Former NBA player Tim Hardaway has apologized once again for his remarks last week in which he expressed disapproval of homosexuality and a dislike for homosexuals. AP reports:
“I don’t hate gay people,” Hardaway said. “I’m a goodhearted person. I interact with people all the time. … I respect people. For me to say ‘hate’ was a bad word, and I didn’t mean to use it.” . . .
On Sunday, he acknowledged “that was very bad.”
His remarks quickly drew criticism from both the NBA and several gay and lesbian groups, and Hardaway said the firestorm surprised him.
“It was like, you know, I had killed somebody. … I never knew that this was going to escalate that high,” Hardaway said.
Hardaway was banished from some NBA-sanctioned appearances he was scheduled to make in Las Vegas as part of the all-star weekend.
He also lost at least one of his endorsement deals, and he ordered his name dropped from advertising at a car wash he owns in Miami, saying he made that decision to ensure the safety of his employees.
In response to Hardaway’s comments, a consensus has arisen that he must be destroyed not only socially but economically as well.
This use of raw power to destroy an individual for his opinions is truly repugnant.
It’s not a political freedom of speech issue, because the government isn’t involved.
But it is indeed a freedom of speech issue for our society, because if an individual can be destroyed simply because he holds an opinion that is highly common in the society but unpopular among the elites, we really don’t have freedom of speech in this country.
That seems to be the moral of this story. Toe the line, or be ruined.
And this used to be a free country.
You’re witnessing a re-description of our taboos as a society. All behavior previously proscribed as sexually wrong is being rehabilitated and intemperate speech dealing with select targets is being debilitated.
Freedom of speech isn’t quite dead yet Mr. Karnick.
We in the commentariNet tend to jeeringly ascribe to MSM labels such as Old Media, Dinosaur Media, and Lamestream media.
But our anticipation of its demise has preceded the actuality by a long shot.
Because, whatever our feelings about it, that media is still ESTABLISHMENT media.
What you have here is an inequity. Establishment media is arrogantly proclaiming: “Freedom for me but not for thee.”
The revolt to that inequity and hubris may even now be in the making, but the real battle has not begun. It is fundamental. Those who will actually succeed will first challenge what sustains that media: the members of society who use its services and pay the money which keeps it breathing another month.
And why hasn’t this tyrant been successfully challenged before? Let me paraphrase Tocqueville: The despot could care less that you don’t love him as long as he is assured that his subjects don’t get along with each other.
Hatred among its subjects is something that it promotes and sustains like no tyrant before it could dream of doing.
There are homosexuals who despise the gay agenda, but no microphones are placed in front of them. There are women who detest NOW, but they are called names and not given any real time in MSM — unless they are inarticulate. There are at least two economists, who happen to be black, one who writes words that regularly make a mockery of statist economists, the other whose delivery is so delightful that he instantly eliminates any pejorative in the word didactic. But as far as Establishment media is concerned, left to its own inclinations, these giants do not exist. But when these men’s existence is forced upon it, it ascribes to them a host of unflattering adjectives.
And now Hardaway. A black man who was asked his opinion now seems to have been set up — or could have been. Or at the least, they are taking advantage of the fact that he’s a jock who never thought about being PC before. Whatever.
They have in an instant put megaphones in front of his critics and have suppressed the speech of his apologists and forgivers.
Hardaway is being subjected to, in the words of Clarence Thomas, an electronic lynching. And there is no apology short of his sacrifice before the altar of the Establishment media’s agenda.
The MSM amplifications can only be challenged when there is an equal and opposite amplification provider, one that is not in lock step with those who now monopolize the primary mode of wide spread influence and the agendas it makes almost unanswerable.
To gain understanding to how vitally important amplification is to any counter offensive of the MSM agenda, please study this entry in my glossary: Social Engineering.
Thanks for taking on this issue and provoking me to join you.
“It was like, you know, I had killed somebody. … I never knew that this was going to escalate that high,”
I like Hardaway as a player and, from what I’ve seen on television, as a person. But this is a remarkably naive comment, especially considering the politically-correct times we live in. Some of it, I’m guessing, is that when Hardaway said he “hates gay people,” he was attempting to describe, however poorly, his hatred of gay sex. Of course, that wouldn’t matter either, because the common wisdom from on high is that anything less than the affirmation—nay, celebration!—of all that is “gay” cannot be tolerated. Physiology, tradition, common sense, religion, natural law, and plumbing be damned. I discuss this at length, with links back to Sam’s excellent posts, over at the Insight Scoop blog.