or, How I Wrote Another Ill-Advised Term Paper on AN and Got My Balls In a Blender For It

I was just thinking about how intense the mass media lemmings are around hyping these players' "off-field difficulties".  It's never not time for them to write endless columns about Ron Artest, Terrell Owens, Milton Bradley... not a "Sportscenter" escapes Bristol, CT without some feature or 34 about another "troubled athlete".  When Latrell Sprewell fought PJ Carlesimo it was like a week's worth of "Nightline".  There's probably more media stationed outside T.O.'s house then there are actively investigating the missing WMDs over in UnoCalistan, I mean Iraq.

I guess part of why this is is the classic "if it bleeds it leads, if it thinks it stinks" mode of journalism, part of the general "Society of the Spectacle" theories about how people want controversy and drama and a kind of adrenalized, risky excitement.  Media outlets stress this stuff because they feel pressured to provide the most thrilling, provocative content to satisfy consumers and sponsors alike.

The fact that it seems like every one of these athletes happens to be black seems to me to be where the facade gets peeled back and we see the man behind the curtain, a primordial racism dating back to the origins of America, when people of African descent could at best only count for 3/5 of a human being because they were "savages," uncivilizable primitives of endemically lower worth.  I think they are always showing in particular the violent incidents, like when Artest went into the stands (played to this day again and again on TV), or last year when our new left fielder threw the baseballs all over the place, because they are pandering to this aspect in the public that still harbors these mythological fears of (and fascination with) the "savage".  If you read articles about Bradley, for instance, there's almost this tone of bemused surprise when the writers talk to him and find him to be articulate and intelligent, not resembling the carnival attraction they feel they need to sell their rags. I just listened to the inane interview Ralph Barbieri did with Bradley on KNBR yesterday (the one subsequently--and IMO rightly--characterized on the air by Billy Beane as one for which The Razor "should be ashamed"), and he asked not a single relevant baseball question... instead of asking what the outfield will be like with 3 proven CFs, or how MB's speed on the bases will fit in with the more conservative approach Moneyball takes to the stolen base, every query was essentially a variation on "So, you're like a caged animal, famous for totally uncontrollable rampages. Are you sorry?"  It was the same with Albert Belle, the press would follow him around waiting for him to explode so they could go, "Look!  He's exploding!  Film at 11!" as if they were stalking wild beasts of prey on safari.

Maybe I will get the big flaming for writing this but there just seems to be too much of this around, where black athletes are singled out in particular under this microscope to be prodded and poked and have their outbursts or bizarre endzone celebrations and gyrations serialized ad infinitum, as if to somehow judgementally gauge or negatively portray the reactions that the "savage" has when plucked from the zoo (where he is unconsciously perceived to have come from by the public, fed on a diet from birth the spectacular mythology of an uber-predatory criminal ghetto underclass) and placed in the more "sophisticated" arena of organized pro sports.  

Love to hear the thoughts of AN, itself an oasis of quality and nuanced information amid the desert of sports media, on this subject.