problogateur

when offered a provocative or loaded statement, most people choose to be offended because it's the easier row to hoe than actual comprehension. taking offense is crude, emotional and reactionary while comprehension requires thought and brainpower. however, in this perverted reality we inhabit, the provocateur who dares so much as to elicit thought is maligned and seen as the crude one or the heel while the delicate flower that is the offended party is pandered to and lauded as heroic for standing up to said evil, offending rabble-rouser. are there offensive statements/people? absolutely. yet, 87% of people who find themselves offended are just too dumb, lazy, uncomfortable and/or scared to expand their ever so myopic horizons. please, consider the tale of jimmy the greek. mr. the greek was a wildly popular television personality and gambler extraordinaire who was fired from his twelve-year position as contributor to "the nfl today" on cbs in 1988 for making racially charged statements when a television reporter asked for his thoughts on civil rights in pro sports while he was eating dinner (on dr.mlk.jr's bday no less). an unprepared and obviously overserved jimmy the greek mused that:

"whites were holding on to coaching jobs because, with blacks dominating the playing fields, management was the only role left for them."

then, he dared to hypothesize and delve further into why exactly the vast majority of the nfl is black:

"the black is a better athlete to begin with. he practices to be the better athlete and he's been bred to be that way - because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. this goes back all the way to the civil war when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid."

the greek would offer a full apology later that same day but it was already too late. multiple groups called for his ouster and cbs obliged. now, on the surface, what the greek said sounds awful and ludicrous but only because that's the way we've been conditioned to feel and not think. and, admittedly so, it wasn't the most articulate or eloquently put theory either (but, is it so awful see a group of people dominating a particular field and not ask "why?"). however, this is a prime example of why people choose the emotional response of offense in lieu of the thoughtful response of comprehension when offered a provocative statement - it's easier. neither blacks or whites want to be reminded of slavery nor do they want to acknowledge the parallels professional sports draws to slavery where white owners are profiting from the physical endeavors of blacks. even still, we have the harder-to-swallow (albeit, morbidly ironic) thought that african american's success in athletics may be a result of slavery. no one wants to think of that but shouldn't our first instinct be to have the intellectual curiosity to at least attempt to arrive at a biologically/sociologically endpoint to either prove or disprove this? as a lay blogger, it doesn't seem so far-fetched to me that the horrors and evils of slavery may have contributed to blacks' athletic success in america. is this the case? i dunno. and, we never will know if we all don't get past the emotional immaturity of taking offense when there is some actual knowledge and answers to be gained. in short, let us quench our thirst for knowledge, not our thirst for blood.

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