Not that there’s a hideous double standard at work or anything, but what if Riley Cooper’s agent had been Jay Z? Seriously.
Jay Z: “I repeatedly rap and record the N-word for the public’s consumption. Far more than most, I’ve helped resurrect the N-word from near-death and return it to the mainstream. And even President Obama claims to love my stuff.
“I’m sure my client, Mr. Cooper, hears the N-word shouted in the locker room, every day. So why should he suffer for being overheard using the N-word in semi-private? Because he’s white? That’s racial profiling! Discriminatory! I implore you: Let my person go!”
Hit it, maestro: “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”
There’s that you-go-girl New York-based weekday ABC show, “The View,” that specializes in advocating women’s rights, often to thunderous applause and “woos!” from the predominantly female audience.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to hear what’s being said because the four panelists talk all at once. That’s not a sexist crack; that’s a fact.
Monday’s show included an announcement from the stage that former NBA great Isiah Thomas is in the house, and, as a camera showed Thomas, the predominantly female audience made with loud applause and “woos!”
When the applause and “woos!” ended, panelist Sherri Shepherd added, “He is Detroit! I love Isiah Thomas!” More loud applause and “woos!”
Apparently, none of the women — feminists, activists — on the panel, including regulars Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, nor the show’s producers nor the predominantly female audience knew — or cared — that Thomas, specifically, and his former Madison Square Garden employers were on the losing side — $11.6 million — in a couldn’t-miss-it sexual harassment case, five years ago.
Oh, well, “Woo!”
Still, we’re blessed. Consider that in afternoon-drive radio hosts Michael Kay and Mike Francesa we have two experts on Alex Rodriguez.
Although it became progressively, visually and statistically obvious that Rodriguez and Barry Bonds years ago were juiced, Kay chose to lend his name, presence and reputation to host a rich-fools-only, two-man — Rodriguez and Bonds — 2004 autograph show, $7,500 per to enter.
When warned, here, to stay clear of such a conflicted, entangling alliance — you don’t go into business, even for one day, with those you cover, doubly so if you’re in the sports media and your two partners are professional athletes of highly dubious character — Kay reacted on air as he too often does: Childishly and churlishly.
The gig, he hollered, would “pay me more for one night than sportswriters make in a week!”
Imagine, both Kay and Bud Selig found financial enrichment in see/speak/say-no-evil drug-infused sluggers!
Kay essentially and defiantly admitted he could be bought. So he was bought and, for whatever it was worth to him then, he remains, forever, bought.
His current opinion of what Rodriguez did, didn’t do and how it should be handled doesn’t count, and hasn’t since the day he agreed to be the paid host of a distasteful enterprise starring and further enriching two wealthy but distasteful and distrusted men.
Meantime, whatever allegiance that Kay, also on the Yankees’ payroll as a TV announcer, may have thought Rodriguez owed him, it recently was betrayed by Rodriguez, who chose to be heard on Francesa’s show recently. Of course, Rodriguez’s integrity, like Kay’s and Francesa’s, is flexible.
Francesa, who always pretends to know everything — and from the inside — about things he knows nothing about, already had knowingly declared that the likes of Rodriguez and Ryan Braun wouldn’t and couldn’t be touched by MLB as per their exposed relationships with the Biogenenesis boys.
And Francesa trashed — and hung up on — all callers who disagreed.
How’d that turn out?
Same as it always does: Francesa not only was wrong, he was spectacularly wrong! Just consult the lost tapes.
But no one is as transparently shameless as Francesa. So, at a time when every application of common sense and common knowledge pointed to Rodriguez, already a proven liar, as headed for a colossal fall, Francesa lent Rodriguez a soft, friendly forum and a sympathetic ear.
Naturally. That was Rodriguez’s reward for reaching out to Francesa, a relentlessly self-impressed egocentric. The fact Rodriguez’s people had chosen him — er, Him — was all it took to get over. After all, Francesa gloats and floats (sorry, Clyde) on the self-recognition that he and Rodriguez have one enormous thing in common: Unlike you, you, you and me, they’re co-big shots.
Anyway, arrests last week included NBA free agent Daniel Gibson. After seven years with the Cavaliers, the former University of Texas student-athlete was arrested for breaking a man’s jaw at a New Orleans nightclub.
As “nightclubs” go, this one must serve breakfast. Police report that the assault occurred at 5:15 a.m.
Then there was 6-foot-9, 253-pound Houston Rocket Terrence Jones, busted outside a Portland, Ore., club at 2 a.m., for stomping on a homeless man. Jones was a full-scholarship student-athlete at the University of Kentucky. Wait … 2 a.m.? What’s he doing out so early?
So here we are, at a time when sports is being laid even lower by the incivilities of its highest-level and best-paid participants, yet Sports Illustrated’s cover last week celebrated attention-starved, garbage-talking, putdown-Tweeting braggart Seahawks’ CB Richard Sherman as the coolest dude in the NFL.
It never ends. Advance to the rear! Lucky us, today starts another week!
NBC trumpets an all-inclusive report as exclusive
NBC’s national TV news, Wednesday, went ESPN.
Correspondent Ron Mott: “NBC Sports reports that a decision on [Alex Rodriguez] could come down as early as Friday.” Yep, NBC and 50 others had that exclusive!
* SNY will air some Cosmos soccer classics, from 1976 (last year in Yankee Stadium) into the ’80s, starting Aug. 11, 9 p.m.
* Good Grief: Wednesday on MLB Network, Pittsburgh pitcher A.J. Burnett was asked, “If the Pirates make the playoffs, will you pierce your nipples, live?” Burnett, who apparently once had such piercings, said no.
* Want tickets to Sept. 21’s Michigan-UConn football game in Storrs? No sweat — provided you buy the six other home games.
* Syracuse’s local alumni and college radio station WAER will honor Ian Eagle, Class of ’90, as a Hall of Famer on Aug. 16.
* Reader Yank Poleyeff: “If Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma, leaves him, would that make her a walk-off Huma?”