John John - My freshness is probably due to my age. I’m 68, and probably one of the oldest members here. My attitude is not all that different from my contemporaries. I discovered that on the 50th reunion of my Sewanhaka HS class of 1949 reunion. Very few of the good old boys have computers. I didn’t get one until last year.
I’ve seen it all, and done it all, and nobody here can tell me anything.
God Bless
Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.
I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency. Charleton Heston
Golly, I’ll bet “RAM,” “VCR” and “cellular telephone” don’t appear in that there high-falutin’ 1948 dickshunary ya got there either. Does that mean they don’t exist?
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
Obviously you’ve never stepped outside the borders of the United States. Amurricans repeatedly speak english (LOUDLY) in foreign countries, and get very upset when their foreign interlocutors don’t know english.
Arnold - I’ve been a world traveller since 1950, and I really never noticed Americans being overly loud compared to others around them. (In manner of dress, YES!). The most reserved people IMHO are the Germans, with the Japanese close behind. (We lived in Japan for 3 years). The Spaniards and Italians are boisterous, as are the Israeli’s.
Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.
I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency. Charleton Heston
Sorry in advance for the length of the following, but I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.
On a societal level, probably the best take on this sort of thing I’ve seen came, coincidentally enough, from a baseball writer, writing about a baseball-related incident, but who wasn’t addressing the Rocker case specifically. In his recent (1996, I believe) book on baseball managers (The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers from 1870 to Today), sabrmetrician Bill James included a brief essay on idiotic, bigoted statements made by baseball figures – specifically, Marge Schott’s idiotic comments about Hitler a few years back.
James devotes about four pages, in a sidebar article entitled “Tolerance, Tolerance”, to the issue of what, if anything, baseball should have done about Ms. Schott, at that time the controlling partner of the Cincinnati Reds, who in an ESPN interview remarked about Adolf Hitler that
This came on top of previous bigoted and anti-Semitic comments for which she had been punished by Major League Baseball before (1992-1993).
James does not defend Schott’s comments. But he does come down squarely in the camp of defending her right to make them. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. But he goes on to make what I think is an important point: that for him, the essence of liberalism (the implication being that that’s how he sees himself politically) is not sensitivity (being constantly vigilant against the potentially offensive), but tolerance (recognizing that other people do have the right to offend you, and that you control your response to that). He says, and I have to agree, that if we’re inclined to, we can find hundreds of things to be offended by within a block of our homes, and that there’s precious little to be done about that, since we can elect to be offended by practically anything. What we do control, of course, is how we react to those things.
I can’t do justice to four pages of closely reasoned argument even in a post so long as this one – James makes the case very well. Well enough, indeed, that while the burden of the argument is not stunningly original, it definitely impressed me at the time that I read it, several weeks before John Rocker began spouting off about New York during the last days of the regular season. The parallels between Schott and Rocker are fairly strong; so strong, indeed, that when I made a special trip out at lunch today to re-read James’ article, I was amazed at the applicability of nearly all of his points about the Schott case to the Rocker flap. Rocker veers much closer to crossing the line into outright racial, ethnic, or homophobic slurs (indeed, may have crossed over it with some comments) than did Schott in the comments that James specifically addresses, but she had been much more pointed in her comments about blacks (referring to the “million-dollar niggers” on her team), gays and Jews on previous occasions.
Taking this tolerant approach, of course, requires that you believe yourself to be responsible for yourself. Speak out about the contempibility of what’s said, if it’s appropriate, but do not, if you value your own right to speak your mind, suggest that someone loses any right to life, liberty, or property when they use their own right of free speech in ways that may be offensive to you.
On a baseball level, the damage that Rocker has done is significant. Whether it was intentional or not is difficult to say. Bobby Cox, for one, obviously has very little use for a loose cannon like Rocker. More so than any manager in the game today, Cox has steeped himself in his former skipper Ralph Houk’s managerial approach: take all the blame and none of the credit for what happens on the field, and keep your mouth shut completely about what happens off the field. I can think of only two incidents since Cox returned as Braves’ manager in which his discontent with a player was made publicly manifest: when he pulled Andruw Jones off the field late in a game in 1998 for a perceived failure to hustle and when he tried to distance himself from Rocker’s early salvos at New York fans during and immediately after the regular season. Cox is also well-known for disdaining trash-talk about opponents – he could be talking about an upcoming exhibition against his daughter’s softball team, and he’ll be talking up every strong point (real or imaginary) that can be made for the opposing team.
Cox’s approach has typically been shared by the players under him; while many have criticized the Braves as being mechanical or uninspired, there also have never been the incidents of clubhouse unrest that have plagued Bobby Valentine’s Mets (cf. Henderson & Bonilla, Valentine’s comments about having a bunch of losers on the team, etc.) and so many other teams. The Braves are practically unique in that respect, and in one more: no other team has won its division eight years in a row. In short, there’s little room in the Braves organization for someone like Rocker. His comments, particularly those about Cox and about various teammates, will make for a chillier atmosphere than one would expect in Orlando, even in February, if Rocker is among the pitchers and catchers who report to the Braves’ spring training camp next month. The best Rocker can hope for is that he’s allowed to make an abject apology to his teammates and then gets his lips welded shut for the duration of the season. I’m sure that there are Braves players and staff for whom even that would be insufficient.
(Incidentally, it’s almost uncanny how closely James’ hypothetical team press releases about such an incident mirror what’s come out of the Braves’ front office since all this started).
That being said, however, Cox and general manager John Schuerholz have also shown themselves to be highly resistant to outside pressure. They don’t make personnel moves that are not squarely aimed at improving the quality of the product they put on the field, whatever the other considerations may be. The Braves organization is faced with a serious problem: a player for whom they have no ready replacement (it remains to be seen whether Kerry Ligtenberg can regain his form of 1998), who has alienated his manager, a large number of teammates, and a significant portion of the team’s fan base, in such a public way that everyone in baseball knows how much the Braves would like to be rid of him. This, as you can imagine, significantly reduces the Braves’ leverage in any trade negotiations. And the Braves organization is very unlikely to turn him loose without obtaining something of value in return – however much they’d like to dump him, however popular it might be, it’d be a bad business move, and the Braves don’t make many of those. If they were to do so, no doubt someone would snap him up, probably at a lot more money than he’s making now or would have been likely to make in the next couple of years (until he reached his third year and became eligible for arbitration). Maybe that’s been his plan all along – but if it is, either Rocker is a lot smarter than he acts or he has an extremely creative agent.
Perhaps the saddest part of this whole controvery is that I’m not so sure that the key to Rocker’s behavior isn’t to be found in his fondness for pro wrestling – and all of the in-your-face hectoring, braggadocio, xenophobia, prejudice, etc. that seem to accompany it. I think it’s distinctly possible that Rocker has modelled his competitive behavior on that other staple of Turner’s television programming. Indeed, that seems almost the only way to reconcile his actions and statements of the last six months with the person who invited a black resident alien who speaks four or five languages (and a couple of them better than English) to l
Arnold I have traveled across Europe and spent weeks and months in many different countries. Yes, I have seem some Americans being rude and boisterous and the locals being very upset about it, justifiably so. If they can be upset with our pigish behavior, and they were just visitors on vacation for a short time, why can’t I be upset with their pigish behavior that I see many times a week year in year out?
Things are not what they seem to be; nor are they otherwise.
[lankavatara Sutra]
John John, I don’t know what countries you’ve visited, but my experience has been that when you’re in a european country and speak a foreign language, people just take it in stride and don’t give you a major amount of grief.
Captain Ed, Americans are usually loud, but maybe not noticeably louder than in some european countries. However they are often noticeable for typically making the least effort to speak and/or understand the language of the country they are visiting.
The old european joke is:
What do you call someone who knows two languages? Bilingual.
Three languages? Trilingual.
One language? An american.
Rocker’s “fat monkey” comment was not directed toward a black teammate as has been assumed. He says that it was made toward a Latin teammate who is a friend of his. He says that he has often called the teammate this name to his face as a joke between friends and that the Latin player appropriately responds with friendly “put-downs” toward him (Rocker).
Does this revelation make a difference to anyone?
It does to me.
Krispy Original – voted SDMB’s 19th most popular poster (1999)
It does to me as well. It would HAVE to make a difference to everyone.
You know, you take people that have played sports all their lives, like Rocker, neglecting education and etiquette, and we expect Emily Post with a Master’s Degree. Not happening.
Things are not what they seem to be; nor are they otherwise.
[lankavatara Sutra]
I would like to state first and foremost that I find Rocker’s statements disgusting and in no way condone his thought process.
With that being said, does anyone remember the old adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
What Rocker said are just words on paper. Yes, they’re deplorable, but the fact is, they didn’t hurt anyone, but Rocker. It has been argued that it makes the Braves organization look bad. No it doesn’t. What moron would read those quotes and attribute the sentiment to a whole group? No one.
He fucked up. John Rocker and no one else was hurt by those words. To force a psychiatric evaluation of him is absurd. If he’s nuts, then a lot of other people are nuts as well.
I hate bigots, but the fact that John Rocker is a bigot doesn’t mean he can’t play baseball. The media has once again blown something waaaaay out of proportion. Do you really think if this story hadn’t gotten so much media attention the Braves oranization would have come down so hard on him? I doubt it.
He said these comment outside of work. If someone made bigotted comments while having a picnic in the park with friends, they’re certainly not going to get fired at work. I realize that he made these comments in a public forum, but he was not on the mound at a baseball game tossing around racial slurs.
We can all agree that John Rocker has a few screws loose. Not because of his opinions because he’s entitled to those, but because he stated them for the world to hear. But, I feel that the punishment is too severe for the crime.
Arnold - I was forced to spend my life visiting many foreign pestholes, such as Rome, Paris, Athens, Cairo, Frankfurt, Tokyo, etc. - hey, somebody’s got to do this dirty work, don’t they?
I made it a point to learn to read menu’s and ask for directions to the men’s room. Binjo, Doka Desuka? Yo tengo el gonas de orinar - donde esta el excusado?
Today, AltaVista has a translator for 5 different languages called babbelfish. I use it to read foreign newspapers. Just cut and paste, and Viola, you are a Frenchman. I respond to editorials with letters to the editor in any language I can get.
Italian seems to have a few flaws, probably due to the vide variety of dialects between the spoken word in Sicily, and the Northern provences.
Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.
I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency. Charleton Heston