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Monday, Jan. 10, 2005
Warning. Avert your eyes if you have no use for controversy. There are other journals out there, yes there are.

Yesterday�s playoff football extravaganza revealed yet another in the endless parade of displays where athletic adults seem moved, as if by some form of portable gospel podium, to flail arms and wail to the sky �Lookit! Lookit me! Lookit lookit lookit!�

If you�re recently arrived from Brazil, a brief �splanation is in order.

The Vikings and Packers, late in the game, a meaningful and potential game changing drive by the Vikes. Long pass from quarterback to receiver, who makes a fine play and scores a touchdown. He rises from the ground and celebrates briefly with team mates, casually flips the ball to the referee and trots off to his next assignment. Nice, eh? Not so if you�re Randy M0ss.

Randy would rather scamper to the nearest goalpost and pantomime dropping trou� in front of the crowd, a little fake moon job. The fact that they were playing at the Packers field and the crowd was decidedly not rooting for the Vikings, well . . . I imagine the gesture was taken quite well by the folks up there in Wisconsin.

Now I watched this ass-grabbing on live television, which is probably the only time you�ll see it on network. They aren�t in for replays of that sort of thing. Sort of like bare boobs at the Super Bowl. It just doesn�t go over so well.

�Jeez, what a class act that moron is � I muttered to Ally at the time, as the TV announcer went into hysterics about �That disgusting act.� Later in the game (when the network had at least two cameras trained on him at all times) our little sinner got some more exposure, cursing the crowd and pointing toward the scoreboard with relish as the Vikes ran out the clock. Post game interviews gave him more air time, unapologetic as it turned out, with much rampant raving about how it was all for the win, we got the win, and end-zone assholery doesn�t matter if we got the win.

�Just remember to Lookit! Lookit me! Lookit lookit lookit!�

Okay, I�m lookiting. Can I just go ahead and do my bend over routine now, too? Surely you won�t mind if I go for a little truth in media whilst displaying my ass.

Randy, you�re a goddam shame. And before you raise that racist trump card you�re hiding up your sleeve, before you even think about whining for sympathy because six generations ago your uncle worked on some white guys farm in Alabama, before your insanity starts matching your bank account you might want to tie off that Afro and listen up like a man.

I�m tired of athletes displaying their ass on TV. Just turn it off and don�t watch? Is that my choice? It isn�t. Live TV can turn into jive TV faster than the network can censor it out and you know it. For you to use that as your stage for self promotion belittles the dignity that you so often are seeking. �The media won�t give me props, the media disses me.� Oh please. The media loves the story and so do you. And the both of you can�t wait until you take your retirement and move into that cushy Sunday color commentator slot. Stop acting like it�s a purge. You�re both getting exactly what you want.

Let�s see. You squirt a referee with a water bottle. You run over a police officer. Last week you walk off the field with time left on the clock. All the while you�re drawing a salary that a sultan would envy? You�re not all about self-promotion? It�s all about the win? My ass is not only aching, it�s spinning on a stick watching this all unfold.

I regularly read a forum about football for another team on the net. Last night this same topic was raised and it was a wonder to me, because all the young posters on the board were trumping about how �This is no big deal, they got the win and that�s all that matters� and there were a bunch of them going on in the same vein until one grouchy old bastard (no, it wasn�t me) dived head first into it. �They�re a bunch of punks,� he said. �Just a bunch of selfish punks with too much money and no respect for the game.� That sort of thing. And the first thing, the very first response to this was �You�re a racist, you just hate that it�s a urban black man thing and you can�t understand that.� I�ve rarely seen the responses go up faster, and eventually the moderators had to step in and shut the comments down, it got so bad.

The key to that was - The grouchy old bastard never once mentioned race, or blackness, or urban issues or anything of the sort. He was stating what he saw, a punk who had no respect for the game or himself, and he defended that position pretty well until it got out of hand. He even made reference to a white quarterback flipping the bird to his own fans a couple of games ago.

Didn�t seem to matter to his young detractors, and I heard a lot of Randy�s voice in their comments. I can do whatever, say whatever, live TV or not so long as I get the job done. You can�t lose respect for me because I�m terrific, I win ball games, I�m paid a shitload of money to entertain you and I am, therefore, beyond reproach.

I suspect it was this same line of reasoning that caused another upright young urban youth to go into a crowd and attack a bunch of basketball fans. Or some over the hill diva to get her bosom exposed to the world at halftime.

You people are not beyond reproach.

And I think every one of you needs to have your momma come boiling down out of the stands and slap your ass all the way to the locker room while holding an ear in one hand. Come to think of it, I�ll be the one handing the paddle to her. Call it my network debut.

�Lookit me now, asshat.� And for Godsake, get a freaking haircut. Idiot.


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