Letters to the Editor
Tom 70
Published Letters: 142 Editor's Choice: 17
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This poll doesn't tell us much
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All it indicates is that members of a minority group are more likely than people in the majority to believe that one of the minority is being discriminated against. But that's obvious, and it's bound to be true no matter what the minority is. If Bonds were Asian and the poll asked if he was being treated unfairly just because of that, then you can be sure that Asians would be more likely to say yes. If he played for the Indians and the poll asked if he wasn't getting respect just because he played for the Indians, I guarantee you that Indians fans would be more likely to say yes. If he were short and the question was about shortness, short people would be more likely to say yes.
The examples could go on and on, and when you're talking about a minority group that has a long history of being discriminated against, as blacks obviously do, it's only natural for them to assume discrimination when asked a question like this. That's not the least bit surprising.
The problem is that this doesn't tell us anything about whether and how much racism is actually occurring here. It doesn't tell us anything at all, really.
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jgale:
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How could anyone hate the Timberwolves?
Just asking.
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Try switching the sexes
[Read the article: Does sex through fraud constitute rape?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... and imagine that a woman pretended to be her sister and had sex with the boyfriend. Is she a rapist? Would you believe the guy's story, even for a second?
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Juliebird:
[Read the article: Does sex through fraud constitute rape?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to be exacting about your criteria because it's important as a matter of legality. And because I honestly don't see the line between pretending you're a specific other person and lying about your desirable qualities as clearly as you do.
Say, for example, a man tells a woman that he's Donald Trump's son, and he knows the son's name and a bunch of facts about the guy in order to make it convincing, and he gets a woman to sleep with him this way. Or say a woman somehow convincingly claims to be someone who went to high school with a guy, and then sleeps with him. By your definitions, both of these people would be rapists, no?
If the answer is yes, then I credit you for consistency, but this would be troubling to me because I think it drains some of the seriousness away from the much clearer notion of forced, wholly non-consensual, violent intercourse that we call rape.
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I'm not a hockey fan ...
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and I wasn't even watching TV on Saturday, but if I had been then the cutaway from playoff hockey overtime to the pre-Preakness crap would have been infuriating. It would be different if they'd cut away for the start of the actual race, because then they'd just be going with the more popular sporting event. But this was more than an hour of pure promotion. NBC wasn't catering to racing fans over hockey fans; they were catering to casual TV watchers over sports fans.
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Great column
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks, King. As a Cavs fan who thinks they blew their chance to win the series last night, I think you nailed it.
Someone said, as someone always does: "I hate columns like this; if Donyell makes the 3 and the cavs win, Lebron made a brilliant play." That misses the point by a mile. King was careful to say that it's not about this one play in a vacuum. The problem is that this play seems to be characteristic of LeBron, it's symoblic of his play generally. Even though Jordan passed up a few shots at critical moments, nobody would look at his play overall and say he was reluctant to take over a game. We can disagree about this being a tendency for LeBron, but it makes no difference whether Marshall made that particular shot, and it's worth noting again what Magic's and Barkley's opinions are on this question.
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Wow
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All these soccer fans! Who actually know what they're talking about! How cool. Who knew you were here?
Stick around. You may get King more interested.
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Punishing flopping doesn't address the problem
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... which, like Brooklyn Todd said, is poor officiating. The reason players take dives is that the officials are easily fooled, which is to say that, given the current rules and the way officials are positioned on the court, it's too damn hard for officials to tell what's a foul and what's not. It's the biggest problem the game has, and I don't know how the hell to fix it, but adding a new type of penalty would probably just make things worse. At least King acknowledged that it would be problematic (a fine understatement).
Plus, as we all know, if the floppers stopped getting the calls they'd quickly stop flopping, no penalty required.
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Ohio proud
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... and Katie Holmes! Luke Perry! Nick Lachey! Oh, stop me ...
Seriously, what's it going to take to give Cleveland a championship team (any major sport) in my lifetime? You'd better stick around, LeBron.
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Why do some songs catch on?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it's simplicity. "Take me out to the Ballgame," "God Bless America" -- they're slow, plodding and simple, and any boob can sing them because they require no vocal range. Easy songs for a big group to sing along to. Just like the "Happy Birthday" song. Oh, and "We Will Rock You" ... can it get any more simplistic than that?
P.S. I'm on board, MarkL.
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Re: Cosmo Sinclair
[Read the article: The end of the line]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He says about the Midwest, "We don't have ready access to fresh and affordable sea food and we don't often eat fish." I could take you to probably 20 restaurants in Cincinnati that have endangered fish on the menu every night. Then I could take you to Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. and do the same. Let's not pretend that the Midwest isn't contributing to the problem.
The fact that apparently very few Salon readers are even reading this article suggests that there isn't going to be much done about it, though.