The item above is the work of one the more cretinous purveyors of sub-Deadspinian “wit”.
Called on his bigoted bullshit, the author responds with the following :
If the original post should’ve stayed up, please, by all means, elucidate us. Why did you take it down? Either admit that you screwed up royally (using a blackface pic to illustrate a spiel about Stephen A. isn’t merely in “poor taste” — it’s an imbecilic way to trade in the ugliest of stereotypes) or you’ve got the courage of your backwards convictions to leave the fucking thing up. Since the latter option was a little more daunting than the weak copout you’ve offered, me and the rest of the ladies on the rag can only conclude that you’re a racist and a coward.
Stephen A. doesn’t even do pre and post for ESPN’s Shootaround anymore. Basketball season means racists come out of the KKKloset.
Jason Whitlock has been throwing around the term “bojanglin’ for dollars” quite a bit recently, saying that Scoop Jackson (and, if I’m not mistaken, Steven A.) amount to a modern day minstrel act. Not sure if that’s what the Deadspin commenter/blogger is referring to or not, but it may add context to the dispute.
But it could be just racism, too.
.
I’d love to give the benefit of the doubt — well, not really, but I’d be willing to — but the rest of this dude’s blog (yeah, I’m one of the traffic-donors from GC’s link) is pretty well full of the same sort of clumsy-unto-offensive racial “irreverence,” most notably about Virginia Tech athletes (I’m going to assume there’s some history there), who get “quoted” dropping “if’n” and “I is” phraseology at a crazy rate. This post, and the whole doofy exercise, seems like an attempt at equal opportunity trash talk, I think, but it’s just done really poorly by someone who clearly believes deeply in the unshakeable hilarity and correctness of every stupid thing he writes. Something like this reminds you how many lame blogs of this sort are out there, and how many hyper-sarcastic 23 year olds with puddle-deep opinions on everything and a great love for their own comedy stylings know how to use Blogger. For the most part, I don’t know anything about those blogs, which is cool with me.
Stephen A., though — he’s interesting. Clearly there’s something about him, something specifically racial, that pisses people off, but I never quite understood it. He makes a point of his street credibility — but not as clumsily as Scoop Jackson. He’s willing to talk about race — but not as insistently as Whitlock. I think he’s marginally a better writer than either of those two, but the guy’s still annoying, bombastic, self-enamored and a terrible writer. That said, he seems a lot closer to the stereotype of a Paige/Bayliss-style branded sports pundit than some street dude. But for whatever reason his blackness is central to the way he gets criticized, both by chumps in the NY Post obsessed with his imaginary kangols and chumps with blogs. It’s no great statement of tolerance to mention that Stephen A. would be exactly as much of a grating know-it-all hump if he were white. So why would you fixate on his race? Unless, you know, you’re racist.
thanks, Ryan. I’m familiar with Whitlock’s gripes with the Scoopster, but I don’t see the parallel here. If you think, to quote our friend above, that Smith’s an ass, whatever. It’s been said before and it’ll be said again. I don’t think, however, his being a grating, egomaniacal blowhard has much to do with his race.
I understand why Whitlock uses the bojangling phrase in connection with Jackson or Stuart Scott. Smith, however, for all his considerable faults, isn’t a minstrel act. Unless of course, his very status as a black man is somehow worthy of mockery.
The rocket scientist at the blog in question, btw, can’t paint his or herself into a corner fast enough.
“What I should do is put up a picture of myself and force them to then call me a racist.”
How exactly would a photograph prove that someone isn’t a racist? But while we’re all holding our breath waiting for a jpg of your lovely mug, how about having the courage of your convictions to put a real name next to your bold public statements?
But fine, if he or she wants to play the old “tee hee, I might be black” game, no problem. That doesn’t make the use of a blackface pic to illustrate an anti-Stephen A. screed any less execrable, nor his or her refusal to accept accountability any less cowardly.
I do however, like the part where he/she/it claims this is driving CSTB’s traffic. This, from a comments section troll who brought the witless offerings elsewhere after I began deleting their own plugs for their craptacular blog.
Whitlock hasn’t called out Stephen A.
roth, good point. i would hate sas were he white. but there is a racial component to my dislike of his commentary.
he can be counted upon to provide knee-jerk support for a black athlete and criticism for a white athlete about 90% of the time. every now and then he takes me by surprise; and he also knee jerks in favor of the athlete over the coach/management, regardless of race. and of course i have not tallied the stats. but i have sensed this type of racial bias in the body of smith’s ‘work’.
btw, i am black, not that it matters.
I have no quarrel with those that take exception to the content of S.A.S’s remarks or writing. It’s the notion that there’s anything intrinsicaly funny about his being black that I take exception to.
I don’t think Smith’s mannerisms are an anymore over the top, cartoony version of a black man than say, Jim Rome exemplifies some kind of archetypical white guy.
I am truly sorry if the person who identifies himself as “The Critic” finds this sort of discussion to be dry and boring. I find his or her brand of self described “caustic wit” packing all the intellectual wallop of a flaming bag of shit.
David Roth: “Something like this reminds you how many lame blogs of this sort are out there, and how many hyper-sarcastic 23 year olds with puddle-deep opinions on everything and a great love for their own comedy stylings know how to use Blogger.”
You nailed that one.
Yeah, blogging’s for losers.
Present company, excepted, of course.
David’s point is well taken. It’s not until one reaches his or her early 40’s that not only do you fall out of love with your own comedy stylings, but an intense dislike for everyone else’s sets in.
Or so I’m told.
I killed that thing over 2 years ago.
I hope this doesn’t sound racist, but something tells me the douchebag from Critical Suckblog didn’t score very high on the wunderlick. Unless he got points for licking Will Leitch’s balls.
Since he doesn’t have comments on his site, CSTB seems as good a place as any to question his latest “layer of caustic wit”
“We certainly don’t seek out other blogs to attack unless we are provoked”
Nah, you just talk shit about the same tv/sports celebs that every other Leitch/Simmons wannbe writes about.
Maybe CSTB ought to stop picking on the retarded and move on.
Without trying to be a snob, I must sincerely ask, did you ever have this conversation when working with GG Allin? I say that as someone who spent many toy collecting conversations with the Tesco Vee, but who also very much ran away from Psychodrama. Did you ever caution GG away from his anti-women statements or does this all fall into 23 vs 40?
I’m not sure what you mean by “this conversation”, Don. I mean, I never saw GG’s blog.
I had little (but not zero) difficulty seperating GG the artist from GG the person. The latter was not someone I had a tremendous amount of affection for. But I didn’t have to share his worldview to appreciate what he brought to the table as a rocker or riot-waiting-to-happen.
However virulent you might’ve found Allin’s totally over-the-top misogyny (and you’d might have every right to call it such), the guy made some fantastic, hilarious records. The Geege may have been a walking, talking biohazard, but he was a legit artist. The blogger who inspired this particular exchange, does not, in my opinion, warrant comparison.
I realize GG is hardly everybody’s cup of puke, but give him this much : he put his name and likeness on virtually everything he produced, and withstood physical retribution from all manner of torch-wielding, enraged villagers.
By contrast, the other dipshit who now claims he’s a free speech martyr, uses a cloak of anonymity from which to aim his needle dick at…well, as the commentator above you put it, the same easy targets as everybody else. When he’s taken to task for being far lamer in his chosen field than SAS is in his, the attacks are….unprovoked?
If the original use of the blackface pic wasn’t meant to be provocative, our friend is disingenous at best. But more likely a moron.
CSTB’s squash job on the Critical Suckblog is yet another example of GC using a rocket launcher where a popgun would suffice. But fun to watch!
Has it occured to anyone that the latest target of GC’s ire might be 13 years old?
I think sometimes each person’s cup of puke as you put it, sets their personal standards for behavior and sometimes certain things are very clear and others are less-clear because of personal history. As you undoubtledly know, Charles Aaron proudly wrote about wearing blackface as a child.
I firmly believe that being a Devil’s Advocate or journalistic Gadfly is one of the worst or lamest things that someone can do publicly and anyone like the blogger above needs to recognize that if you give the hitler salute in front of a building in your hometown and put it in your fanzine that someone’s not going to get the joke. You’re dead-on right that this kind of thing is wrong and worth pointing out as wrong. I just remember that when I first saw punk rockers on PM Magazine that I went from revulsion to, “hmmm, that IS a slap in the face to the baby boomer establishment, is it not?” And in 1978 there were swastikas on those punks. My conscience of how I handled those 6th and 7th grade anti-hippy thoughts isn’t entirely clear, but thankfully the worst thing that came out of my early 80s experience was a love of Suicidal Tendencies macho lunkhead tendencies including a misunderstanding of how their “Cholo” style was based on The Crips.
As someone smarter than me once said, if you couldn’t listen to a band because they were a-holes, then how many artists would that eliminate?
Now, back to GG. I corresponded a fair amount with Merle back in the day, but Merle sought everyone out too. I got a kick out of that scene until I saw members of Letch Patrol grope Lisa Suckdog in an unfriendly way at a show while Costes did nothing. I walked out of CBs and didn’t come back until it was over. Did that short-lived scene hide rapists (GG was convicted of rape in 1989), drug abusers, and sociopaths amongst the musicians? I posit that it did! You know more than me about GG’s on and off-stage personalities, but any time you get into separate personalities, you open up the door to treatable personality disorders.
We all have levels of extremity that we accept. The blogger isn’t right, but man, some of us were really wrong too. If Lisa Carver wanted me to feel like crap 15 years later for not decking one of those guys in the audience, then she succeeded.
Don,
while I thank you for your comments, I’m certainly not about to compose a defense of Letch Patrol (there’s a band I didn’t think I’d be forced to remember in 2006) nor an alleged sexual assault of Lisa Carver.
You are incorrect in claiming the Geege was convicted of rape. In 1989, he plead no contest to a charge of aggravated assault with intent to mutilate, and served an 18 month sentence. I’ll grant you, this might seem like an arcane point.
I’m still not entirely sure what you’re driving at here. If there’s anything from your own history you’d like to disavow, by all means, be my guest, though I don’t think it is necessary. I still don’t think the guy who yesterday called ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill “a skanky Angela Davis” bears much comparison to the artists in question, regardless of how sociopathic they were, onstage or off.
I have nothing to disavow, other than Suicidal and lunkheadedness, as I stated, and that generalized HC anger where anything one doesn’t like automatically is ridiculable, regardless of who it hurts and why. You are correct that GG pleaded No Contest. I guess my only point was that during that era (82-89) there was a lot of tacit acceptance of antisocial activity in the name of art that would be unacceptable if not in the name of art. Change “Art” to “humor” and… well… no one wants to go there.
I couldn’t help but recall the following quote from the current king of douchebaggery,
“What I should do is put up a picture of myself and force them to then call me a racist.â€
upon seeing his trenchant analysis of Dartmouth’s AD having a problem with the University of North Dakota using the “Fighting Sioux” nickname, He Who Cannot Be Named made the following comment at Deadspin : .
“I’m native american and I went to Princeton. Many thought Dartmouth was the right place but I didn’t like it.
Mascots aren’t racist. That’s BS. People who pretend to be concerned or who feel like they need to speak up on behalf of “others”, that’s the worst kind of racism because most of them feel as if they are superior and must speak out on behalf of others.”
So there we have it. A guy who (supposedly) attended an Ivy League university believes that because he’s “native american,” that precludes his being a racist. And apparently, anyone who takes offense at ignorant, stereotype-perpetuating imagery of Native Americans is merely pretending to give a fuck.
It’s kind of astonishing that a guy who spends ridiculous amounts of time questioning the intellectual capacity of black people (almost as much time as he spends trying to shove his schnozz up the Screech’s backside) accuses anyone else of feeling superior. A guy that matriculated at the same institution as Malcom Forbes, Louis Rukeyser, Donald Rumsfeld, Samuel Alito, Lyle Menendez and Jon Solomon (sorry, Jon) is gonna lecture the rest of us about “pretending to be concerned.”
I think he’s for real. Which is to say, beyond aiming his knob at his own mouth, I don’t think he’ll pretend to be concerned about jack shit.
I didn’t go to Princeton.
I stand corrected. It’s even worse than I thought!
It is quite ok. Feel free to replace my name with one of the following: Billy Disease, Ken Katkin, Bill Frist or James Hogue.
I was gonna try to leave Ken out of this.
Hey there. This conversation is long over, but I’m the only member of Letch Patrol that was there with the Lisa Suckdog thing. You witnessed a show. No abuse, nothing that was out of line. Me and Lisa are still friendly to this day, just saw her last year for her book tour. You witnessed a fiction. And I’m not sorry, that was indeed the point. To disturb you.
Go back to sleep…