I like this lady. She does a good job. Will this type of "lynching" ever stop? http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080110/SPORTS18/801100416/1048/SPORTS
I agree Gip....I've always liked Kelly. I think Tiger's response should vindicate, but in this day and age, it's unlikely. It's a shame....imho, it says much more about Sharpton and his ilk than Kelly.
Hey what about Nick Faldo...he just nodded and smiled when she said that...should that sort of tacit approval cause some problems? Much ado about nothing, just like Fuzzy Zoellers unfortunate comment about Fried Chicken...hell I like fried chicken!!
Sorry, guys. I can't make it unanimous. She does not need to be "punished" but at the very least, I believe the kind of thoughtlessness that prompted the comment needs to be highlighted, which is what her employer did. Nick Faldo's on-camera reaction has nothing to do with it. They gave her an appropriate slap on the wrist, Tiger handled it with class, and it's over. Time to move on.
Really Sid? Al Sharpton wants us to believe that "Lynching" is a word directed specifically at black people alone. That's where the debate is. There was nothing racist about the phrase she said and there is certainly nothing racist about the word itself as it is defined-: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction. There are times where it is blatantly obvious that no ill will or intent was behind a phrase or action. Thi is one of those times. She was saying that as a compliment to Woods, as in nobody can seem to beat him. It seems to me society has become overly sensitive these days.
Mike, first of all let me say that I don't know where Al Sharpton fits into this picture but I consider him an idiot and a con artist whose schtick is on the same as Jesse Jackson. I don't like either one of them. Second, you are a young man, born many years after the passage of civil rights legislation. You can't possibly understand the sensitivity of a statement like that. Thee are people alive today who less than 70 years ago witnessed the lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana, just 40 miles south of where I live and almost 200 miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line. As a young man I saw firsthand the impact on friends of racism and prejudice. It still exists in abundance today but to a much lesser degree than 50 years ago. I lament that there is too much political correctness in this society of ours, but this is not one of those situations. The statement was not mean-spirited. Everyone involved understands that. It was just thoughtless, and like I said earlier, only needs to be highlighted for what it is. That's all. She is a good person. She's had her wrist slapped as a signal to think before she speaks. Now it is time to move on.
Al Sharpton is the one who made the original stink about the comment. His hired guns that scour the news and television in general looking for things for him to crusade against notified him of her comments. Otherwise it would have gone completely unnoticed. I will defer to your experience in terms of the hurt behind the word, and I definitely agree that there is still far too much prejudice in the world today. I just recall days of my teenage youth where all the guys would play games like manhunt and such, and we commonly used that word to "lynch" one of our friends. We never even had a shred of thought to the word having any harmful meaning behind it. We just knew it was time to give some good ol' fashioned gut punches to the unlucky victim (which countless times was me as well). I had white friends, black friends, hispanic friends, asian friends, and so on. Our use of the word did not discriminate any one of them. It wass just good fun amongst oblivious teens I guess. Maybe that's a good think if you think about it. Words are just words. They have no bearing on feelings at all. It is the intent behind those words where the true meaning lies. As words begin to lose their hateful meaning throughout generations, I think it only points to progress as a society moving forward where that hatred is beginning to fade. That, to me, is a good thing.
You would think that people would learn from others mistakes. Apparently Golfweek magazine failed that test. The put out this cover, what in the world were they thinking? I also find it laughable that they fired one guy over this, like nobody else signed off on the cover or was aware that it was going to be the cover. I guess there has to be a scapegoat. To me this is sort of like the N-word. It is just no longer a word that can be used, even black comics and hip hop artists are getting flack and they were supposed to be the ones who could use it because ...well theyare black. GolfWeek
I recall in high school reading THE OX BOW INCIDENT which was a novel about lynching. Not about blacks being lynched by white accused horse thieves. Somewhere along the way I guess that lynched became part of the group of words that only blacks could use or understand. Arthur Black was quoted as saying that he hoped that Michael Vick could someday return as QB of the Falcons. He also said that he hoped that Vick didn't eat too much fried chicken and stayed in shape. Apparently fried chicken has also become part of the vocabulary that ONLY applies to blacks ans using it is somehow stereotypes blacks. I am somewhat confused. Does this mean that fried chicken does not make whites heavy or does that mean that only blacks eat fried chicken? In either case I say ********. I've come to the conclusion that we as a society can never be equal. There are some words some of us cannont us while others can. That alone demonstrates how screwed up we've become.
Mike, You and I went to HS about 3 years apart in the late 50s & early 60s when segregation was still the norm throughout the country. I also read the OxBow Incident and never associated lynching with blacks because even in HS I did not know it was done. I'm guessing that you didn't either. It wasn't until college and young adulthood in the 60s that I learned the hard, cold facts about segregation and racial prejudice, watching TV and seeing peacefully marching blacks being beaten by police and black students trying to enter a school being spat upon by whites. Neither you nor I have ever been on the receiving end of racial hatred, as were those marchers and students and others throughout the years. The closest I came was as a teenager when I went swimming in Haddonfield, NJ with one white and 3 black friends, and a man told us there was only one small area of the pool where we were allowed to swim. I was so naive my black friends had to explain it to me. I don't expect to change your mind or your opinion, but as a white man having lived through the last two decades of de facto segregation and having learned as much as possible the history of racial prejudice in our country, I understand the sensitivity of certain words, and I understand the recent uproar about the noose.
Gentlemen, Although I entered school as late as 1965, I did so in the “deep South” where racism is still alive today. I went to school with many card carrying KKK members. I was actually “recruited” unsuccessfully in the 4th grade by Roy Orbison Jr. A 10 year old kid spreading that kind of hatred means that his family believed that way and encouraged this attitude. It was not long afterwards that Roy Orbison's house burned where two of his kids including Roy Jr. died inside the inferno. In the 8th grade, William Golden’s (Oak Ridge Boys) son Rusty tried the same thing. It was a private school where no blacks were allowed. This school, B. C. Goodpasture “Christian” School allowed its first black student in 1977, three years after I left (I graduated from Dupont, a public school, in 1976 after spending my Junior and Senior year there). The area in which we lived, Donelson, Tennessee, had a Woolworth’s department store. These stores had a lunch counter. I don’t remember the city in which the Woolworth’s protest happened, but I think it was in the Carolina’s. Blacks came in and sat at the lunch counter and refused to leave until served. The Woolworth’s in Donelson closed the lunch counter rather than be forced to serve blacks. I am not sure if that happened in all Woolworth’s. I was only two years old in 1960 when this occurred. That lunch counter reopened in 1980, twenty years after it closed. Blacks came from all over middle Tennessee as if in a celebration that they had won a war that was ongoing that long. In fact, they had only won a battle, the war is still not over and that is a shame. :?
I was born in 1953 in Dayton, Ohio in the southwestern part of the state. Sid and Gipper are familiar with it. Dayton was a fairly large city ( about 220,00 ). But everyone knew it as the east side ( whites ) and the west side ( blacks ). Geography made it simple as the Miami River ran straight through the center of town from north to south. The main crossing point was the Stewart Street bridge. Both groups only crossed it if absolutley necessary. I can remember when I was very young there were a couple of Klan rallys in town.