Scoop Jackson Has a Dream
I was going for provocative with the title. It ended up being a little overdone I know. The real question is, does ESPN sports writer Scoop Jackson know he’s turning himself into a caricature or, perhaps more to the point, is he doing it on purpose?
Maybe ESPN tells its writers to aim for a role. Bill Simmons is the “college guy,” Pat Forde is the “all American guy,” John Hollinger is the “nerdy guy,” Marc Stein is the “if I don’t say ‘committee (of one)’ at every possible opportunity then I’m not happy with my life guy,” and, apparently, Scoop Jackson is the “black guy.”
Race is a strange thing in sports and its coverage. Almost no one openly admits or believes they are a racist and, yet, it would be impossible to say that no discrimination exists.
Donovan McNabb, for example, faces harsher criticism than most white quarterbacks. Take Tony Homo…err, I mean Romo. He has yet to win a playoff game, seems to choke at the biggest moments (my favorite being his “run Piggy run!” moment vs. Seattle in 2007), and is building a reputation for getting injured consistently. Despite such limitations as a QB, Romo continues to remain the media’s darling. Even more inexplicably is that many of the Dallas Cowboys’ woes the past couple years have been blamed predominantly on teammate Terrell Owens while Romo has been given a pass. Yes, Owens is black.
So that has to be racism right? Well, I don’t know. Owens gets blamed because he can’t keep his mouth shut and every time he does speak he jams his cleats down his own throat. He also has a tendency to give quarterbacks hell. Just ask Donovan McNabb.
The waters of racism are almost always murky, making it difficult to define what is and what is not discrimination. Unless you’re wearing white cloaks, have a swastika tattooed on your forehead, and are screaming hate speech it’s pretty difficult to identify you as an absolute racist.
(Oddly enough, the above example of the extreme racist isn’t even an exaggeration. Watch the prison show Lockdown and you’ll witness some of the most remarkable examples of the darkest part of the human gene pool. Some of the inmates say things like “I like killing black people because a group of them were talking while I was trying to watch American History X at the cinema.”)
With that said, long gone are the days of this type of attitude:
“But as comedy writer Murray Roman, a nice man who didn’t know any better than to reflect prevailing opinion, advised me, ‘Now I’d introduce Bill [Cosby] to my mother. But a guy like you…Don’t mention the fact that you’re a nigger. Don’t go into such bad taste.’”
That’s from Richard Pryor’s autobiography Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences. It’s a hilarious read and eye-opening take on American culture during one of the United States’ most interesting periods of history for anyone interested.
But what does all this have to do with Scoop Jackson? Well, a lot actually. It is relevant because he has a tendency to make race a prevailing theme in much of his writing. While that’s not a bad thing in itself, it becomes bad when you start turning almost any issue into an issue of race as Jackson so often does. Scoop seems to think he’s still living in the US that Pryor was. Times have changed.
In 2006, Jackson was responsible for a travesty of sports writing. He wrote an article condemning the Chicago Bulls for refusing to allow Ben Wallace to wear a headband. Somehow he turned that wardrobe issue into a race war. Some of his most memorable lines from that article include:
“Too black, too wrong.”
[…]
“See, what Wallace should do, since he’s on this defiant trip, is tell Paxson, ‘OK, I’ll abide by the headband rule if you stop letting (or giving away, as the Bulls did during the home opener to welcome him) fans wear those back-to-slavery Buckwheat wigs during games.’
Think that’ll happen?
Never. Because, like honestly dealing with why the team is losing, the Bulls really don’t want to deal with real issues of professional image and subliminal messages being sent.”
OK, I’m nominating “those back-to-slavery Buckwheat wigs” as the most absurd, insulting, and incredibly moronic line of any sports piece this decade.
I thought imitation was the highest form of flattery? Wallace’s hair has become as much a part of his character on the court as his blocks. Fans, most of them kids, wearing his hair wig would appear to me as a sign that they support Wallace, not slavery. But hey, I guess I’m just not reading between the lines enough right?
Scoop seems to think that by not allowing their players to wear headbands the Bulls are suppressing black culture through subliminal messaging. I can’t even write or read that without laughing. Somehow I can’t imagine the Bulls brass as a secret society of hate mongerers who have late-night meetings where they sit on either side of a long table with the Bulls’ owner at its head cackling over how much he hates black people and can’t wait to destory them. Isn’t the Bulls’ stadium the one immortalizing the accomplishments of Michael Jordan, an African-American athlete, with a statue of him outside its entrance?
I wonder if Scoop is one of those people who goes through every Walt Disney film ever made frame-by-frame looking for burning American flags and sexual imagery.
In his latest article, Jackson is at it again. Jackson writes about Plaxico Burress’ legal troubles and turns an issue of law into an issue of race; implying that Burress’ ethnicity and public image had an influencing factor on the leniency of the District Attorney who was intent on making an example out of a “31-year-old, 6-foot-5 brotha in a suit.”
Could be. Or it could be that he’s enforcing the law as his state dictates it. Difficult to say with any degree of certainty. The waters, as always, remain murky. Scoop Jackson should take a break from swimming in them so consistently and dry off with some sports issues rather than race issues.
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