Posted on 04/10/2011 9:09:00 PM PDT by presidio9
The trial of Barry Bonds has always been more than a simple case of pursuing a bad guy and proving that he lied. The chase and the subsequent trial have been as much about a baseball era driven by vanity and greed, and fueled by performance-enhancing drugs.
But the eight-year pursuit of Bonds also reflects America’s discomfort with prominent, powerful, wealthy black men.
That might seem like an incredible statement to make in a nation that elected Barack Obama as its first black president. But Obama, who has had his citizenship questioned and has been heckled by a member of Congress, has a place among men including Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali and Bonds.
In good conscience one could never put Bonds on par with Ali or Robeson and certainly not with the president of the United States.
Bonds’s historical antecedent is Jack Johnson, who became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908.
Johnson lived a fast, unapologetic lifestyle. He incensed some blacks and enraged many whites by openly keeping company exclusively with white prostitutes and marrying at least one.
In 1910, Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act. The legislation forbade the transportation of women in interstate or foreign commerce for prostitution, debauchery or any other immoral purpose.
Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act when he traveled with a prostitute from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $1,000.
Johnson had violated the act in only its narrowest application — if that. He was prosecuted because powerful forces within the government felt that a black man who lived such a brazenly bodacious lifestyle was a threat to America’s racial order and had to be taught a lesson.
And
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
But Johnson did not use performance enhancing drugs!!!! Barry the white hater DID!!
Wait! what? Barry Bonds is black? Seriously, all these years hearing about him playing baseball I had no idea what his skin color was till just now. Admittedly I rarely watch a baseball game. But even so, I had heard of Barry Bonds plenty of times over the years.
Barry Bonds****************************************************
From the outset, an insane premise.
Only a liberal racist could think this way.
This is why less and less people read the New York Times all the time. Is it an editorial? Is it an article? Is it a polemic? Is it screed with a byline? Can I have the couple of minutes it took me to read it back, if not the price of the paper or the cost of access to the fee-charging site? More questions than answers, and more of a statement on its author and its publisher than anything else.
All these papers who are converting to pay only websites will have their readership decline..finally to zero. Other sites have all the news and opinions paid for by advertisers. Why pay for opinions in the NYT? Good bye Grey Lady.
Barry isn’t being prosecuted because he’s uppity.
He lied before a grand jury. Prosecutors almost always prosecute people when they lie before a grand jury.
He also deserves to stay out of the Hall of Fame for his steroid use. He was stupid to have used steroids and he didn’t need to. He already had a couple of records without them.
How many Wall Street crooks were arrested and convicted for crashing the world economy?
None of them lied in those thousands of contracts and transactions that the feds had to dig Bonds’ testimony from many years ago?
Just ask Martha Stewart.
I agree with you that this is more of an internal issue for baseball to handle.
However, Bonds made it an issue externally when he lied.
I despise the guy, especially since he seems to be such a prick. And yes he lied in front of the grand jury...and that’s illegal and bad.
Question: Why aren’t the feds taking the Wall Street crooks before grand juries to see if they lie? How much damage did they case to the world economy?
Let’s get our priorities straight, that’s all I’m asking.
Cause if the Wall St. crooks’ necks are on the line, they might just start talking the truth about how involved high ranking government officials were in the manipulation of the economy. And being banker types, they probably have the paper trails to prove it.
I’d been away from New York for a while and coming back was full of surprises. One was how far the New York Times has fallen. They’re right now going around acting as if they are continuing to lead the way in going to fee-based online content, but when you combine that move with their trying to branch out into odd things for a newspaper - selling New York memorabilia, etc, and organizing for-profit seminars, all the while advertising them every day - they’re looking more and more desperate. It’s a downward spiral from here. It’s beyond the point where jettisoning Paul Krugman is going to pull them out of it.
Even though the city is not as center-right as the rest of the country is as a whole, they used to try and be fair-minded - it seemed. They’ve abandoned all pretense of objectivity since then. For me the final scale fell on that when reading their coverage of Jared Loughner’s Tucson insanity.
It’s not so much that news outlets can’t make money - center-right and moderate ones seem to be doing quite well. It’s more that the editorials don’t always appear on the opinion and editorial page; and that’s where the mainstream media’s leftist to the tune of 90% of reporters’ views were once printed, and tolerated by those that didn’t agree with them (the majority of the country and thus majority of potential readership) as long as real reportage appeared on all the rest of the pages.
This man is an idiot. Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record, another black man, and one who earned it.
>> But the eight-year pursuit of Bonds also reflects America’s discomfort with prominent, powerful, wealthy black men.
What a #ing bogus premise. I hate stupid, and right there is some serious ‘stuck on stupid’.
As I said, I agree we should be also going after those who damaged the economic system.
And I’m not saying that I agree with the prosecutor on this. However, when you are called to testify before a grand jury, don’t assume the prosecution has nothing on you.
You should always find out what they have on you and always be prepared to give the minimal concession with whatever a prosecution might have.
That was Martha Stewart’s mistake. Had she conceded that her actions were the result of acting on rumours that she heard and her actions were ill-timed, but not criminal, she likely wouldn’t have spent any time in jail.
Same with Barry Bonds. Do not totally deny what you’re being accused of, but spin your story as having no criminal intent if you can, and you’ll likely not spend any time in jail.
The main reason why the Times is losing money and why it’s paywall is going to fail is due to syndication.
They’ve been selling their content to other newspapers for years. The consequence is that, with a little searching, you can read the whole NYT without having to visit its site.
The only way they are going to make money on this scheme is if they are willing to stop syndicating their work.
It’s an interesting and neglected view in the explanation, but simply insisting on enough money from their syndication to cover their loss would be enough to remedy it, all else being unchanged.
I’m with Bonds and Stewart on this issue. Grand juries have far too much power to wreck people’s lives for the crime of being prominent and uppity, while glossing over the real crimes of, say, the banksters who crashed the economy. Absent any real charges for the people they target out of personal pique, they will nail you on any technicality they can dream up.
Lie like hell to grand juries, I say, until the whole mess collapses under its own weight.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.