The proof is in the details.The proof of racism in sports media is not in something like the fact of Michael Vick’s guilt. Once the evidence came forth, we understand Vick’s culpability in the dog fighting that took place on the grounds of the home in Surry County, Virginia. The proof of racism is in the manner in which the Vick case was reported. The proof is in the omission of details, the half-truths, and the lies in reporting the incident.

We watched as no member of mainstream or of Big Box sports media questioned how the Vick dog fighting case was assembled. No one ever questioned how the Davon Boddie marijuana bust turned into investigators walking onto Boddie’s property and talking with someone other than a person who lives in the house; a someone who took investigators to a kennel full of pitbulls because the investigator “heard dogs barking.” Yes, I said Boddie’s property. Vick bought the property and oversaw the building of the home and the kennel (which we now know was not initially built for dog fighting dogs), but Boddie paid the bills and the property taxes. We know that Vick gave this property to Boddie in lieu of handing him a “just because” check every month, or so.

So, how did no reporter dig this information up before the seven to ten days? A journalist or some journalists. Some journalists knew that something was awry when police investigators turned what was a street bust into a home and property search. Some journalists had to know that something smelled funny about this.

Yet instead of doing the work, journalists saw Michael Vick, first black quarterback ever to be drafted number one overall, and ran with the thoughts of five minutes of fame dancing in their heads. Sensationalism and an easy target overtook journalistic responsibility.

To justify this greedy want, reporters everywhere, but especially in Atlanta and at ESPN, sought to establish themselves as the end-all purveyors of Vick news while cozying up to new NFL czar, Roger Goodell.

The initial news was benign, but Terrence Moore of the Atlanta Constitution-Journal went out of his way to paint a black picture of Vick. Moore repeatedly trotted out Vick flipping off fans – erroneously reporting that they were Atlanta fans. He harped on the “Ron Mexico” pseudonym used by Vick to find out if he did or did not have STDs. That is news for Internet sloth – football-specific sloth and otherwise; you know who they are - and the National Enquirer, not for a reputable newspaper of one of the largest cities in the U.S. Moore told bald-faced lies about the water bottle Vick refused to give up at Miami International Airport. The same bottle that when Vick said jewelry was in its secret compartment, was suddenly no longer discussed. Vick’s failure to appear in front of Congress was a sign that he was nothing more than a thug.

As evidence for Vick’s thugishness, Moore painted his cornrows, his posse, his nightlife, photos of Vick with a Black and Tan cigar that Moore swore was a joint. He howled to the moon in his column and implied that Vick should be run from the city or stoned; whichever came first.

ESPN rushed in to one up Moore and sent Kelly Naqi to set up camp outside Vick’s home. Meanwhile the Worldwide Leader used a cadre of reporters to dress the investigation in the clothes of their choosing. When ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported that team officials from the Atlanta Falcons and officials from the NFL league office both were told that no indictment of Vick was forthcoming, ESPN and Moore fell into mourning. Their nine-day silence – until the federal government surprised everyone with indictments - was palpable. Only the Internet sloth, whose very lives appeared to be tied to Vick’s guilt, continued the drumbeat for further investigations into the Vick matter.

In those days Moore, ESPN, and the Internet sloth shifted gears and draped a dark gown of impropriety over the head of black prosecuting attorney of Surry County, Gerald Poindexter. They intimated that Poindexter was trying to let Vick off the hook because of shared skin color. They implied that Vick paid off not only Poindexter, but federal agents, as well. However, Poindexter repeated constantly that he had been burned by similar loose warrant language and that as soon as the language was cleared up, he would resume his investigation of the case.

ESPN wasn’t listening. They had their hooks in two black men now and they weren’t about to let them go until they tore them to shreds. They aired Vick specials, they put Jeremy Schaap on Outside the Lines to damn Vick in ways Bob Let would never dare. You see the results; what they did to sway public opinion of Vick before the feds had evidence. And to this day they continue to excoriate Poindexter. The latest charges in the hell-hounding of Poindexter are that he has failed to prosecute the case strongly enough; that the charges are less serious than they should be.

Lapdog Moore, who appeared on various ESPN news shows panting with excitement in his ability to play the black white journalist, currently wags his tail in agreement with ESPN’s Poindexter stance.

Look at the coverage of Barry Bonds, which has been well-chronicled here at TSF. Not only did Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams allow the idea of a Pulitzer Prize to stain their thoughts, it tainted their integrity. And this extends especially to Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury-News and any other reporter black or white with an ax to grind over Bonds. Again, though, the racism inherent in their reporting isn’t in the shoddiness of their allegedly extensively detailed writings, it is in the manner in which they wrote, in what they chose to emphasize.

It is important to understand the racial undertone involved in placing an inordinate emphasis on Bonds’ preoccupation with Mark McGwire. It is the story of the black man jealous of the white man’s accomplishments and flying into an over-emotional rage and becoming unnecessarily consumed with the white man.

I have since heard from a very reputable source that Bonds did rant about McGwire at a bar-b-que at the home of Ken Griffey, Jr. However, to use a rant as the nexus of Bonds’ alleged steroid and HGH use is a questionable leap of faith. Yet it was reported and taken as gospel truth because the general white public is so inattentive to its own racist tendencies that no one would dare attempt to punch holes in such a shoddy argument.

Think of how the white mistress, Kimberly Bell, was and is at opportune moments, shoved down our throats. Bonds confided, not in his wife, but in a white woman with whom he was allegedly having an affair. Bonds told Bell about his elbow injury and the need to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to quickly recover from his surgery.

The problem with this white woman as deified to the black man fairy tale is that Bonds was separated from his wife at the time he was seeing Bell, so there was no affair, no mistress. It was a relationship between a man and a woman - period. And unlike the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment case where the black woman’s -Anucha Browne Sanders - word has been challenged as much as Thomas’ word, the word of the white and fair belle, Bell, goes unquestioned.

Notice the difference between Vick and Bonds coverage with that of St. Louis outfielder, Rick Ankiel. Now, before anyone says Vick and Bonds are more popular therefore blah, blah. blah, let’s get something straight: Rick Ankiel was the panacea for all Bonds talk, all the Vick talk, all the black athlete gets busted for marijuana talk. Make no mistake; Rick Ankiel was the feel-good sports story of 2007.

And before we get into Ankiel, let me expound on the black athlete gets busted trick for just a moment. First, one name, Bill Maas. Whatever the hell happened to the sordid story of Bill Maas? Popular or not, as an ex-athlete who apparently had the broadcasting world by the tail, Maas makes very good copy. I never saw the mug shots of Maas and his female road trippin’, drug-doin’ cohort splashed on the homepage of ESPN.com or any of the blog sloth’s homepages. Where are the ESPN.com Page 2 commentaries about Maas in a larger context, that context that everyone is susceptible, not just athletes - everyone. Where are all those writer who seek to find the out of the way angle, those important writers of great worth to us all who are bastions of the NFL press, like Peter King? They are completely and uniformly silent on the Maas issue - and believe me, I’ve been waiting.

As far as the black athlete gets busted for pot issue, doesn’t it strike anyone odd that so many of these athletes get pulled over for failing to use a signal to change lanes or exit a highway or turn a corner: ‘damn nigras, why do we let ‘em drive?’ Has one sports journalist ever stretched beyond the boundaries of the game to report the irrepressible fact that a marijuana smoker is arrested in America every 38 seconds? Thirty-eight seconds?! No one has reported that in 2006 that 829,635 persons were arrested with marijuana and put that into perspective when it comes to athletes - especially black athletes? Of these people, 738, 915 or 89% were arrested for possession of pot. This represents a 188% increase in arrests over the last 15 years costing taxpayers 10 to 12 billion dollars annually. It is little wonder, then that so many athletes make their way to the police blotter with a marijuana charge hanging around their necks.

Once again, our sports media has failed us when it comes to matters of race and sports.

Now, back to Ankiel. After he was named in the Signature Pharmacy scandal, the Mighty Wurlitzer, that is the national sports media, immediately churned out story after story excusing Ankiel for receiving a 12-month supply of HGH from the Pharmacy. They wrote that we should honor the “sacred” doctor-client privilege involved in the Ankiel case. Yet they failed and continue to fail to mention that Ankiel’s “doctor” was an Internet physician who Ankiel did not visit in person. They failed and fail to note that no legitimate doctor would prescribe a 12-month supply of HGH to a patient and have a pharmacy ship the HGH to the patient so that the person could self-administer the drug.

They wrote that we have no solid proof that Ankiel even injected the HGH he received from Signature. Are you serious? Are you really serious?! Then where is the press conference with Ankiel breaking out his box of ampules showing the world that he, in fact, did not use HGH.

They wrote that the drug was not on the MLB banned drug list at the time he used HGH. Well then the same holds true for Barry Bonds, but no sports journalist ever reported that fact. The sporting press lamented the fact that Ankiel felt pressured to return to the majors and all-but lauded him for trying everything in his power to recover from an injury and finalize the switch from pitcher to outfielder. Hell, sports journalists found physicians who were and are willing to say, in relation to Ankiel, that HGH has no benefits that would help a baseball player.

Huh?!

No one ever mentioned that about Bonds. No one mentioned in glowing terms that Bonds was trying to return to his former self from elbow surgery and that he was trying to cope with arthritic knees. No one lamented that he felt the need to succumb to - in this day and age of over-hyped sports coverage – the use of PEDs to try to break Henry Aaron’s home run record. No no no. As we all know Bonds was and is reviled for anything he might have done, though we have absolutely no proof that he injected or rubbed anything illegal on his body.

And where is the black press throughout this black athlete head hunting expedition, this safari through the plains and the cities of America to hang a black trophy head on the walls of sports desks everywhere?

They are pretty much nowhere to be found. Sure they trot themselves out for the Jena 6 - cookie time! Sure a few of them say enough is enough with Bonds, though they still believe that his head and feet grew because he was a wild HGH-steroid user who shot everything from the clear to cattle ‘roids. If you believe what the black and white sports journalists say, Lyle Alzado had nothing on Bonds. Bonds, all because of Mark McGwire, went legendary jungle #### crazy on the PEDs. If you believe all these scribes and their tall tales of PED abuse, Bonds might have about five years to live before his head explodes.

So, why aren’t black reporters pounding down the doors of editor’s offices - editors white and black - and demanding to have their voices heard?

Black reporters are subject to the same racist treatment as black athletes. They are watched, hand-picked and often removed from their communities by opportunistic editors. They are befriended by veteran white journalists and deprogrammed and remodeled as whiter black people. These reporters are sometimes handed high-paying, influential columnist jobs before they are ready, writing or experience-wise. They soon find that, implicit in maintaining their position is the knowledge that they are not to rock the boat or make waves by writing anything that challenges the established status quo.

After being thoroughly “systemized” these black journalists, like their athlete compatriots, know their place, no matter what they might try to say. At first, they make a conscious effort to not overstep their boundaries and it shows in their writing. In a few years, though, their master’s wishes are ingrained in them, and their words become seamlessly meshed with their editor’s wishes and compliance becomes their message. And they too, do the knee-jerk, reactionary, the black athlete is at fault thing. Sometimes, they’ll jump on the boat before their masters, just ask Jason Whitlock.

Can all this change? Of course it can. Awareness and the ability to be unrelenting in seeking and reporting the heart of all sporting matters are the keys to maintaining a sense of self; that, and a sense of community, no matter how small or large.

However, less than a handful of black mainstream and Big Box writers accomplish this. We see them, read them. Many white readers despise them because they refuse to tow the line, unless it is the truth; and even then their reporting o####iven event will reveal something entirely different than their peers. The majority of black writers though, will go along with the flow, smiling and dancing all the way to Mantan and Sleep ‘n Eat purgatory, as they are never quite dead, but their words show they have certainly left life behind.

With their black peers along for the ride white writers are never forced to step out of their existences and truly see anything other than what is comfortable for them. The sporting world keeps spinning; black athletes keep losing while the media keeps winning.

Don’t believe me. Take some time. Take a tour for a week or so and read for yourself. As receivers of this hegemonous message, you owe it to yourself to look around and truly decide if this is what you want your world to look like.

But whatever you do, do look. The proof is in the details.

addendum: A Memphis football player, Taylor Bradford, was shot and killed last night. Clay Bailey and Alex McPeak in their Memphis Commercial-Appeal article indicate that:

Memphis police have not established a motive and have no suspects in custody.

However, the Associated Press-ESPN News Services article say something entirely different about the shooting:

A University of Memphis football player was fatally shot on campus in a targeted attack and classes were canceled Monday as a precaution, officials said….

In an e-mail alert sent to faculty, staff and students at 3:40 a.m. Monday, officials wrote that “the initial investigation indicates this was an act directed specifically toward the victim and was not a random act of violence.”

The university decided to cancel classes Monday, although police believe the person or persons involved in the shooting left the campus immediately.

“We feel like the campus is safe, but we’d rather err on the safety than not,” [university spokesman Curt] Gunther said.

Is the AP in the business of providing “safety messages” for universities or is their article another indicator of how incidents are twisted to fit the image of people of color?

Well, I was right about ESPN’s town hall meeting, “Across the Vick Divide.” Yesterday, or more accurately, this morning, I wrote the following:

The guests will provide a gawking television audience with overblown depictions of Vick in a sure attempt to reduce him to a “thing” lower on the evolutionary tree than any Simian primate. Their praise of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will be fawning - the new “bwana” keeps the animals with veldt origins separate from civilized onlookers. The panel will depict all black people who cried out for temperance rather than an automatic judgment of Vick’s guilt before the facts of the investigation were known as a monolithic voice of unthinking emotional reactionaries in the tried-and-true tradition of loaded racist verbiage. There will be side discussions about various athletes who defended Vick and, in their rabies-laden eyes, downplayed dog fighting; side discussions about athletes - black athletes - in general and dog fighting. Perhaps the panelists will try to make a “cultural connection” to the rural South, black people, and dog fighting.

John Goodwin, “featured guest audience member” provided us with the, Vick as lower than animal because of his treatment of dogs, theme. Neal Boortz was relatively non-descript and actually acted as panel all-around bland guy. Boortz was so purposefully vanilla that he must have had “tone it down” written in the palm of his hand; or perhaps his role was pre-determined. Roger Goodell was praised because Vick committed a “federal offense,” was the mantra repeated by Chuck Smith, former Atlanta Falcons player and CNN, NFL analyst. Terrence Moore took care of the “unthinking emotional responses” portion of the vilification process. The athletes who defended Vick were met with the charge of being uninformed by Smith. Selena Roberts took care of both the, why is dog fighting connected to athletes and the connection to the rural South.

No Selena, dog fighting does not have Southern roots. It came over to New York from England. It was an upper-crust Northeastern affair. Do your homework before you open your mouth, woman. Quasi-authoritative remarks glossed with hal####efenses of black people don’t fly with us black people who know your kind. You’re the white woman who stays the #### away from black people for real, but does a great acting job when you realize your “motivation” is empathy for a weaker people. You act “down” and insightful, but you’re as fake and as pompous as the white men whose bidding you perform.

Meanwhile, the final question from Internet sloth to the ESPN “Across the Vick Divide” town hall meeting audience concerned whether or not dog fighting should be a strongly penalized law. Most of the audience felt there should not be a stiff penalty for dog fighting. I guess that’s an “emotionalized” response from those “African-American” people who are “not rational,” right Terrence Moore (and thanks for inventing a new word)?

Moore is a train wreck of a black man; a negro without a cause. He told the nation that he had a professional duty to vilify Vick and espouse his guilt, even before the evidence was gathered.

Unfortunately, Moore cannot see through the forest of his own fallacious behavior manifested in his writing. It really wasn’t his professional duty to lie about the initial evidence concerning Michael Vick. It wasn’t his professional duty to misquote Surry County district attorney, Gerald Poindexter, nor was it Moore’s professional duty to quote Poindexter out of context while omitting valuable information that, if written or spoken, explained Poindexter’s reticence to prosecute Vick. It was not Terrence Moore’s professional duty to call Vick a weak-armed quarterback when he has one of the strongest arms in football today.

Moore had the temerity to say “they” in reference to black people, rather than, “us.” The use of “they” illustrates just how separate he is from his blackness, from himself, and how he is viewed by the world, much like his compatriot in African American-ness, Chuck Smith.

Smith, until tonight, was not a well-known entity in the NFL talking head world despite his gaudy title. Yet he was very well-known in Atlanta. Now, everyone knows him. Everyone knows Smith has taken a very superficial tack when dealing with the Michael Vick case: Vick is guilty of a federal offense and that is the end of the story; black people need to get over it and move on.

Though he never said it, Smith appears to be another “they” in reference to black people type of person and it is obvious that most people in Atlanta see it; it’s just that for many black people, Smith is a television-strictly version of Terrence Moore and is despised. For white people he is perceived as a black guy who sees beyond color. In other words, Chuck Smith will never make them uncomfortable.

What Smith forgets with his federal offense mantra is that, purposely derived or not, laws get coincidentally laws get passed just before a major black figure in the public eye is investigated. Meanwhile, our president is arguably guilty of impeachable offenses and is a seen as a war criminal in some countries, but you will never see laws invented just to get him to court so that later he can be impeached or tried in a world court.

Smith erroneously said of John Goodwin, “This man has devoted his life to [combating] dog fighting.” The reality of John Goodwin, now of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is far different than the public image. You see, he didn’t seem to know much about dog fighting cases, especially the Vick case, when I interviewed him. He said he hadn’t seen the dogs in question in the Vick case and didn’t know first hand whether or not they showed evidence of dog fighting. He also had no clue that dog carcasses were said to be buried on Vick’s property, which indicates a distinct lack of knowledge about a case in which he was acting as an aid to the state of Virginia and the federal government, well, at least the United States Department of Agriculture.

Goodwin, in reality spent as much or more time as a pseudo-hippie leader of the Animal Liberation Front, which spent as much time committing crimes and escaping the law as it did calling to attention the mistreatment of animals by corporate entities. Goodwin, in reality, is the kind of guy who put underage teens on the front lines of protests so that police could beat their heads in and arrest them first, then be forced to release them because they were not adults.

That is the reality of John Goodwin.

During the ESPN show Goodwin said of dogs in dog fights, “They’re discarded after they’re broken and bruised.”

That sounds a lot like NFL players to me.

The treatment dogs that participate in dog fights and the treatment of NFL players is strikingly similar. Professional football players, like fighting dogs, are bred to play the game. It takes a singular person to deal with the violence inherent in the game; to shake off injuries that require surgery for the average person; to hit someone with the sole hope that they not rise from the ground; to watch another athlete be paralyzed during a game and continue to put what was just witnessed out of his mind and focus on the task at hand - brutalizing another human.

The most feted dog fighting dogs go through a nurturing process that includes checking and rechecking their vital signs before and after situation where they are faced off with another dog, but chained so that they cannot touch. The fat content of their bodies is watched like a hawk. They run on special treadmills meant normally for dogs bred without enough land to run. The difference is, dog fighting dogs run to build endurance for fighting, not to exercise. If they are not ferocious, they either breed or are killed.

Before a football player becomes a professional he trains with specialists who alter the player’s diet, his weight lifting regimen. They make him faster and more flexible. After this he enters an arena - the NFL Combine - where he is poked and prodded like a slave on an auction block, his monetary worth assessed like a courtesan preening in front of royalty choosing him for years of sex until his beauty - health, for an NFL player - fades. And when his time is done, he is discarded, broken and dying before his time, and replaced by a new dog, player.

NFL players drawn to dog fighting see the brutality and the potential finality of every fight. they know their dogs lives are cut just a little shorter with every nick and bite and injury incurred during each fight.

Perhaps NFL players see themselves in their dogs.

Finally, Terrence Mathis conveyed a message from Michael Vick to America. Though he spoke more toward helping us to understand Vick, he ultimately proved only one thing: that us, black people, were given a god by our masters in the form of Christianity, and should we choose to believe in that god, we pray harder and believe more in that god than white people ever could themselves.

———————–

“Across the Vick Divide” proved that ESPN knows how to put on a show, but does not know reality. All of the claims that the Worldwide Leader’s enterprises seek and find more diversity in its workplace are but a pigment of our imaginations.

Diversity does not exist when you seek out people of different colors who act and think just like you. All you do, then, is hire mirrors of yourselves - you might as well not hire the image of us and just hire you. This is the reason why Howard Bryant can compare Michael Vick with Alberto Gonzalez and tell black people that they forget one crucial difference between the two. It’s why Bryant can reduce the ruse that was Gonzalez’s investigation and his slipping quietly off into the sunset though guilty as sin, a matter of class, a matter of financial transcendence. He writes this with righteous indignation while somehow forgetting that neither Mark McGwire not Rick Ankiel - both, not-so coincidentally, wearers of the St. Louis Cardinals uniform - have yet to apologize for their malfeasance.

For the aware, “Across the Vick Divide” illustrated painfully that “blackness,” is meant to be a thing of the past. We are now “African Americans” when, in fact, we are so far from this moniker that one wonders who coerced black people to accept it as a monolithic falseness. Nearly all of us, black people, are much more than African ——– and much less than American. We are European white. We are Native American. We are Hispanic. We are Asian…. and we are African.

We are not American. We are not afforded the “god-given” rights of white people. We do not at all possess god-given anything; our rights are of the “civil” variety and must be renewed by acts of Congress and signed off on by a ringleader known as a president. True Americans practice something called “tolerance” when it comes to us, black people; not acceptance, but tol-er-ance. You can tolerate me and still hate me. However, you cannot hate me if you accept me.

With this stripping of color as an identifier comes the final, fine-grade sanding away of the memory of who we were and the understanding of what we are. Without memory or understanding, our future is bleak, if there is to be for us, black people, a future at all.

And we still are no closer to understanding Michael Vick and what he means to black and white America than we were September 25 at 5:59 p.m. EST.