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Disney Exposes A ‘Community’ Too Politically Correct for Pride

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr., was a black man, of the 1960’s and 1970’s, who excelled in athletics and had a mind for other important pursuits. Like Curt Flood, who challenged Major League Baseball’s Reserve Clause as unfair to players; like Jim Brown, who retired from the NFL – at his peak – rather than allow the Cleveland Browns to dictate to him. Others included Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell. These were passionate sportsmen, but each knew where sports ended and dignity began.

A little more about Arthur Ashe…

Born July 10, 1943 in Richmond, Virginia, to married parents. His mother died in 1950. His father raised his children with strict discipline. Ashe and his younger brother attended church every Sunday. Their father timed the walk from school, and Ashe had 12 minutes to get home after the last bell. Mindful of his son’s slight build, the elder Ashe forbade his son to play football.

Ashe began playing tennis at age 7, first mentored by Richmond’s best black tennis player, then by another black man who coached Althea Gibson. When segregation in Richmond limited his competitive options, he spent his senior year of high school living with the family of another black man in St. Louis, who coached him as well. In response, Ashe became the first black to win the National Junior Indoor Championship in 1962.

Arthur Ashe received a tennis scholarship to UCLA, and was the first black ever selected for the U.S. Davis Cup Team, in 1963. He won the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open Championships in 1968 (ranked Number 1 in the world during that year), the Australian Open in 1970, and Wimbledon in 1975 – also black American firsts.

Ashe, with Charlie Pasarell and Sheridan Snyder, founded the National Junior Tennis League in 1969, a program offering tennis opportunities to economically disadvantaged youngsters. It was the first organized tennis program in which Venus and Serena Williams participated.

A heart attack, and quadruple heart bypass surgery, in 1979 forced his retirement the next year; he had another bypass procedure in 1983. In 1988, Ashe had an emergency brain surgical procedure and published a three-volume history of black American athletes, A Hard Road to Glory. A blood transfusion, during the second heart procedure, infected Ashe with HIV; he died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1993, spending the last year of his life raising awareness, and funding, to combat the disease.

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr., the product of a black nuclear family, was building his own when he died. He was a great athlete who never caught a break. Rather, helped by other black men in his early years (including his father), he created them. He was an honorable man, made great by doing good, including excellence in his chosen field. And he responded to the misfortune of a fatal infection by fighting for others. He was, and remains, a legacy in which blacks can take pride…and one which they should defend.

Watching Abby Wambach and Bruce Jenner make that legacy a blank canvas onto which they painted the homosexual agenda – describing their “community” in sympathetic terms, and grabbing attention to help “mainstream” their “choices” – as “courageous” was distressing, and not just to Brett Favre (see video below, at @ 2:15 in)…


ABC US News | World News

The ESPN/Wambach/Jenner performance was not racist; it was worse than that. In just over 13 minutes, and on an international stage:

    • It made dislike for the homosexual lifestyle equivalent to dislike for skin color – an equivalence blacks still reject,

    • It gave U.S. combat troops the side-eye, overlooking a veteran who had lost limbs but not his passion for sport, and

    • It dismissed the fearlessness of a female college athlete, whose terminal cancer claimed her life, but not her competitive spirit.

Instead of acknowledging sports relevant example of courage, ESPN gave the award to someone whose last sports involvement precedes the birthdates of their target audience. All while standing on the grave of a black man whose courage, character content – and myriad accomplishments – made his skin color an asset, at a time when it was a liability for many others. The black response to this blatant legacy hijacking…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHQxE-CNKkA[/youtube]

Despite Wambach’s assertions to the contrary, the award was all about Jenner. He actively campaigned for this award. His team approached ESPN about it to promote his upcoming TV show and, when negotiations faltered, threatened canceling an interview with Diane Sawyer (see video, at @ 2:10). The result was a “win-win-win”: Jenner “won” publicity for his media efforts, ABC “won” a major news story, and ESPN “won” another political correctness opportunity.

(By the way, the Walt Disney Company, itself increasingly sympathetic to the homosexual agenda, owns ESPN and ABC.)

The only losers were America’s blacks, who ESPN publicly pimped and, apparently, are too focused on irrelevant flags and monuments, churches burned by phantom racists (like lightning and poor electrical wiring), and seeking “justice” FOR every questionable (or worse) character the police encounter – while requiring no justice FROM them – to care what the presentation sought to take from them.

Blacks resisted efforts to use Rosa Parks’ legacy to promote the homosexual agenda, and Martin Luther King’s daughter is on record declaring that her father “did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage”. At least for now, those legacies remain valuable to blacks.

But Arthur Ashe, a black man who rose to the pinnacle into an internationally white-dominated sport, winning the hearts and minds of people the world over, by dint of effort and class, his legacy – as black as black excellence CAN be – is abandoned to a re-definition of courage shown in, or through, sports to mean standing up for one’s bedfellow choice or being openly confused about one’s gender?

That every black athlete did not stand up and walk out of the ESPY’s speaks volumes about today’s black American athletes. That not one of them did speaks even more loudly. To be fair, had Jenner worn a Confederate flag, and received the award atop Georgia’s Stone Mountain, then black NBA players might have reacted like this:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxziyB_VJGM[/youtube]

or black NFL Players might have exited the auditorium the way these entered a stadium:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjatISKs5BA[/youtube]

As it was, they clapped politely at the public denigration of a legacy that helped make them both prosperous and popular.

This lack of black pride and principle is astonishing. Peter Berg, no one’s black man, at least attempted outrage, before the PC police got to the Friday Night Lights producer. But black athletes today seem more willing to make acceptable “protests” than principled statements, more concerned with being PC than with legacy. That attitude seems shared by many, if not most, blacks.

So, what are blacks about?

Is it taboo to disrespect black criminals, but acceptable to piss on the legacy of a black sports legend? Are we more committed to attacking symbols that we say we hate, be they flags, rocks, or 150-year-old military corpses, than to protecting the legacy of those who deserve love for what they showed of “blackness”?

Disney challenged American black self-respect and, so far, that challenge goes unanswered; perhaps all accept that homosexuals are more politically relevant than blacks today. After all:

    • So say the courts, who remove liberties to favor homosexuals,

    • So say the schools, which promote homosexuality with a fervor not shown for black concerns,

    • So says the president, who violated his oath of office by not defending traditional marriage, as law requires (though blacks support traditional marriage), and further disregarded the views of blacks by “re-lighting” the White House after the recent Supreme Court Decision on homosexual marriage:

Rainbow White House

So, the “black” president disregards blacks; now a major corporation follows suit. Both have done so on an international stage. A relevant people does not take such treatment lightly. So, the question is, “Are blacks yet relevant, or has Political Correctness finally claimed its first ethnic group victim in the U.S.?

Brownian Black Movement

In 1827, Scottish botanist Robert Brown, looking through a microscope at pollen grains suspended in water, observed small particles that moved about irregularly, similar to the red dots in the “water” of blue dots below:

Translational_motion

The phenomenon Brown observed bears his name: “Brownian Movement” – the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid. The particles neither move on their own, nor move with any purpose. Instead, they get knocked around by the fluid.

Brownian Movement seems to describe many American blacks: particles suspended in the fluid of American culture and current events. Blacks neither create the events nor control the impacts. Instead, they get knocked around by them, often according to someone else’s agenda. For example:

The Rise of Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Obama’s historic election elated blacks. From the 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address that brought him national prominence, to his improbable triumph over Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democrat Party Presidential Nomination, blacks supported Obama, so strongly that he could take their vote for granted, in the primaries and in the general election.

But where were the blacks directing the Obama “event”? They were generally not part of Obama’s inner circle, in either his first or second administration. Instead of embracing the black church, Obama distanced himself from his black pastor of more than 2 decades – a controversial man who performed his wedding and baptized his children – before securing the 2008 nomination. Some questioned his black “bona fides”.

Unsurprisingly, white acceptance led to Obama’s success. During the 2008 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “praised” Obama as “a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'” Joe Biden (D-DE), who also sought the Democrat nomination, called Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Of the nearly 69.5 million votes Obama received in the General Election:

    • Less than 22% came from blacks,
    • Less than 10% came from hispanics, and
    • Less than 3% came from asians….

…and more than 60% came from whites. By providing fewer than one of every four Obama votes, blacks resembled the girl who could not keep her grandmother’s fried chicken “secret”:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB7j3sUWohE[/youtube]

Only this time, “Shake N Bake” was, “Who elected Obama?” The black voter response: “Those white folks…and I helped”.

Six years, and one re-election, later, blacks: have lost economic ground, absolutely, and relative to whites; feel less empowered; saw latino and homosexual concerns receive higher priority than theirs; became America’s most racist group; and felt disrespect from the president.

Blacks did not create Obama; he was thrust upon them…and knocked them around.

The Trayvon Martin Shooting

Trayvon Martin’s death, on February 26, 2012, sparked outrage over a white man shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager.

But Martin’s killer is not white. That small detail did not prevent Trayvon-inspired “revenge attacks” on whites, both before and after the trial; the “popular” narrative was impervious to fact.

Sympathy for Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s biological mother, was sincere, and nationwide, even though Trayvon did not live with her when he died. Alicia Stanley,Trayvon’s stepmother, actually raised him…from the age of 3. Blacks generally ignored this (step-) mother’s pain – Stanley was displaced at Martin’s funeral and at Zimmerman’s trial. Sybrina Fulton’s exploitation of the son she did not raise, copyrighting protest slogans, less than a month after his death, also seemed to go unnoticed.

However, Fulton’s opposition to “Stand Your Ground” laws, in Florida and in Washington, D.C., did draw attention…even though police found “Stand Your Ground” irrelevant to her son’s case, and even though “Stand Your Ground” was not part of Zimmerman’s defense.

That legal experts called Zimmerman’s arrest affidavit “irresponsible and unethical”, and considered Zimmerman “overcharged”, angered more blacks than it informed. News that a grand jury indicted the prosecutor who charged Zimmerman for falsifying his arrest warrant made more blacks question the system than question the prosecution’s case.

Somehow, Sharpton’s rhetoric, NBC’s editing “errors”, and a non-threatening image of Trayvon Martin, which differed from the unarmed teen Zimmerman met:

young trayvonthreatening trayvon

masked these inconsistencies, and blacks got knocked around by a false narrative which put them at odds with the facts, the legal system…and other Americans.

Donald Sterling’ Clippers

Audiotape of Donald Sterling’s private conversation with a mistress became public on April 25, 2014; the fallout came quickly.

The next day, current and former NBA players offered their opinions, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called the recording “offensive and disturbing”, other NBA owners weighed in, and Clippers’ players protested…before losing their playoff game.

The following day, a second recording surfaced, and president Obama commented. By April 28th, just 3 days after the first tape leaked, sponsors severed ties with the Clippers.

Then, Commissioner Silver dropped the hammer, on April 29th:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHCgmVikntw[/youtube]

banning Sterling, for life, from the NBA. After more drama, Sterling’s estranged wife sold the Clippers, on May 30, 2014.

And so, the word went forth: major sports franchise owners cannot make racist remarks….even if in private…

Even if their bigotry is common knowledge since last century

Even if they pay 7- and 8-figure annual salaries to black men who play and coach a game…

Even if they are generous philanthropists, with multiple NAACP Lifetime Achievement Awards

Apparently, what a man does, publicly, to benefit blacks is less important than what he says, privately.

Blacks did not create the Sterling tapes; they simply bought into the politically correct doctrine that only those with “approved thinking” can supply entertainment in the U.S., and that violating someone’s privacy, or even the law, to enforce that doctrine is acceptable. The NBA needed “cover” for its income-stream-preserving exorcism of Donald Sterling, something it has wanted for 3 decades, and blacks unwittingly obliged…gaining nothing in return, apart from sound bites.

NFL Domestic Violence

NFL players behave better than those they entertain yet, from media reports, one might believe the league is full of wife-beaters and child abusers.

Ray Rice’s one-hitter-quitter episode with then-fiancee, now wife, not only cost the running back his job, it also threatened Roger Goodell’s tenure as NFL Commissioner. The ensuing desire for “justice” was so strong that other things apparently did not matter.

It didn’t matter that Mrs. Rice did not want her husband on trial (after all, it was their private altercation, not a prize-fight). Instead of praise for acknowledging her role in the incident, or standing by her husband, some labeled her a gold digger.

It didn’t matter that New Jersey dropped charges against Rice, or that a female arbitrator overturned his suspension from the NFL.

All that mattered, to many, was calling the NFL soft on domestic violence…and blacks boarded the bandwagon.

Adrian Peterson’s child abuse case, took political correctness to a different level. Not because it involved a child, not because it damaged Peterson’s Father of the Year candidacy, but because of reactions like this:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_w9aeTeKY4[/youtube]

Cris Carter’s rant, against his mother’s child-rearing and values, garnered wide praise. Yet, watching successful black men question the judgment of those who raised them, and the biblical values that sustained blacks in America for centuries and through difficult times, is disturbing.

Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson are now events by which the politically correct knock around what remains of traditional black family connections and cultural values, at a time when blacks desperately need both.

Bill Cosby “Sexcapades”

If Cosby’s troubles were about exposing a powerful man’s past sexual misdeeds, either to validate victimized women or to “educate” the public about his character, then another “Bill”, Mr. Clinton, would answer for sexual allegations, dating back to 1969 (plus a recent lawsuit involving sex with minors); especially since:

    ● Many Cosby “accusers” waited decades to speak out, with no independent verification; Clinton victims reported incidents when they occurred, often with 3rd party attestation,
    ● Cosby “accusers” claim he drugged them, without bodily harm; Clinton victims often reported physical abuse, and
    ● Clinton wielded more power, as a governor and president, than Cosby ever could as a comedian.

The lack of timely reporting or corroboration make proving the allegations against Cosby improbable, even if they are true. Consequently, the anti-Cosby argument is not, “Look at all the evidence against him,” but rather, “All those women cannot be lying!”

Brian Banks, who lost a football scholarship and 5 years of his life, might disagree. So might members of the Duke Lacrosse team, whose accuser now serves time for murder. Indeed, false rape allegations are not uncommon, and the women who make them rarely face negative consequences. Cosby’s accusers will likely speak with impunity.

And many blacks are hearing their message, meaning Cosby’s message, critical of failed black behavior:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gh3_e3mDQ8[/youtube]

…is heard, and regarded, less.

Blacks did not create the Cosby rape allegation “event”…but it knocks them around, so that many no longer receive a needed word, for the messenger has been (falsely) tarnished.

Michael Brown, Eric Garner Demonstrations

Michael Brown was an unarmed black teenager whom a cop shot and killed. Some remember Brown as a “good kid”, college bound with a bright future.

Apparently, they did not know the Michael Brown who had gang affiliations, who had an arrest record, who committed strong-armed robbery the day he died, or who assaulted a cop, tried to take his gun, and then made a run at him.

Those who entertained the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” story accepted a false Michael Brown narrative. Though disproved, it fueled riots and looting that still scar Ferguson, and many still cling to it.

Eric Garner, who died when NYPD used a choke hold while arresting him, is a more sympathetic figure than either Michael Brown or even Trayvon Martin. Instead of attacking police officers, Garner asked them to leave him alone; instead of fighting a man with a gun, Garner broke up a fight. Instead of a violent man, the video of his last moments show a man in distress.

What the video does not show is Garner’s history with NYPD of 30 arrests, or that he was out on bail, on multiple charges, when he died.

There was no reason for Garner to die that day, the police are at fault for his death. However, how does Garner, a veteran of 30 prior NYPD arrests, not know how to avoid a police takedown…especially when other men face arrest and stay unharmed, despite extreme emotional upset:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhHm7Tujca4[/youtube]

Yet, people “demonstrate” throughout New York, chanting, “I can’t breathe” and other sayings. They also take their message to restaurants, as though white diners either caused or support the lack of a grand jury indictment in Garner’s death.

Which leaves blacks knocked around by protesters who “peacefully” advocate violence, deteriorating relations between the mayor and police force of a leading American city, and calls for “change” that will neither happen nor help.

The Obama event marginalizes blacks politically and maintains their issues at a low national priority; The Martin event showed blacks as more emotional than factual; The Sterling event showed blacks as willing to harm those who’d done them more good than harm; the NFL Domestic Violence event saw black men attacking traditional black values; the Cosby event punishes black men who unabashedly speak to traditional black values; and the Brown and Garner events work to remove black confidence in police and in the justice system.

Blacks created none of these events, yet they buffet the black community, affecting their political, economic, social, and cultural standing. Currently, it is hard to identify a true black voice or direction, one more attentive to what blacks value more than to what excites them. And the events that knock them around make constructive voices and directions harder to identify. However, until blacks, as they did before, find those voices and directions, and navigate American culture and events, instead of getting knocked around by them, they will continue to resemble the red dots you see here…

Translational_motion

And Now, Football Must Die…

American Football is quintessentially…American. Unlike soccer (what the rest of the world calls “football”), where participants can’t use their hands as part of the “beautiful game”, Football requires full-body participation in repeated outbursts of violent energy. Also unlike soccer, Football is a game of testosterone; women and young children can neither play it well, nor with the requisite emotion and camaraderie…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XYN2xss88Y[/youtube]

American Football is men, combining their individual might, speed, guile, bludgeoning, and force of will with that of other men, as a committed unit to physically complete against another group of men. It is simultaneously the height of rugged individualism and the ultimate expression of team. Football models achieving the American Dream: personal sacrifice and perseverance, teamwork, a hero’s rise, the breakthrough moment, full commitment, win or lose, in pursuit of an unwilling objective. Football elevates some and humiliates others, yet remains egalitarian; it exposes every man’s weaknesses – and that man will either be made better, or be made to go away, by the revelation.

However, Football is losing its place in the country that invented it (After all, how long can you support a professional expression of hyper-masculinity in a culture concerned with a “war on women”?). This teacher of basic truths struggles in an American society increasingly comfortable with complex lies. Unless that changes, this politically incorrect game will die.

The National Football League (NFL) began as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1920, with four Ohio teams, in a Canton automobile showroom. By 1927, after franchise fits and starts, the NFL trimmed 22 clubs to 12, cutting financial dead weight and shifting its center from the Midwest to the East Coast. A de facto ban on black players in 1933 was overcome after World War II. In 1946, the NFL headed West, with the Cleveland Rams relocating to Los Angeles.

In 1960, Texas oilmen, kept from NFL franchises, launched the American Football League (AFL), sparking a competition that led to Super Bowl I in 1967 and an explosion in player salaries. Along the way, Football replaced baseball as America’s favorite sport. The two leagues merged, in 1970, into the modern NFL.

Today, the NFL’s 32 teams span the country. A sport once ignored after the Midwestern Fall now rivets the nation’s attention year round. Yet Football is both under attack and in decline, with few realizing the situation, though the signs are visible.

Before the NFL, Football brought glory and built character, but no one played for any real money. Football was a vehicle to launch young men’s careers; it was not itself a valid career choice. The professional league did not immediately change even the best players’ minds on that. The 1935 Heisman Award winner was the first player chosen in the NFL’s 1936 inaugural draft. But Jay Berwanger never played in the NFL, opting instead for a manufacturing career.

And the young NFL was not immediately a big money career. In the NFL’s early decades, most players had jobs or businesses. Football players had to WORK, not just work out, during the off-season. However, that prepared them for life after Football, even as they played, integrating them, socially and economically, into their communities. But the big money, which began with the AFL-NFL competition for players, brought big changes.

Big salaries isolated Football, creating players who are much larger, and richer, than the people among whom they live, leaving them with little physically, economically, or socially in common with their communities.

The source of Football salaries created another form of isolation. Most people generate their incomes from their local economies. Football players…not so much. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans’ economy, cutting off local jobs and incomes. Yet Saints’ players still got their checks, without interruption…because the NFL, not the cities, pays most of player salaries.

NFL teams generate about, $51 Million from annual ticket sales; NFL payrolls, in 2012, ranged from $91.9 Million to $118.3 Million. The league provides what teams cannot from TV and other revenue.

Another, and worse, form of isolation is of players from education. Before the NFL, Football was an education vehicle; players left the game in their twenties to compete in the fields of business, education, and politics. Even after the game went pro, early NFL players were likely to be college graduates. However, by 1989, only 1 in 3 NFL players had college degrees. By 2004, the number rose to 46%, however the damage was already done.

Large NFL contracts isolated players from college degrees, lessening their marketable skills once their playing careers ended. When an All-Pro defensive lineman admits he was functionally illiterate in college, yet was an upperclassmen; when the Number 1 pick in the 2006 NFL draft files for bankruptcy protection in 2014, that is not integrating men into society. That is destroying men within society.

Now, there is “chicken little” talk of concussions and players safety; some surmise it may end football, as parents, including NFL players, grow wary of seeing their sons play Football, though the science is not settled. And the NFL wants to head off the issue with a monetary settlement, which is stalled in court.

However, in truth, concussions and CTE will likely be the feather that knocks over a weakened sport. The real damage to Football began long before people showed concern for how many times a player “got his bell rung”.

When American Football went professional, it began turning from a game that integrated young men into society as educated, aggressive, and disciplined leaders, and into a sideshow of well-paid, large-bodied characters who are likely uneducated or undisciplined entertainers.

Without the NFL, this outburst:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPD_Lgq7IyI[/youtube]

is harmless exuberance from a 20-year-old kid. Instead, it is from a 25-year-old kid (big difference, right?), who makes a half million per year, and causes a national uproar. Seriously?

Without the NFL, this foolishness:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZNBN1GO_h4[/youtube]

is unconscionable, along with the support of the group that led to this idea in the first place.

If there were no “next level”, which paid folks to play, then a free education, and the connections that come with it, would be appreciated, rather than sniffed at. Football players as college employees? Do they wish to pay taxes on those scholarships and stipends?

Football no longer has giving men with uncommon drive a path to societal greatness as its primary function. Too often, it simply prepares a small minority (there are less than 2000 active NFL roster spots each year) to play a game for pay, extending their adolescence well into their 20’s and 30’s, and leaving them unmarketable and broke when done.

If Football provides nothing more than money, while crippling those who play it, then who could blame a reasonable society for turning away from such an enterprise.

It is time to return Football to what it did well, before a great game goes away.

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