Freshly Squeezed OJ

It appears that they have finally gotten the Juice. They have waited patiently for Mr. Simpson to self-destruct and true to his nature he has obliged. According to news reports two of Mr. Simpson’s accomplices have agreed to turn States evidence and testify against Mr. Simpson. By the time their stories are heard, Mr. Simpson will take the brunt of this prosecution. In what many have seen as a set-up from the beginning to prosecute the Juice for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman, the cards are lining up against him. Many people wonder what could possibly have motivated OJ to get caught up in this whole scenario anyway and what could he have hoped to gain.

Mesereau said the move by co-defendants to plead out and testify to save themselves shows the prosecution's motive is to get Simpson.

"This might feed into the idea of a setup," he said. "They set him up in the hotel room and tape recorded it and now they're setting him up in court."[1]

My question is this, if you know you are the most watched and most despised man in the country how could you ever hope to walk into a hotel room full of shady characters to retrieve merchandise with guns and expect to get away with it? What must he have been thinking? The problem with OJ and many men like him is that their arrogance always trumps their good sense. Mr. Simpson has been untouchable for most of his life; once he picked up that football and outran every other kid on that field he became impervious to reality. He grew up in the pampered life of a gifted athlete; he had people waiting on him hand and foot. He grew accustomed to getting away with whatever he wanted and if he got caught it was quietly brushed under the rug. It’s the same thing with a beautiful woman she goes through life unchallenged and develops a narcissism that few can fathom and understand.

When many of us would have faded from the scene following a murder trial, which the majority population felt he was guilty and got away with murder, he chose to remain in the limelight. He got away not with any murder but the murder of a beautiful blond white woman, who he wasn’t supposed to be married to anyway. Mr. Simpson on the other hand continued to want to be in the limelight, he continued to flaunt his freedom having the false belief that people would forget and once again welcome the Juice back with open arms like they did so many times in the past. His arrogance got that the better of him; there are many things a black man in America can be. He can be a role model, a hero, and maybe one day President, but what he cannot be is arrogant. Arrogance was a virtue OJ could no longer afford. It is one thing to win the Heisman, to run for 2,000 yards, and to be accepted into the Hall of Fame with those you can afford some arrogance, it is another to kill two white people and get away with it in the minds of many and still be arrogant.

The clock has been ticking on OJ and he couldn’t hear it. His ego wouldn’t let him. He kicked into the room still believing that he was the old OJ and the country had forgotten about the past. He believed that people would understand and support him, because he was right. He couldn’t have been more mistaken. These people don’t care if he is right, they want their own brand of justice and by God they intend to get it. If that meant they had to wait, they would wait. OJ got comfortable, he started believing that he was the Juice again, so being fueled by the people who would eventually set him up he took the bait and the rest as they say will be history.

Two of Simpson's co-defendants, one a former friend, agreed to testify against him Monday in return for drastically reduced charges.

"It's always a prosecutor's strategy to go after the little fish to get to the big fish," said lawyer Edward Miley, who represents defendant Charles Cashmore. "In this, it seems to be that O.J. Simpson is the big fish."

"All the others are getting a good deal and Simpson, the one without a conviction, doesn't? It's all about who he is," said Thomas Mesereau Jr., who represented acquitted defendants Michael Jackson and Robert Blake in cases that turned on witness credibility. "They probably wouldn't have brought charges if it wasn't for who he was."[2]

Before this is all over, everyone will walk but OJ. The whole goal was to get OJ and they got him. I guarantee you there will be no acquittal this time. There will be no “Dream Team”, no Johnnie Cochran; there will be no public outrage. As this case proceeds it will become fairly obvious to all that it was a setup, but no one will care. The characters will all have had some involvement with the criminal justice system in some way or another. They will all have seedy pasts and were it not for OJ would not even be noteworthy to the public. The pressure is mounting and the Juice is about to get the final squeeze.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-15-2690514155_x.htm
[2] Ibid.

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Another Hip-Hop Role Model

Hours before he was to perform and possibly receive awards for his talents, the rapper T.I. was arrested for trying to purchase two machine guns. The entertainer was set up by his personal bodyguard who he had sent to retrieve the guns. Here unfortunately is another example where life is trying to imitate art. You see T.I.’s specialty is rap music that glorifies the drug lifestyle and even has its own label, “trap musik”. For those unfamiliar in the black community a trap can be a drug house, house of prostitution, or some other place of nighttime activity. A drug dealer, pimp, or player is said to be checking traps in the same sense that a hunter or trapper checks their traps for game or prey.

The entertainer, whose real name is Clifford Harris, was arrested Saturday just hours before he was scheduled to perform at the BET Hip Hop Awards.

Harris, 27, was arrested in a federal sting after his bodyguard-turned-informant delivered three machine guns and two silencers to the hip-hop star, according to a Justice Department statement.

Authorities said they found three more firearms in the car in which Harris drove to pick up the machine guns and silencers, "including one loaded gun tucked between the driver's seat where Harris had been sitting and the center console."

At his home, authorities found six other guns, five of them loaded, in his bedroom closet.[1]

According to court records, Mr. Harris is a convicted felon and therefore cannot possess firearms. We in the black community are constantly being given signs of the destruction that this music and its purveyors have wrought on our communities and yet time and again we ignore its destructive effects. We continue to allow BET and the other media outlets to glorify these clowns for our children’s edification. We have had these clowns kill folks, we’ve had them denigrate our women, and they have continued to dare our communities to stop them. We continue to kowtow to these hoodlums and allow their poison to infiltrate our homes and the minds of our children. I just wonder what it is going to take for us as a community to stand up and say enough is enough.

This man was about to receive awards for promoting drugs and that lifestyle and then to top it off he is trying to purchase machine guns and silencers. I’m sure they were for going hunting with Dick Cheney. These are not common weapons that you just have lying around the house for personal protection; these weapons are designed to do maximum damage to humans. Our children are being fed a steady diet of this garbage by BET, I’m sure this man’s CD sales are about to go through the roof. What are the lessons that our sons and our daughters are being taught by this episode? Where is the uplifting in this?

I know that there will be those who claim it was a setup, another poor blackman being targeted for extinction by the white power structure, the same white power structure that created him and marketed his “trap musik”. How can we continue to be so foolish to believe that money will insulate us from the real America? This man had to know that he was on everybody’s radar and yet he still tried this foolish mess. But, it was the thug life that he had to be true to, had to keep it real. How much longer are we going to continue to glamorize this nonsense? Does anyone wonder why are communities are war zones when the role models are living like this? We have only ourselves to blame, we allowed this to come into our neighborhoods and into our homes. We created this monster and now it is turning on us and destroying us.

What happened to the outcry after Don Imus, it has quietly faded into the usual drone of forgetfulness. The stupor that so easily envelops our communities and our lives, which has us unwilling or incapable of mounting any sustained effort against anything. Have we become so complacent to the struggles of life that we no longer have the will or the strength to stand for what is right and what is good? The flood of negative images continues to flow unabated through our communities, being driven by greed and the self destructive mentality of some who would rather glorify violence to make money at the expense of our youth and our communities.

It is time for us to say no more to the people who reward those who are destroying our communities. We must no longer allow others to define for us who the role models for our children will be. We must demand an end to the negative and begin to elevate the positive images of our people. We can no longer wait on those who exploit us to have a change of heart; it must come from within us. We must cast off the shackles that no longer bind our feet and hands, but now bind our minds, our spirits, and our imaginations. Have our dreams and the dreams of our forefathers been reduced to petty crime, drug dealing, and senseless violence directed at each other? And are we going to sit idly by while the aspirations of a people are being high-jacked by the greedy executives and their willing black minstrels? I pray to God not.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/15/rapperti.court/index.html

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Cheney – George Bush’s Spine

If Karl Rove was Bush’s brain, then Dick Cheney must certainly be Bush’s spine. The rogue VP whose office is conducting its own foreign policy, domestic agenda, and war-mongering has been the architect of many of the debacles of this administration. The ever bellicose chicken-hawk continues to pump his chest with heroic prowess, yet when given the opportunity to display this warriors courage decided to dodge the war. He was needed in Wyoming to fight the local VC insurgents who were planning a behind the lines enemy offensive.

June 29, 2007 - Dick Cheney is like “Zelig,” the Woody Allen character with the uncanny ability to turn up everywhere. We always suspected his dark influence throughout the government, and now it’s been documented chapter and verse in an exhaustive series in The Washington Post. Cheney operates largely in secret, and because he is such a skilled bureaucratic infighter, he’s able to do end runs around everybody, including President Bush, who does nothing to rein in his evil twin.[1]

Dick Cheney articulates the Neo-Con wingnut philosophy in a manner that limits the choices George Bush is allowed to consider. A President is bombarded by information, opinions, and opposing views on every issue that crosses his desk. It would be a monumental task to keep abreast of all of this information for a very intelligent person, but for a C, legacy student it would be impossible. So like many of his predecessors that have lacked intellectual curiosity, Mr. Bush relies on close allies to direct his decisions. This is why loyalty is valued more than competency in his administration. It is more important to protect the President’s incompetence than to be qualified to make correct decisions. This is why Mr. Bush has never held anyone accountable in his administration for anything, no matter how calamitous the results.

Cheney, 66, grew up in Lincoln, Neb., and Casper, Wyo., acquiring a Westerner's passion for hunting and fishing but not for the Democratic politics of his parents. He wed his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent, beginning what friends describe as a lifelong love affair. Cheney flunked out of Yale but became a highly regarded PhD candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin -- avoiding the Vietnam War draft with five deferments along the way -- before abandoning the doctoral program and heading to Washington as a junior congressional aide.[2]

Mr. Cheney personifies the tough western American image; he manages by fear and intimidation. He is what George Bush wishes he could be, someone feared and whose authority goes unchallenged. Cheney has shown a total disregard for any authority outside his own, as evidenced by his statement of being a separate branch of the government. It has been asserted that Cheney is the engine that makes the train goes, but I disagree. Cheney asserts a certain level of power over Bush, but not by overt means. He asserts this power through the limited choices he provides Bush and through his evisceration of any competitive opinions. By providing Bush with limited choices that Cheney has condensed through his input at the staff level, he focuses the President’s agenda to only the options he provides.

We should not be fooled; Cheney is providing the options to policies the President has signed off on in broader terms long ago. Cheney gives direction and targets for Bush’s overall agenda. An agenda that Bush brought with him to Washington, one that Cheney provides methods for implementation. It is in these methods that Cheney exerts influence over Bush. When a situation may offer two options; one using diplomacy and the other projecting American military power, these are the arguments Cheney has prevailed in. This is why I call him Bush’s spine; he emboldens Bush to become the “warrior President”. I just find it strange that when both men had the opportunity to display their warrior prowess, both chose to decline. It’s easy to be tough with someone else’s life.

The vice president's reputation and, some say, his influence, have suffered in the past year and a half. Cheney lost his closest aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to a perjury conviction, and his onetime mentor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a Cabinet purge. A shooting accident in Texas, and increasing gaps between his rhetoric and events in Iraq, have exposed him to ridicule and approval ratings in the teens. Cheney expresses indifference, in public and private, to any verdict but history's, and those close to him say he means it.[3]

Many believe that Cheney’s influence is waning based on a number of calamities in the past year or so concerning his office and his lost of key personnel, I am not so sure. I think his influence is decreasing, but not because of any change in the relationship between Bush and Cheney, but because as Bush surveys his time in office and its place in history he is discovering he has little if any positives. Hence his willingness to sign off on the North Korea deal, even though Cheney and his wingnuts were totally against it. It’s strange how when a President finally acknowledges the finality of his presidency he wants to become the statesman he never was before. That whole legacy syndrome thing being played out on the world’s stage. Bush will need less spine and more brain to try to recoup any semblance of a successful presidency.

[1]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19507575/site/newsweek/
[2] http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/chapter_1/
[3] http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/chapter_1/

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The Sin Is Pride

The thing that bothers me the most about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly and the other black conservatives is not their politics, their seemingly denunciation of their heritage, or their advocacy of wingnut philosophies. No, it is something more perverse in their character. I believe that we all are entitled to our beliefs even if those beliefs do not correspond to the ones I think you should have for your own survival. For example, I believe that poor whites are entitled to believe that the Republicans represent their interests, even though this belief to me is against their better interests. To me a better plan of action would be to join forces with people in the same condition regardless of their race or ethnicity, to develop cooperation to bring about economic change for all.

What bothers me the most about these guys is their tremendous egos. Let me explain, even if they truly believe that it was due to their superior intelligence and hard work that they were able to outsmart over 300 years of racism and white privilege to attain their current positions, what about your brothers? They appear to be saying I have mine and screw everyone else. I am so bad that I was able to overcome these obstacles, why can’t you?

There are two problems with this scenario. The first is that these men were able to attain what little success they have because of people and policies put into place to help overcome all of those years of racism, slavery, etc. If it were not for affirmative action none of these clowns would have a pot to piss in, so for them to claim otherwise is to fly in the face of reality. To deny this of course feeds their super ego’s and allows them to think that they are somehow superior to other blacks, yet both have benefitted from either affirmative action or racial set-asides.

The second problem is that let’s assume they were so smart and cunning to have been able to overcome the pitfalls of racism and Jim Crow, so what. Why would you pull up the ladder that many others need to overcome these systemic problems? The history of immigrants in this country is full of stories of them reaching back to help their brothers, it appears that only blacks have a problem with supplying help to those other blacks that need it. This is the same philosophy being played out in our city streets that allows one young black man to kill another. In the hands of these race apologists the number of victims is multiplied by thousands. Rather than lifting up our brothers we continually want to tear them down, if you’re not going to help someone don’t hurt them.

I understand the mindset of these men I witnessed it in college, it is an attitude of defeat. The person believes that fighting is futile; so they take the attitude if you can’t beat them, then join them. If given the opportunity they would become white completely. They don’t want to be like whites, they actually want to be white. Sometimes this mentality is the product of growing up in a home where the whites are portrayed as superior in thinking, culture, and physically by a parent or mentor of the child. The child grows up believing that all things white are superior to their own racial traits. Many times they marry white women because they believe that white women are more attractive to black women and it allows them to complete their fantasy of pretending to be white or colorless. This of course is not the only reason black men marry white women; I would never attempt to stereotype all inter-racial relationships. I am merely pointing out that this is a by-product for having that mentality.

One of things I find tragic about these men is that when confronted by adversity from other blacks or progressive whites they immediately bring out the race card and claim the criticisms are racially based. In the case of Judge Thomas, “a high tech lynching”, here is a man who would deny protection of blacks or any other group from hate crimes talking about a lynching. The irony of these clowns is amazing; they only pull the race card when it fits their case. If I remember correctly Mr. Connerly has gone on record saying he isn’t black. It seems that Judge Thomas could not understand why blacks wanted a “Black” man on the Court, not someone who does not perceive color.

That is the problem with these people they perpetrate the lie of a colorless society. We don’t want the society to be colorless; we just want the country to be equal for all regardless of their color. Some would say that is what these black conservatives are after, but the difference is that they want to ignore the past 300 years of white privilege and entrench the inequality now in place. I am all for an equal society, but don’t give yourself a giant head start and then want to play fair. No, let’s do some things to level the playing field from the past and then play fair. It kills me when whites or blacks talk about equality as if today is the first day of the world and we are all beginning from scratch. Using their logic it would take centuries for those who have been discriminated against to catch up without any considerations. I’m sorry, but I’d like to jumpstart the process a little quicker.

How can you give blacks from inferior schools, neighborhoods, and economic conditions the same test as whites from suburban schools and call it fair. We aren’t seeking a hand out, we want a hand up. These race apologists and white wannabes promote equal opportunity as if all things are now equal and have always been equal. By doing so they help to assuage the guilt of their white handlers and give credence to the lie that the greater society’s debt to blacks has been paid in full and now it is up to blacks to “pull themselves up” just like they did. Their egos will not allow them to see the foolishness of their argument. Yes, the sin is pride and God does not like ugly or pride.

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What The Officials In Jena Should Have Done

In a reenactment of the noose incident that occurred in Jena, La; a black college professor at Columbia’s Teachers College found a noose hanging from her door. The noose appears to be the new calling card of racists in America; it has replaced the burning cross. After all, it is smaller and not as messy. This is important for the cowards who want to hide behind the façade of normalcy while they play out their sickness on society. There are those who say Blacks should ignore the nooses popping up and their vile implications, after all we have free speech and while it is ugly it is still only an expression of free speech. To this I strongly disagree, it is not the presence of the noose that is so contemptible to black Americans; it is the implication of it. To an outsider it is just a rope, harmless in and of itself and I would agree if not for one tiny detail, the presence of black bodies hanging from them. To hang a noose is to imply wanting to harm another human being, black, white or otherwise. This would be akin to my using verbal threats to one’s person to express my displeasure. While it could be argued it was an expression of speech, its connotations would be unmistakable.

A hangman’s noose was found hanging on the door of a black professor’s office at Columbia University Teacher’s College on Tuesday morning, prompting the police to start a hate-crime investigation.

Detectives with the New York Police Department’s hate-crime task force were investigating whether the noose, which was discovered on the fourth floor of the college at about 9:45 a.m., was put there by a rival professor or by a student who was angry over a dispute. Colleagues of the professor identified her as Madonna Constantine, 44, a prominent author, educator and psychologist.[1]

Upon learning of the incident the authorities in New York immediately begin to investigate, the authorities in New York acknowledge it for what it is without hesitation. Why do the people in New York and not in Jena recognize it, because in Jena hanging nooses is considered a harmless prank, distasteful but merely a prank. Just kids having a little fun, no big deal. The authorities at Columbia and in New York understand the volatile nature of the noose and how it could escalate if not checked immediately. In Jena, due to centuries of black subjugation they assumed the Blacks would just accept their benevolent explanation and once again put up with another affront. It is still a shock to them that so much became of a few nooses.

In an e-mail message to students and faculty at the school, the president of Teachers College, Susan Furhman, said the incident was a “hateful act, which violates every Teachers College and societal norm.”

The president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, also released a statement condemning what happened.

“This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us,” he said. “I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action.”[2]

There can be no vacillating or indecisiveness; a response must be quick and direct. If a similar tack had been taken in Jena, I believe the incident would not have escalated to the level it did. Will the response from the authorities prevent similar occurrences? Probably not, there will always be those who choose to use the language of hate to express their displeasure. I do believe though that it has sent a message and set a tone that this will not be tolerated publically and if caught will be dealt with in an appropriately serious manner. By doing so it also gives the administrators an opportunity to open a dialog on race and diversity, an opportunity the people in Jena chose not to take.

This despicable act could have presented opportunities to educate some young people, but in order to educate you have to have teachers willing to teach. Diversity and race were not lessons that they wanted to teach in Jena. The lessons they wanted to reinforce were fear and segregation, the same ones they had been teaching for centuries. It could have also been an opportunity to show just why this symbol is so virulent to Blacks by relating its historical significance and its malicious past. These are lessons which many Americans could use a refresher course.

The lesson in the response of New York versus the response of Jena is simply this if we continue to minimize the behavior of those who pull at the scars of racism; we only provide them with the cover to continue more brazen acts. If enough people had stood up at the first cross burning and said we won’t stand for this, imagine where we would be today. Instead there was silence and that silence led to more unspeakable horrors. No, there must be a collective repudiation of hate and racism and it must be clear unequivocal.

Free speech is one of the most important freedoms we have and I would never take its fundamental application lightly, but when free speech incites violence and hatred it is no longer free.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/nyregion/10cnd-columbia.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1192036442-ax087f9Yzju/OrNMiliM9g
[2] Ibid.

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This Is Immoral

The following is part of a series of stories produced by the Miami Herald, detailing the abuses of the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, a non-profit setup to administer millions of dollars in government funds to fight poverty in the worst neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County. What resulted was the poster child for wing-nuts looking for why social programs do not work. As I read the series of reports I was appalled by the deliberateness of the people involved. It was as if there was no accountability by anyone and the funds became the personal accounts for the employees, family, and board members.

On Aug. 23, 2005, a chartered Gulfstream jet landed in Miami carrying a famous passenger: music mogul Sean "Diddy'' Combs.

Diddy flew in to host MTV's Video Music Awards at the AmericanAirlines Arena, where the hip-hop impresario known for his vast fortune and extravagant tastes handed his diamond-studded wristwatch to a fan in the crowd. Another luxury plane took him back to New Jersey the following night.

The round-trip flight cost more than $87,000, including $1,070 for in-flight catering.

But Diddy didn't pay the bill. Neither did MTV.

A nonprofit poverty agency picked up the tab -- using tax dollars set aside to help Miami-Dade County's poorest residents.

That agency, the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, was founded by county leaders in 1999 to take aim at the backbreaking poverty in nine designated "empowerment zones'' - among the most destitute neighborhoods in Florida.

Created to fight poverty, the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust squandered millioins of dollars on insider deals, pet projects and bad loans.[1]

The insane thing about this is that it has been going on for over a decade without anyone noticing what was taking place. The board forged documents, misled federal agencies, and basically handed out cash as if there were no tomorrow. This trust was setup to provide living wage jobs to some of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods and to date very few jobs were created and the few that were created came at an astronomical cost. I hope God has a special place in hell for those who would line their own pockets with proceeds earmarked for the poor and for pimp preachers. The sad thing about all of this is that the people taking the money are not poor, they are just greedy. They don’t have enough, so they take from those who have nothing.

The truly shameful part to me is that the avarice knew no racial or ethnic boundaries. Its funny how well folks get along when it comes to stealing from the poor, all those biases and animosities just fly right out the window. We can argue about racism and immigration after we divvy up this money. They need to line them all up and make them live in the conditions that they were suppose to try and alleviate. This type of behavior really chaps me, because I work with poor people through my church. I also went to Atlanta a few years ago on a mission to bring technology training to the unemployed black men that wander so many of Atlanta’s streets. On my rounds to all of the “so-called” social trusts in the city designed to help these men I got the same refrain, “Our people can’t fix computers”, we need to start them out at (fast food restaurant of your choice). I left Atlanta heart-broken; these were not white wing-nuts and bureaucrats these were black men. These were black men who would rather help themselves, than to help another struggling black man. You see they had to keep providing low-skill minimum wage workers to their corporate sponsors.

If this is how our government officials are going to administer our funds and our trust, I could almost agree with the wing-nuts. Almost, I can’t get past the part where they line their corporate benefactors pockets off the public dime either. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would almost be tempted to believe that the Bush Administration’s (both Jeb and George) allowed this program to continue to draw support for their nefarious schemes to gut social programs. Thanks to these social service robbers there will be no shortage of antidotal evidence of why social programs don’t work.

The idea was in 1994, to create “empowerment zones” in 15 of our most intransigent poverty areas, these empowerment zones would be infused with government money to create new businesses and to entice other businesses into the zones to create living wage jobs for the residents. They were also to help provide affordable housing, training, and other social services to help overcome the cycle of poverty in these areas with little oversight from the Feds. This would allow local authorities to administer the money as they saw fit and to address local needs. To date, the Federal Government has given 1.1 billion dollars and cannot verify whether the programs have had any beneficial effect at all.

After investigating the Miami Herald could not verify that the Trust had provided any new jobs, housing, or business opportunities for those it was suppose to be targeting. That’s over the course of almost a decade and 68 million dollars of tax payer money and basically they have little to nothing to show for it. What they were able to verify was criminal and shocking. This program is scheduled to expire in 2009 and anyone would be hard pressed to be able to rally support for its extension. I guarantee you the wing-nuts and other corporate welfare whores will hold these results up as reason to terminate the program. The injustice of it all is that it won’t be the people who it was designed for that screwed it up, it will be the usual collection of poverty pimps who have for years made a living off the misery of their fellow citizens.

[1] http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/povped/part4/index.html

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Is Winning Everything?

Winning isn’t everything,
It’s the only thing
Vanderbilt and UCLA football coach

Henry “Red” Sanders

This is a famous sports quote heard by anyone who has ever participated in sports from little league to professional. It was immortalized by Vince Lombardi legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. It is invoked by players and coaches and for many epitomizes what athletics is all about, the drive to win. For some however, it typifies what is wrong with modern athletics, to win at all costs. It is hard to be a sports fan and not be familiar with the recent doping scandals. It seems that everyone in every sport is taking some sort of performance enhancing substance to win. When pressed on his infamous remark the legendary coach Lombardi made the following statement.

In response to growing criticism surrounding the credo, Lombardi eventually came to regret the "winning is the only thing" statement and offered a repudiation, implying that what he meant to say was, “Winning is not everything - but making the effort to win is." Those sympathetic to Lombardi downplayed his use of the original quote. However, contemporaneous sources including first-hand accounts by his players and various journalists have documented Lombardi’s use of the “winning is the only thing” version.[1]

It appears that everyone from Barry Bonds to cricket players; no one has been immune to doping scandals. Why are so many of our athletes resorting to cheating to get an edge? Does this phenomenon speak to larger issues at play not only in the world of sports, but in our societies as a whole? The reason for my writing this essay is I was reading about the recent misfortunes of Marion Jones, the female track star and former Olympic gold medalists. It seems that Ms. Jones has admitted to cheating and using performance enhancing drugs during not only her Olympic career, but for most of her years on top of the track and field world.

I have to admit I have always liked Marion Jones, although I never met her she seemed to be a quiet, graceful athlete who went about her sport with dignity. She never seemed to gloat on her victories and took her defeats, even though she was always held to lofty expectations. I guess I am really not disappointed in the fact that she was using the drugs, because there had always been rumors surrounding her and drugs. The thing that bothers me is how she and other big name professional athletes take the American public to be stupid. And I for one do not like to be treated like I am stupid.

I at one time fancied myself somewhat of an athlete and played basketball in college. During my “career” I tried rigorously to train and monitor my diet. I became very intimate with my body and my capacity for pain and recuperation. I spent hours in the gym and weight room. I became so familiar with my body that I could predict and anticipate bodily changes to muscle stress and recovery. I by no means was a professional, so I find it hard to believe it when professionals say that they were given performance enhancing drugs and were not aware of it. This flies in the face of any rational or sane person even remotely familiar with the athletic process.

When you are training your body becomes a fine-tuned machine and you are aware of even the most subtle changes in it. Remember we are talking about fractions of seconds in performance; the drugs do not make a weekend warrior into a super-athlete. The drugs are used to give a superior athlete just a little extra edge to be a great athlete. The difference in winning and losing is often measured in very small increments. Barry Bonds already had the knack for hitting a baseball, the drugs didn’t give him that, what they did give him was that fraction of a second of bat speed to overcome age and superior pitching. So how an athlete can say the following and expect anyone to believe them is beyond me.

Jones had been dogged by suspicions and doping allegations for years, angrily denying all of them. On Friday, though, she told a federal judge that then-coach Trevor Graham gave her a substance that he said was flaxseed oil but was actually "the clear."

"By November 2003, I realized he was giving me performance-enhancing drugs," Jones said Friday.[2]

While I have never personally used steroids or any designer performance enhancing drugs, I have been witness to its results in the gyms. I don’t care what a person may tell you they are giving you, your body will tell you the truth by its muscle development and strength recovery. If I am taking “flaxseed oil” and my muscle development is expanding and my speed of recovery is increasing, I think I would know that there is something rotten in Denmark.

But here is the scary part, because of her acknowledgement of using the drugs her medals were taken and will be probably redistributed to other athletes. Many of the other athletes who would have benefited from her being removed from the record books have themselves been involved in doping. My fear is the message these scandals are giving our children, that in an effort to win anything is ok so long as you can get away with it. It is bad enough we have the crazy parents shooting and punching coaches who are not playing their kids, but in addition we have these so-called role models promoting cheating.

I have always thought athletics in their purest form represented the determination of the human spirit to overcome not only ones competition, but also one’s self. That the lessons learned from athletics: discipline, hard-work, and perseverance can directly translate into success in the real world. I guess I am being too naïve; why work hard when you can take shortcuts. So it is in the professional world, so it is in the athletic world. I guess winning is the only thing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_isn't_everything%3B_it's_the_only_thing
[2] http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/trackandfield/news/story?id=3054706

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