SportsDystopia

By this point, you’re probably well familiar with the controversy that has swirled around Dallas Mavericks forward Josh Howard in recent days over his comments made in July at Allen Iverson’s Charity Flag Football Game.  As usual these days for anything vaguely offensive, the reaction has been knee-jerk righteous indignation, as commentators can’t resist bludgeoning Howard, who’s become an easy target in the past few months, after he bafflingly confessed to the Dallas Morning News that he smoked weed in his free time, and then partied it up while the Mavs went down in the playoffs.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith called him “The franchise’s resident idiot, someone who is gainfully employed solely for his ability to bounce and shoot a basketball.”, which is 2 more reasons for him to be employed than Stephen A. Smith, as far as I can tell.  Smith claimed that “others around him respectfully stood in recognition” while Howard “spewed his rhetoric”.

Here’s the full video.  Howard’s comments come at 1:43, but if you start watching at 1:20, you’ll see there weren’t too many people on the field “standing in recognition”.

Others who’ve watched the video have also seen things that aren’t there in their eagerness to get in a free shot on Howard, like J.A. Adande, who said “the worst part isn’t in what Howard said.  It’s in the comments that follow, a free-flowing cesspool of n-words and orders to go back to Africa”.  Uh, I’m sorry, what was that J.A.?  Were we watching the same video?

Josh Howard’s comments were brief and not terribly eloquent, but I have to ask, why SHOULD a black man stand in respect for an anthem written by Francis Scott Key, a slave owner?  And why is that simple fact not mentioned in any of these commentaries that villify Howard, especially those penned by black commentators like Smith or Adande?

Even when Adande is trying to get to the heart of the matter, he still misses completely when he says “I’d bet Howard would tell you the country has been great to him. He went to college and made it to the NBA. Now his contract is being used against him, why is it that we hate it when athletes put money first, but so many believe that same money should trump their right to complain about the country?”  Again, did we watch the same video J.A.?  Howard said nothing about his country, nothing at all.  What he DID say was “Star-Spangled Banner’s goin’ on.  I don’t celebrate that sh*t.  I’m black.”  Considering who Francis Scott Key was, and the obvious hypocrisy of a man who kept slaves penning lines about “the land of the free”, how can you blame him?

Stephen A. Smith can take his free pass and call Howard “ignorant” all he likes.  It’s really Smith and his cohorts who are ignorant of the history that surrounds the Star-Spangled Banner, and it is they, the members of the media, who do us a disservice when they fail to understand or interpret the racial issues that surround the situation, and instead content themselves to take aim at the easy target.

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