Posted on 07/04/2006 9:09:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In his new book White Guilt, Shelby Steele describes listening to early reports on his car radio about the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and feeling certain that the president was finished. He reflects that, when he was a boy, if President Eisenhower had done something like this, he would have had to resign immediately. He remembers also that Eisenhower was rumored to use a racial epithet to refer to blacks when he played golf, but doing so (if in fact Eisenhower had) was not seen as a major sin then. Yet if Clinton had been caught out using a racial epithet in 1998, he would probably have been destroyed. Realizing that Clinton's sexual transgression was no longer viewed in the same way as it had once been, Steele writes that "it was the good luck of each president to sin into the moral relativism of his era rather than into its puritanism."
The accuracy of Steele's observations is well demonstrated in the recent flap over derogatory comments made by Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen regarding a Chicago columnist, Jay Mariotti. In an obscenity-laced tirade, Guillen referred to Mariotti as a "fag." Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who took nearly ten years to investigate the rather obvious doping that was going on in baseball, pounced instantly on Guillen, ordering him to sensitivity training.
Guillen is a vulgarian who, as others have pointed out (see especially here, would have been taken to the woodshed long before now if he had been a non-Hispanic white man. His use of a derogatory term that is unfortunately a staple of locker rooms and playgrounds hardly required bureaucratic intervention. Where was Mariotti with a combative or colorful riposte, or better yet, a challenge to a fistfight? Mariotti claimed that "people call me worse when I'm ordering coffee in the morning at Starbucks," but in the next breath he called for Guillen's suspension.
If we were back in the Eisenhower 1950s that Shelby Steele remembers, we would find it hard to believe that Ozzie Guillen was in more trouble than, say, someone who had repeatedly insulted the U.S. military. Yet that is the situation: Guillen is in the doghouse, while the New York Mets' Carlos Delgado is a figure of moral integrity.
Until his arrival in New York this season, Delgado had refused to stand to honor American troops overseas in the seventh inning of games because he objects to the war in Iraq. He has consented to do so this year at the request of the Mets, who do not engage in the ritual for every home game, as their crosstown rivals the Yankees do. Delgado has been for the most part celebrated by the media for his supposedly courageous stand. Selig has never ordered Delgado to sensitivity training so that he could better appreciate the effects of his behavior on grieving military families. To borrow Steele's terms, Delgado has sinned into the moral relativism of his time.
It's a time in which patriotism is a subjective virtue at best, always flexible enough to be redefined by whoever is rejecting its most elemental requirements. Hence Delgado's protest has been lauded by more than one sportswriter as a demonstration of what America is all about.
A different kind of man than Delgado could have reasoned that it really didn't matter what his opinion was about a particular military conflict when he was merely being asked to honor those fighting in it. He might even have reasoned that he owed such individuals his respect all the more, given his view of the conflict in which they were engaged.
And, finally, he might have realized that, being a citizen (Delgado is Puerto Rican) of a country that has made him rich, the decent thing to do would be to go along and bow his head and keep his addled thoughts about American foreign policy to himself. That would require humility, though, and humility is always in conflict with the demands of an overdeveloped ego.
Like Clinton's affairs, Delgado's pompous display of ingratitude is just a matter of opinion, an issue about which we are not permitted to pronounce definitive judgment. This same subjectivity is absent when it comes to Ozzie Guillen's language for people he dislikes. Ozzie didn't have the good sense to thumb his nose at men and women who die for the country that has enriched him. Instead, he called a reporter a bad name. He should have picked his fights better.
Guillen could still redeem himself, though: he could call President Bush a fag. That would build some bridges for him. But he'd still be a long way from playing in Carlos Delgado's league.
Paul Beston is a writer in New York.
Carlos Delgado's behavior costs him nothing. He can be as rude and as disrespectful as he wants as long as he keeps hitting the baseball (and catching it). He's just another example of an entertainer who doesn't get that all anyone wants from him is "to shut up and sing" (as Laura Ingraham would put it!).
And Ozzie has always been a loud mouth. It's supposed to be part of his charm, uh uh.
Black Sox 2005/6.
What we saw with Guillen was a man being persecuted for speaking his mind and telling the truth. He found that his 1st Amendment rights are limited by corrupt laws called "hate speech", and that truth has taken a back seat to political correctness.
I don't think the White Sox pay Ozzie to exercise his 1st Amendment rights. He can do that on his own time in the off-season. Ozzie should keep his mouth shut and figure out what to do about the Tigers, that's what the team is paying him for. Which I hope he doesn't do, go Tigers!
Well done Mr. Beston.
The comments that got Guillen in trouble, were off the record.
So now we've got to be paid by someone in order to exercise our free speech rights? Ozzie just said what most people think but are too afraid to say. I never thought I'd see the day in America when people would be silenced by homosexual perverts.
bttt
I think the people of 1955 would have thought Ike's intern was a deluded communist mental patient who should be locked up.
What's wrong with calling someone a 'cigarette' anyway?
It can also be luck, a year ago, he pretty much implied that the mets were a racial oriented team (actually implied is wrong, he went out and said, and he meant it in a bad way).
He (unless I am getting him mixed up with Beltran) basically said that Minya was trying to use ethnic backgrounds and culture and race for leverage and manipulations.
The media reported it, then dropped it, 2 days later.
To me, thats a story, and worse, when controversey came up this offseason, no one remembered it.
Do I think Ozzie is wrong for calling the reporter what he did? Absolutely.
Do I think there is ever a place for that kind of language? Absolutely not.
Do I believe Guillen is being honest about his supposed difficulty with American English? No.
Now that those questions are answered, I'm going to post an email I sent to ESPN Radio host Doug Gottlieb on the morning of Sunday, June 25 when his subject was Guillen's slur and ChiSox GM Kenny Williams' threat to fire the manager who won the first World Championship for the White Sox in 88 years if he didn't show remorse:
If "sensitivity training" actually was a training course regarding the necessity of protecting your employer from the ill-effects of being perceived as "intolerant" of minorities of a variety of types, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I can even understand a gay NFL player talking honestly about his painful experience in the locker room. But the fact is, such training often is a thinly-veiled threat; 'As long as you draw a paycheck from us, you will change the way you think, or else.' I have been through a form of it in a company I once worked for (it was mandatory; I wasn't sent for cause) and found it seethingly patronizing.
I live in San Francisco, a Mecca of homosexual activism and center of a region dominated by liberal groupthink. Later this morning, a parade dedicated to homosexuality will be attended by million people. Several elected officials in San Francisco and even more appointed bureaucrats are openly homosexual. No one famous dares say anything that is critical of homosexuality.Yet, this past February, when an organization of peaceful, polite Christian youths opposed to abortion and homosexuality based on Biblical grounds freely gathered at AT&T Park, the Board of Supervisors of S.F. passed a resolution saying they WEREN'T welcome in "America's most tolerant and progressive city."
Did anyone at City Hall have to go to sensitivity training? No, because sensitivity training teaches people that so-called "oppressed classes" by virtue of their victim status have the perfect right to treat the majority the way they have been treated, and the majority has no right to object or question it.
I am black. That means I am part of an "oppressed class." I am also a Christian. In the world of sensitivity training, it no longer matters that I am black -- I suddenly become an 'oppressor.' I never use slurs of any kind, but I believe homosexuality is wrong. But if I am caught by my employer saying gay sex is wrong according to the Bible, I could be fired if I don't subject myself to a session of scapegoating and psychological pummeling for thinking as I do.
Someone needs to do a story about "sensitivity training" and what it really is and not just as if it is a taping of "Dr. Phil." Maybe then more will understand why some view it as hypocritical and disrespectful. Here's a primer for you, Mr. Gottlieb:
http://reason.com/0003/fe.ak.thought.shtml
L.N. Smithee
Nice post.
Eisenhower did have a mistress, but the Kennedy White House was a mob brothel.. times HAVE changed since those days..for the better in that case.
Yet if Clinton had been caught out using a racial epithet in 1998, he would probably have been destroyed.
"it was the good luck of each president to sin into the moral relativism of his era rather than into its puritanism."
Was having sex with gun molls considered okay back in the early sixties? Don't remember...
In an obscenity-laced tirade, Guillen referred to Mariotti as a "fag."
Wonder if Ty Cobb ever used that languange? :)
..pounced instantly on Guillen, ordering him to sensitivity training.
What's happened to our national past-time? I recall listening tp language at minor league games that would blister lead paint.
Guillen is a vulgarian who, as others have pointed out (see especially here, would have been taken to the woodshed long before now if he had been a non-Hispanic white man.
I like Guillen. He's whiter than the Sox team average..don't think this is a matter of race here.. just P.C. taking over baseball..
Guillen is in the doghouse, while the New York Mets' Carlos Delgado is a figure of moral integrity.
Carlos who?
To borrow Steele's terms, Delgado has sinned into the moral relativism of his time.
I still don't get that... was Kennedy sinning into the "moral relativism" of the late 50s, early 60s? I think powerful, popular people routinely get away with murder (mostly figuretively speaking).
Guillen could still redeem himself, though: he could call President Bush a fag. That would build some bridges for him. But he'd still be a long way from playing in Carlos Delgado's league.
I mostly watch baseball... for the baseball, not the off-field political soap opera. Delgado isn't the first immature punk in professional sports and he won't be the last. Mostly best to ignore.
How about the punishment? Going to Gay Pride day? I don't equate going to Gay Pride day with going to some civil rights event. If we don't agree with the message of "Gay Pride," are we wrong?
See the faggot with the earring and the mink coat.
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair.
That little faggot's got his own jet airplane
That little faggot is a millionaire.
Shelby Steele is a great intellect, but I think he's mistaken on this. Clinton would have been given a pass on the n-word, just as he was on everything else.
Unlike Delgado, Guillen has stated on several occasions, publicly, that he was so proud to have become a citizen of the United States and that he loves this country.
The word "fag" is also used to describe lack of courage and NOT a sexual term.
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