babbling blue

One of the neat things about RSS syndication (technically that’s redundant, but more clear in my mind) is that it’s not perfect. A post on S.c0tt A-dam’s blog (The Di|ber+ Blog) showed up in my feed reader, but when I tried to get to the actual post to read comments, it was gone. It is now nowhere to be seen. Even though the original post was removed, the RSS feed was still available.

I can only assume he was pressured in some way to take it down, but I found it amusing so I snagged it from the feed and am posting it here in full. . . at least until I get sued to take it down.

Updated 2/22/07: According to Scott, he took down the post due to all the nasty comments it was generating on his blog. People are so stupid.
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Tim Hardaway

Are you following the story of ex-NBA player Tim Hardaway’s public statement that he hates gay people? This is good news for gays. When Tim Hardaway decides to hate you, it’s time to celebrate. I want Tim Hardaway to hate me too. This post should help.

Years ago, I used to watch Tim Hardaway play for my local team, the Golden State Warriors. He single-handedly ruined my love of basketball. As a point guard, he had two noteworthy skills:

1. A great crossover dribble
2. The ability to do something stupid in the last 10 seconds to lose almost every close game.

Tim never seemed to notice that when he took the last shot in a tight game, his team almost always lost. Now, just to be clear – there’s nothing wrong with being a poor clutch shooter, unless you also happen to be the starting point guard, and it never occurs to you that passing to another player might work.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Hardaway ruined my love of basketball. That’s literally true. I didn’t mind rooting for a team with a bad record, but I couldn’t cheer for stupidity. I gave up on the Warriors and never regained my interest.

So when Hardaway said on the radio that he hates gay people, I think he was surprised that it caused a problem. He’s not good at pattern recognition. I’ll bet he spent the first week of the shit storm just shaking his head and muttering, “I didn’t see THAT coming.”

And did I mention that Hardaway was scheduled to do some public appearances for the NBA during All-Star week in Las Vegas? Apparently it never occurred to him that announcing a deep hatred for a portion of your fan base and advertisers would be bad for business. More muttering, “I didn’t see THAT coming.”

But my favorite part of the story is that Hardaway apparently never noticed that he’s African-American. Or maybe he never realized that enthusiastically promoting bigotry isn’t a good idea if you’re a member of a persecuted minority. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing that gets you into Mensa.

The great irony of this story is that millions of people probably had the same first reaction to his announced hatred of gays: “He’s probably gay.” I doubt there’s any statistical validity to the notion that the biggest gay-haters in the world are closeted gays themselves. But lots of people believe it. So Tim Hardaway managed to insult gays while simultaneously planting the suggestion in millions of minds that he might be one.

Does he hate me yet?

Posted on: Tue, Feb 20 2007 9:52 AM