And so we hate celebrities mouthing off like they are wont to do because they don’t get fired from their jobs when they’re wrong. This is especially true of the sports world, where the famous people not being fired for voicing opinions also represent our favorite teams, like the Chicago Bears. Or even our least favorite teams, like the Syracuse Orangemen.
Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim spoke out about gun control this week because a bunch of children were murdered recently and a bunch of microphones were stuck in his face. The men holding the microphones said, “Hey Jim, let’s talk sports.”
Jim didn’t want to talk sports. Let’s talk sports….
BOEHEIM STEAMROLLER
Jim Boeheim is an exceptionally annoying sports figure, largely because of his nasally voice and insistence on being a whiny jerk. That said, he’s also a phenomenally successful coach who recently won his 900th game, all at Syracuse. This is a big deal, of course. Only two other whiny jerks had won 900 games before, Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight. A big deal for whiny jerks, I guess you’d say. Anyway, on the occasion of his 900th win, Jim Boeheim had this to say about the recent massacre in Newtown:
“If we cannot get the people who represent us to do something about firearms, we are a sad, sad society,” Boeheim said, speaking in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting tragedy. “If one person in this world, the NRA president, anybody, can tell me why we need assault weapons with 30 shots — this is our fault if we don’t go out there and do something about this. If we can’t get this thing done, I don’t know what kind of country we have.”
I suppose the credited answer to this question has to do with fighting off the other guy with the assault weapon with 30 shots. Right? I assume an assault weapon capable of firing 30 shots is necessary to defeat the hypothetical other dude who had one. The bad guy. It’s the only answer I can think of to Jim Boeheim’s question. Maybe another answer, a more Rumsfeldian one, has to do with going to war with the weapons you have, not the weapons you need. Has nothing to do with need, I guess. Hell, I don’t know.
Jim Boeheim annoys me and Syracuse beat Kansas for the 2003 national championship, which is an unforgivable sin in my book. But I don’t see a whole helluva lot wrong with his exasperated outrage in this particular instance. Not that anyone cares what celebrities have to say about stuff.
OWNERS BEHAVING BADLY
This week, we have news of two NBA owners acting like douchers. The first, Miami Heat minority owner Raanan Katz, is alleged to have gotten a blog shut down because the blog, among other things, posted a goofy picture of him. In order to shut it down, Katz sued both Google and the blogger, arguing that the picture in question was copyrighted. Or, well, owned by Katz somehow. You can see the picture pasted all over Deadspin’s article about the case here.
At any rate, the end result of Katz’s legal maneuvering has been to get a Florida court to shut down a blog with only the slightest of legal arguments that what it’s shutting down is defamatory. I’ve perhaps already said too much…
The other owner is Donald Sterling, who was sued for being a terrible landlord and worse human.
RAP SHEET ROLL CALL
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