Muddled Messages:
Perhaps if I had known Sean Taylor I would have liked him. Who and why anyone likes anyone is not exactly any reasoned rational exercise. More often a marriage made enigmanated in mystery.
“It’s times like this that all of us struggle to find meaning in life,” NFL Commissioner Goodell told the mourners. “The NFL was proud of Sean Taylor. He loved football and football loved him back. But more importantly, it was what he was as a man and what he was becoming as a man.”
Maybe so but their are certain facts that remain:
Taylor was raised by his chief-of-police father in a middle class home and attended private school.
He was fined seven times for viscious late hits
He spat in the face of an opponent during a playoff game
DUI arrest in 2004 but charges thrown out
In 2005 arrested for aggravated assault and faced 46 years in jail for waving a gun and beating up alleged thieves of his ATV's. Was sentenced to 18 months probation.
His SUV was shot 15 times in a drive-by shooting in 2006
There is ample evidence that Good Commissioner Goodell is also proud of Coach 'Billicheat' who drew not a minute of suspension for cheating in football games. It was left up to some wimpy righteous Coach Dungy to express any real disapproval: During an interview on HBO's "Costas Now" that will air Tuesday night, Dungy was asked whether "frosty" was the proper characterization of their brief handshake.
"Well, it probably was," Dungy said. "But that's Bill. Bill has always been that way with me."
Dungy told host Bob Costas that he had not heard from Belichick about his comments in September that the Patriots being caught spying was a "really sad day for the NFL."
"But what I meant was you had so many people looking at this team and this organization," Dungy said. "They've won three Super Bowls. We're talking about them as maybe the best team ever. ... And to have something like that happen, it just lets people say, 'Oh, you know, this is how you win.' Or, 'This is OK, as long as you win.' And I didn't think it was good for the NFL."
This is not to say that Good Commissioner Goodell, the puppet and mouthpiece of the NFL Owners, is proud of just every player in the NFL. There is Ricky Williams for example. He has been suspended for seasons for smoking pot. No DUI for Ricky, no assaults, no cheating, no waving guns around, but the NFL has to draw the line in the sand somewhere and smoking that well established performance enhancing drug marijuana is of course the logical place to draw the line. The other stuff is just good ole American boys will be boys stuff.
What the NFL seems to be least proud of is any player who dares to be different, more precisely---to be indifferent to the carefully managed tune the league writes for the players to publicly dance. The best of citizens, with the best of noble personal principles, with clean as a whistle living, with a self made determination and training regimen for success---is targeted with unrelentless verbal and legal assault. You wonder what the Good Mr. Goodell would say if Terrell Owens had been murdered in a home invasion. To tell the truth he probably would give the same God damned speech.
But all this aside. When are Americans going to ever understand that violence begets violence? Are we really going to ride this arrogant ignorance into a chaotic disintegration of everything we have built up over the past 200 years?
