in human nature that makes watching a ‘car crash’ compelling.  A substantial part of the audience would disappear if on-air body blows were’nt handed out every week.  Simon Cowell does this for his new show, X factor and Gordon Ramsay assumes that acidic role for his cooking reality show.   People go on those shows with the expectation of possible and likely verbal abuse.  If you want to play football, you’d have to expect that 1000 pounds of men will crush you every 2 minutes or so.  That’s the price of entry.

If Mr. Bono doesn’t think his appearance on the show has any angle other than showcasing his lightness of feet, he is as delusional as his mother.  When the show picks performers for their seasonal line-up, they are not expecting to find hidden Nureyevs among football players, comics and centerfolds.  While it’s  always amazing when such unlikely performers rise to the challenge and show real talent, it’s purely for amusement that celebrities offer themselves to the public altar of judgement.  I mean come on, Emmet Smith in a tutu?

If you’re in the entertainment business, you’d better be used to personal insults. One of the best lines ever uttered was when Bruno accused Kate (of Kate plus 8 fame), of being “like a shopping cart” pushed around by her professional  partner.  Or when Kirstie Alley inadvertently body slammed her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy in mid lift. 

Trying to frame his ouster from the show as some kind of personal attack on him isn’t going to wash.  There are no zaftig professional dancers.  In real life, people don’t get paid for effort, only results,  (lawyers of course being the notable exception).   With all due respect to the unspoken undercurrent to Bono’s participation in the show, there really are big differences in the way people perform in life.  Chaz may be transformed, but on the inside, he may still carry vestiges of his former persona.  News to Chaz, calling men fatso is not hurtful.  That’s what guys do, they insult each other.  It’s not all I’m ok, you’re ok.  If nothing else, these shows demonstrate the reality that differences do matter.  Life is cruel and unfair and your mother can shield you from only so much.   You can’t force people to like you,  be a man and get over it.