On Tim Hardaway
Feb. 21st, 2007 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
justalurkrLeonard Pitts always puts it better than I can:
Homophobic outburst may do some good
At Large
Homophobic outburst may do some goodBy LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
L ast week, Tim Hardaway declared his hatred of gay people. Gay people should be thankful.
Let me tell you a story. It's about a man named Bull Connor. In 1963, he was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala. Back then, Birmingham was pleased to be considered the most segregated city in the South. Then civil rights demonstrators under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. came to town. Connor directed the city's response.
When you see those famous images of dogs attacking unarmed marchers and firefighters directing high-pressure hoses at men and women singing freedom songs, you are seeing Connor's work. He was a hateful cuss, but there was a useful purity in his hate: The sheer violence of his response to the civil rights movement brought international condemnation and irresistible pressure for change.
Segregation was, for many people, still socially respectable in that era. Politicians defended it with honeyed euphemisms like ''state's rights,'' and preachers assured their flocks that it was God's will. So you could be a segregationist and still feel good about yourself, still feel moral.
Connor inadvertently made that impossible. How moral can you feel when a guy is loosing dogs on children in your name? Connor stripped segregation naked. He made people face it for what it was.
Hardaway, a retired jock who once started at guard for the Miami Heat, did the same thing for gay bashing last week. No, he didn't turn dogs or hoses on anybody. But he surely stripped homophobia naked.
DIRECT ANSWER
Asked during a radio interview by my colleague, Dan Le Batard, for a comment on John Amaechi, a former NBA benchwarmer who recently came out of the closet, Hardaway did not have the brains to lie or deflect the question. Nope, he was blunt as a brick.
''I hate gay people,'' he said, ``so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.''
Any questions? Me neither.
There is something bracing in the matter-of-fact clarity of Hardaway's declaration. He cut through the clutter of weasel words and half-truths that traditionally surrounds homophobia, showed us what lies behind honeyed euphemisms (''traditional values'') and claims to speak for God.
''I hate gays,'' he said. Period, end of sentence. The statement had to it the same flat clarity of Bull Connor, straw hat on his head, cigar clenched in his teeth, siccing dogs on children.
No, Hardaway isn't the first person to speak so stridently against gays. The lunatic Fred Phelps comes to mind. Still, you could always ignore Phelps precisely because he was a lunatic. Hardaway is not. He is, or always seemed, a decent guy. Which makes his words all the more hurtful.
AFTER THE FACT
He has apologized, of course, but that surely has more to do with universal approbation and the loss of lucrative endorsement deals than any true change of heart. Anyway, that's his business.
Ours is this: Like segregation before it, homophobia is, for many people, still socially respectable. So one hopes that one byproduct of Hardaway's outburst is that it will become less so. That we will be forced to face it for what it is. It would be a nice change.
So often, we use words to distance ourselves from what we feel, to hide our true meaning, even from ourselves. Hardaway used words to say exactly what he felt, and it is possible to abhor what he felt and yet appreciate that he does not make you guess or infer.
Think again of Connor, screaming obscenities under an Alabama sun. To hear him, to hear Hardaway, is to know that you have finally come down to it, finally met the beast that lives behind euphemism and weasel words.
It is ugly, but it is also, at long last, truth.
Homophobic outburst may do some good
At Large
Homophobic outburst may do some goodBy LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
L ast week, Tim Hardaway declared his hatred of gay people. Gay people should be thankful.
Let me tell you a story. It's about a man named Bull Connor. In 1963, he was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala. Back then, Birmingham was pleased to be considered the most segregated city in the South. Then civil rights demonstrators under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. came to town. Connor directed the city's response.
When you see those famous images of dogs attacking unarmed marchers and firefighters directing high-pressure hoses at men and women singing freedom songs, you are seeing Connor's work. He was a hateful cuss, but there was a useful purity in his hate: The sheer violence of his response to the civil rights movement brought international condemnation and irresistible pressure for change.
Segregation was, for many people, still socially respectable in that era. Politicians defended it with honeyed euphemisms like ''state's rights,'' and preachers assured their flocks that it was God's will. So you could be a segregationist and still feel good about yourself, still feel moral.
Connor inadvertently made that impossible. How moral can you feel when a guy is loosing dogs on children in your name? Connor stripped segregation naked. He made people face it for what it was.
Hardaway, a retired jock who once started at guard for the Miami Heat, did the same thing for gay bashing last week. No, he didn't turn dogs or hoses on anybody. But he surely stripped homophobia naked.
DIRECT ANSWER
Asked during a radio interview by my colleague, Dan Le Batard, for a comment on John Amaechi, a former NBA benchwarmer who recently came out of the closet, Hardaway did not have the brains to lie or deflect the question. Nope, he was blunt as a brick.
''I hate gay people,'' he said, ``so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.''
Any questions? Me neither.
There is something bracing in the matter-of-fact clarity of Hardaway's declaration. He cut through the clutter of weasel words and half-truths that traditionally surrounds homophobia, showed us what lies behind honeyed euphemisms (''traditional values'') and claims to speak for God.
''I hate gays,'' he said. Period, end of sentence. The statement had to it the same flat clarity of Bull Connor, straw hat on his head, cigar clenched in his teeth, siccing dogs on children.
No, Hardaway isn't the first person to speak so stridently against gays. The lunatic Fred Phelps comes to mind. Still, you could always ignore Phelps precisely because he was a lunatic. Hardaway is not. He is, or always seemed, a decent guy. Which makes his words all the more hurtful.
AFTER THE FACT
He has apologized, of course, but that surely has more to do with universal approbation and the loss of lucrative endorsement deals than any true change of heart. Anyway, that's his business.
Ours is this: Like segregation before it, homophobia is, for many people, still socially respectable. So one hopes that one byproduct of Hardaway's outburst is that it will become less so. That we will be forced to face it for what it is. It would be a nice change.
So often, we use words to distance ourselves from what we feel, to hide our true meaning, even from ourselves. Hardaway used words to say exactly what he felt, and it is possible to abhor what he felt and yet appreciate that he does not make you guess or infer.
Think again of Connor, screaming obscenities under an Alabama sun. To hear him, to hear Hardaway, is to know that you have finally come down to it, finally met the beast that lives behind euphemism and weasel words.
It is ugly, but it is also, at long last, truth.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 05:23 pm (UTC)When the Hardaway hoopla erupted last week, I resisted dissecting it on my blog because I felt pretty much the same way that many people did, Mr. Pitts included, and I knew that columnists, bloggers, and everyone with a voice in between would no doubt eventually reach such conclusions in a far more eloquent manner than I ever could, thereby relegating my comments to, well, "comments."
On one such blogger's comments page, I said: While it no doubt saddens me that his kind of hatred, fear, and ignorance continues to persist in this day and age, I am pleased that the NBA was so quick to sanction him and, in effect, draw national attention to his behavior. It gives me hope that we are indeed moving (albeit slowly) away from complacency and toward understanding and -- dare I say it? -- acceptance.
(How unbelievably pompous is it of me to quote myself? I have nothing but good intentions, I assure you!)
And as an unnecessary FYI but one I think you might enjoy nevertheless: Marc, Paul, and I once had the distinct displeasure of traveling on a plane from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale with none other than Mr. Hardaway himself way back in '97 (we were soooo hoping it woulda been Tim Conway instead!). I hold the unwavering belief that it was our very public, over-the-top, Nancy boy, free-love giddiness that instilled within Mr. Hardaway his now-legendary homophobia. It's a small world after all!
How did I miss this?
Date: 2007-02-28 03:00 pm (UTC)Okay, and obviously? One look at me in the bookstore lo these many years ago sent you into the screaming frenzy that became the OTT, Nancy boy, free-love giddiness, so I share credit. Blame. Whatever.
It's all about ME! :D