Does this offend me, Part 3

An interesting statement was recently made by Terrence Howard while promoting his movie, Ironman. He was discussing his recent stint on Broadway. Here’s what he said:

The Iron Man insists that if he had known the theatre schedule was so tough he would never have signed up for the role in the beloved Tennessee Williams play. He claims that appearing on stage at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre every night and trying to cram his personal life and business meetings into one day off have left him exhausted. And he has turned to allergy medicine just to stay healthy. He says, “Tough thing about Broadway is (it’s) eight shows a week. It’s slavery. That needs to be adjusted. It’s wrong. Actors work three years straight sometimes with one day off. This exhaustion puts you into depression. Monday, your one day off, you have to cram in all your meetings and appointments and the rest of your whole life, and hope you can survive on Benadryl. Broadway is an actor’s revenge. I couldn’t do Broadway again if it’s more than five (shows) a week. I’d just say no… Not doing it.”

When I first read this statement, I actually was offended.

How can a black man even compare his unhappiness with hard earned paid work with the greatest injustice in American history?

Terrence is a black man and I hope that he has the prospective that his statement is inaccurate. He surely knows that the fact that he even earns money for acting doesn’t qualify as slavery.

The thing about it is that Terrence or anyone else in society can leave their job if they find that the work conditions are uncomfortable. There’s a choice. I’ve heard professional athletes make similar statements about how teams use them until they are no good and are kicked out of the league. Warren Sapp even made some statements a few years ago about the NFL having slave masters: http://www.blackathlete.com/Football/110203.shtml

In the end, a double standard has seemed to develop in the usage of certain words by people who seem entitled to use them. Warren and Terrence were open to using the words slavery because their black, but if a non-black person used this terminology, there would be problems. Its similar to black people using the n-word because apparently its ok for us to use it, which is not true.

I’ve seen women call each other bitches and whores, but if a man does that, problems. I’ve heard ethnic groups call each other slurs among each other yet if someone outside of their race does that, they get offended.

We just need to be careful with what we say.

So, in the end, was I offended? Not really. I don’t get offended by stupidity.

Is this supposed to offend me?

First, congrats to our boy Matty Leinart. You've had a so-so past two seasons for the Arizona Cardinals, your rep within the local Phoenix community is not the best and now you were caught attending a pool party with your pal Nick Lachay with some co-eds who may or may not be even 21. Even worse, there's another picture of you pouring a beer funnel for a young lady. Good times for all involved. However, I have one question to ask...

Is this supposed to offend me?

Sports has always been a microcasm for the positive aspects of life that we would like our society to have. We've used sports to propel the civil rights movement here in America, countries in traditional and civil wars have found a way to play games such as soccer against each other internationally and have no incidents of violence take place and there are other examples. We look to athletics to represent the best form of equality in our society. Two people or teams face each other under the same rules and the best person or team wins. Simple as that. However, we place these athletes on a pedestal and expect them to not only be professional on the field of play but off the field as well.

Charles Barkley may have said it best when he said that athletes aren't role models, but that's not completly true. We should be role models to ourselves and carry our lives in a positive manner and not look to our celebrities for morals.

Now, our boy Matty falls into a long line of athletes who are taking advantage of their celebrity to have a good time. Women like athletes. Women like a lot of types of guys, but athleties are the most visible and obvious one for all of us to see. However, I'm still looking for some SID "jock chasers" and haven't found one yet. I guess writing an awesome press release or producing an epic media guide doesn't compare to hitting the game-winning home run or scoring the game-winning basket. Their loss. Anyway, Matty is just acting like many guys would in his situation and for us to place our "morals" on him because he's an athlete is not right.

Would I like all public figures to act in a mature manner, say their prayers, eat their vitamins, go to church every sunday and other cliche types of good actions. Not really, because that's not human, that's not real and I've never looked at an athlete for inspiration in my life. Maybe having my three favorite players growing up be Dwight Gooden, Daryl Strawerry and Lawrence Taylor made me cynical to athletes.

So, to end this, Matt, enjoy your celebrity now, because if you perform the next few seasons like you've had with the Cardinals, you won't have too many pool parties to go to in the future. But I know Nick would probably still be able to hang out, his lack of a career has given him a lot of free time.