Looks like no one else around here wants to tackle the tough issues. The news items that really demand the attention of a blog with that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, when it comes to boondoggling the bamboozlers, tackling when others might tip-toe. So here we are, let's have at 'er.
Nigger. Faggot.
Those two words are the easiest summation of the trials and tribulations this week of one Wayne Simmonds, close-to-elite level NHL player. Two separate incidents, one per word, that Simmonds was a part of the past seven days. One the victim the other the vocalist.
Incident one:
A spectator threw a banana at Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds during an overtime shootout attempt in Philadelphia’s preseason game against the Detroit Red Wings in Ontario.
Okay, in case you didn't figure it out from the picture, Wayne Simmonds is black. The use of a banana, when thrown at a black person, is considered a racial slur. I guess it means they are a monkey, or a gorilla, or that only black people really like bananas and other races don't. Fuck, I really don't know. It's kind of confusing because I call my yellow friend a banana because he is yellow on the outside but white on the inside. But what's a double-sided race card other than a barrel of laughs at an apple bobbing competition in Ontario's rural backwoods?
To clarify, the article doesn't use the word nigger anywhere in it. Nor does it say the banana wielding hick screamed it as he put his diabolical plan into action. I used the word nigger because that's what we're supposed to think when we read the headline. And you can only take a word's power away by using it. My guess is, if presented the opportunity, the idiot who threw the banana would not take it, to call Wayne Simmonds a nigger. Unless he was feeling suicidal.
The long and the short of the scenario: Simmonds composed himself and scored on his shoot-out attempt. The Red Wings did end up scoring the winner, no news if any backbone-less slimebags anointed them with projectiles of their own.
All mood-lightening jokes aside, and straight -up takes on racism as well, it sounds like Simmonds was fairly matter-of-fact in his dealing with the proceedings. To think that he hasn't been dealing with similar bullshit (although not is such a spectacular fashion) for a good chunk of his life is naive and hoighty-toighty of any person to believe.
Incident two:
Does WAyne Simmonds call Sean Avery a "fucking faggot"?
Oh dear. So less than a week later the victim is the violator in the tribunal of public disdain, the pit of xeno-homo-centuriphobes.
An anecdote! I never laced em up (unlike the other contributors) as a youngster, and didn't give two fucks for hockey until my dearly departed grandfather got me interested in (my now despised) Canucks hockey. It didn't take too many years for me to turn into a testosterone-producing puberty-pushing rage-addled teen, and a huge advocate of the term "fucking faggot" to express my displeasure at any given player or play, be it on the team I was rooting for or the enemy. The hindsight homophobic humbling of these few years is that my dad sat in the other room (he never liked any sports) listening to me wail and bellow bigotry, all the while being a (closeted) "fucking faggot".
I'd be lying if I said I've never used the term nigger in my life. The roots of racism lie deep in some families and you are exposed to it at some point. I also listened to gangsta rap fairly religiously for about a decade, so when you're getting down like a fly ass white-boy does, sometimes you just gotta rap along with Bushwick and Willie D.
Anyways, this article isn't about pointing fingers at Wayne Simmonds for being a hippocrite. It's about pointing fingers at everyone else who wants to turn every banana or fag-bomb into a personal crusade to clear a conscience that they could easily void themselves if they just did some soul searching and realized the onus lies on everyone's hands, and if not, bloodline. So unless you are a test-tube baby, go get high and jerk your blue balls off and tell the closest Chinese lesbian how it felt. It worked for John Lennon.
Fuck, how do you think Peter Worrell felt about playing on the Panthers with this piece of shit cruising around ruining everyone's fun?
