MINORITY MINORITY REPORT

The new EBONY magazine is out and the cover is graced with “real housewife” of Atlanta and now sitcom star Nene Leakes. Now over the past few years I’ve accepted “reality” TV and it’s hot personality of the minute but seeing Nene on the cover of EBONY took me aback. Just last month President Obama and his wife Michelle were on the cover. I can’t help but think you went from the leader of the free world to a woman claiming to be a housewife but really isn’t. I can already hear the cries of “hater”, “let Nene get hers” and “STFU” but my issue or should I say discovery wasn’t Nene or her newfound fame. What I am discovering I am now a minority within a minority. Behavior that used to be deemed inappropriate was now the status quo in the black community. Flava Flav, Nene, Stevie J and the Basketball Wives—sidepieces—hoes—whatever they are called are controlling the narrative of black America or at least the ones that are focused on. I won’t say I don’t know these people or haven’t seen them in this life but media outlets be it TV, film or print would have you think they are the majority of black America and that’s sad. I can’t lie I cringe at Nene in the new sitcom The New Normal not because she took work from real actresses—okay I do a little, but it’s why she has the role. I recently saw her on a morning news show and she said that when she met with the show creator Ryan Murphy he said “We were looking for actresses who act sassy and do what Nene Leakes does and we thought why don’t we just get Nene Leakes and let her be herself”. Sadly, the Nene Leakes that the world knows is a paradigm of pathology of black women, which is sassy, lip pursing, neck rolling and hip holding. I couldn’t help but recall the impetus of Dave Chappelle’s exit from his titular hit Comedy Central show to the Motherland. Dave was doing a sketch called the Nigger Pixie and he noticed one of the crew who was not of color was laughing in a different manner then most people. Dave realized what he was doing may have been sending a message that he didn’t need to perpetrate. Black people don’t always have enough great images to fight the negative images as seen during a time where a black man is the leader of the free world. I can’t help but recall the film A Soldier’s Story and Adolph Ceasar in his classic role as Sgt. Waters. He had a line that will always live with me forever. He told an imprisoned soldier, CJ, whose behavior he thought to be coonish and an embarrassment to black people, “the black race can’t afford you no more C.J.”. Can you understand what that is saying? During that time period there were probably twenty million black Americans in the country and Sgt Waters felt this one man’s behavior held back the progress of a whole race. While I don’t think Nene can do that alone, she contributes to a team of all-stars that do. Now Follow Me! Follow Me To Freedom!

RETURN OF THE PHOENIX, MORE LIKE A PELICAN

There is a Democratic president, Notre Dame University is the number one football team in America and I haven’t had sex in a “minute”. Did I hitch a ride in a Delorean with Doc Brown back to the year 1992? Why no, it is the year of our Lord, 2012. I can truly say I am happy about one of my revelations but there is no need to go into further specifics on what happening has grasped on to my jocularity. Those few sentences are the pseudo-clever way I wanted to begin my first entry in months in my blog Diablo’s Bastille. I intended to Chicago two-step you with a brief jaunt back to a better times in our nation and dip you with an eighties movie reference. Pretty darn cool but so very antiquated huh? I thought so too after I typed and read it, but I’ve been planning this entry for months and I realized that you can never be too careful in planning your introduction—or re-entry into the blogosphere in this case. I kept debating myself like Obama/Romney on how to start my first blog entry back. I didn’t want to disappoint whatever lucky internet traveler who would come upon my ‘cascading discourse’ (patent pending on that phrase). You know what they say about first impressions, “first impressions are lasting”. Now I don’t know any members of this mythical, group, who seem to be some of the most, sage people on the Earth, recognized only by the pronoun “they”, but still I trust their vague and unsubstantiated opinions. So upon my journey back to “post entry” begins. When I first fell off on doing my blog, I told myself, you’ll get back to doing it next week. Next week turns into two weeks and two weeks turns into volunteer hours at your daughter’s school, a paid writing assignment, life in general and a few days trying to catch up on everything in my DVR. With the passage of time and distance between myself and my last entry the ante is now upped -- in my mind of course -- to a level that I feel my next five hundred words must read l like WAR & PEACE, THE FIRE NEXT TIME or whatever is atop the New York Times best seller list – oh God it’s one of Bill O’Reilly’s rectum created tomes. Of course I then must wring my hands over what the first subject I shall write about in my first blog entry back. I so wanted to do a piece during the presidential campaign and catch the heat of the Mitt Romney and President Obama giving us a verbal Hearns/Hagler in the daily 24 hour news cycle, but I thought my mythical public would just say “how clichéd of you ”. So I refrained and then thought my last entry was about my beloved New Orleans Saints and the infamous BountyGate scandal. The Saints have rebounded from an, 0 and 5 beginning, to get back to a present 5 and 5 record. I felt my imparting a story about this beloved underdog from my personal, POV would gain myself a click fest and a wave of comments. Who doesn’t like the underdog regaining their proverbial footing? I was beginning to think a number of people because I quickly jettisoned that idea. As my doubt seeped further and further into my thoughts I figured I’d step away from the idea and think about other infamous planned comebacks and how I could possibly model myself after them. So I began to amass a list of great comebacks. Ex-Washington, DC Mayor Marion Berry ran for mayor after a crack cocaine conviction and won. The man was good and so was his return -- almost phoenix-like, but I couldn’t mirror my first blog back to “that got damn bitch set me up”. Then I thought about Betty White’s recent resurgence but then again, I don’t want to people to read my blog for nostalgia of my better blogs, I feel I’ve got better blog entries in my future. Then I thought about the most popular comeback in history…. Jesus Christ. Love him or not the Dude knew how to make an impactful comeback. I began to wonder, as Jesus lay in the tomb for three days did He make a conscious decision to not do big theatrics and just appear? He knew Easter Sunday was his Super Bowl, He had turned water into wine and brought someone back from the dead already. Did the question of style influence Him as it has weighted so heavy on my mind in my quest to return in electronic glory on the internet? After much deliberation I came to a decision on how to return to Diablo’s Bastille based on two thoughts. The first was from comedian/actor/Fat Albert creating/Pudding Pop selling Bill Cosby who said “you can’t please everyone, so you better please yourself” and the second thought was from myself, don’t write over than 850 words. This totals 847. Now Follow Me, Follow Me To Freedom

…OF SAINTS, SINNERS and HYPOCRITES

The New Orleans Saints broke the rules, defied and lied to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. For that defiance they deserved to be punished. If my father told me specifically to not to go hanging in the French Quarter and then I ignored him and did it again. I would expect to be have all my driving privileges taken away for a month (but this isn’t about my teenage miscues). Sean Payton has been handed a season long suspension for systemic failures on his part in in this case. We all know the story of how the New Orleans Saints were running a—and I use the term loosely—“bounty program”, where non contract incentives were offered for “knock out” hits and “cart-offs” and repeatedly ignored.

As Saints fan, I am disappointed because I just don’t want my team to have any setbacks in the annual quest for “the ring”. As a football fan I respect that Goodell is commissioner and he has to police his sport, though I may beg to differ on his reasons. As a former football player, who began playing the sport at the age of 8 years old and continuing on to high school and college, I am taken aback by the media and the public’s so-called moral outrage and sudden concern for player personal safety in sports. If you haven’t realized it, football is not natural. Football is a violent sport, not high school football, not college football, not pro football—football is a violent sport. This is a sport where 22 men, who have been training their bodies for years to be fined, tuned, human catapults. These catapults then repeatedly engage in 75 to 85 violent collisions over a three hour period. As I said, “This is not natural.” For roughly 22 weeks, including pre-season and post season, 32 teams do this before filled 65,000 thousand seat stadiums and millions watching at home on TV. They all want to watch these modern day gladiators hit each other, not unlike old Roman Coliseum. The viewers at home want to watch this blood sport so badly they will pay $300 so they won’t miss a moment of all the games being televised from their modern day coliseums. The game is so loved the league at one point packaged a “Greatest Hits video of literally the most violent hits of the year. Football is so loved that a certain four letter network assembles plays to show at half time and hits are usually involved. This game is so loved, that fans have actually motioned to turn the Super Bowl day into a national holiday. But the moment a reporter kicks his Microsoft Word thesaurus into overdrive and uses a word like ”bounty” in reference of the sport. The warriors that are so celebrated are now vilified, equated with violent murderers and even considered to be brought up on criminal charges. Really, Joe Fan? The idea of incentive didn’t start in the Saints locker room. It has been going on for years across America and it starts on the playground. I can recall a coach offering $5 or a McDonald’s meal to whomever, in a room full of 8 year olds, had a big hit in the game. The rewards continue on in high school and college, where it’s even publicly celebrated with stickers on helmets. You don’t think all those stickers are for fumble recoveries do you? There’s always a reward for the violence football players perpetrate weekly, the coffers just differ in value at the different levels of play. I played football on the playground, high school and collegiate levels and I knew I was playing a violent sport. Each time I moved to another level of football I experienced an initial hit that “rang my bell” and signified to me that the level of play has yet again stepped it up, but I continue playing this violent sport. At eight years old I knew I wanted to be a part of this violent sport and I was reminded constantly in the beginning. I recall in one of my first practices as a child and I approached a tackle hesitantly with my head down and a turned shoulder. I instantly got angrily chewed out by my coach, who said “Don’t you ever let me see you make a tackle like that. If you don’t go full speed and you can get paralyzed.” My coach may have exaggerated that day but he wanted me to know is if I wasn’t going 100 miles an hour, the other player was. And while I may not get paralyzed I could get hurt. I must admit even before “bounty gate” the League concerned me with the way they want defensive players to turn their shoulders to make tackles now. They are asking people who have been taught all their lives to hit a player square and run their face mask into them. As much as wide receivers are “defenseless” now, I am more concerned about defensive backs are defenseless. Has anyone seen Calvin “Megatron” Johson? NFL Receivers are averaging 6’3, 240 nowadays. Can you imagine having to slow down to tackle him because you can only hit him with a certain part of your body? He will run across coverage and “through” a DB, who is trying to avoid hitting a defenseless receiver and not getting fined by Commissioner Goodell. The largest cry I hear from the public is how the Saints were out to hurt people and while nomenclature like “knock out” and “cart-off” have been tossed around like fish at Sea World, I think the media and league has jumped to the conclusion of malicious intent on the Saints part. Of the 6 billion people on Earth, the just over 1800 men who make up the NFL, they all know they play a violent game and are in a very, small fraternity. Yes, they all want to “hurt” each other which means, “I want you thinking about me so much, I take you out of your game and make you miss an assignment”. No one wants to end a person’s livelihood as I’ve heard so many players say. As a former a defensive player, I believe no one man would take a play off to “intentionally hurt a specific player”, if for nothing else but not miss their play assignment. In the 30 seconds before a play goes off, a defensive player is thinking “What’s the formation”, “what’s the coverage”, “how many running backs”, “is my assignment changing because of the formation”. Not “Where is the receiver I can get $1000 for hitting really hard?” If a player missed his assignment to “knock out” a player, it probably would be his last play ever for the Saints. I am not all knowing but I am quite confident that no pro football player intends to maliciously hurt another player. There’s just too much mutual respect for what the next man has done to get in this elite fraternity. If you’re still not convinced, recall Lawrence Taylor, the most feared linebacker in the game after he broke Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football. The sheer horror on Lawrence’s face as he called and beckoned for the ambulance to get to the field quickly should tell you enough of how players so respect one another. Now I know many will challenge me on the players “intent” but until you’ve run a 40 yard dash in their cleats you can’t really speak on it. And whilst my 40 time in slow, I’ve still managed to finish a few races. So my question for my outraged, PC, non-violent, pro football fans, if we proudly keep this personal safety up, when do they start playing flag football?

Now Follow me! Follow Me to Freedom!