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My farkin knee!!!!!!
Sincerely,
Milton Bradley
Isn't that a chapter in "Freakonomics"?
I wish people would stop pretending the First Amendment applies to private organizations... and it SHOUDLN'T! I mean, Christ, look at the NFL.. you can get a 50k fine for saying Roger Goodell's tie looked silly today.
Furthermore I would guess that the investigators didn't even suspect that the guy was a KKKer, they were just asking crazy questions. One NFL prospect for instance recently said one team doing a background interview with him recently asked if he had ever KILLED a man. Go figure
You, sir, are history's greatest monster. I, for one, applaud MLB for FINALLY taking steps to drive the pernicious influence of today's KKK from baseball.
You do know that some 25% of NFL players have criminal records? And NFL stars have been implicated, and convicted of murder in the recent past. It's not so far fetched a question.
i haven't checked that thread since last week--am I missing anything?
I read that too, even the prospect seemed to find it funny. I bet they started asking that question after the 2000 Washington Rose Bowl team.
That's ridiculous. It's only 21%.
O.K., that's still pretty bad.
One NFL prospect for instance recently said one team doing a background interview with him recently asked if he had ever KILLED a man.
"Yes. In Reno. I think you can guess why I did it."
Insert clever comment here.
No? OK, no longer interested in thread...
Simple, after three Ks, it's the other team's turn to bat.
No, I understand that. But the kid, granted I can't remember who it was, was a kid with a clean record and not a kid who even had tats/dreads or anything "thug" about him. So yeah, you want to make sure your not picking a murderer but the interview I read gave the impression the question was more part of a psychological questioning. I suppose the team and their shrink was tying to see how the kid would react.
Plus, as in demand as Ray Lewis is I don't think some teams even care...as long as they guy beats the rap.
And now that I read post 9, Jerramy Stevens keeps getting jobs too. And he SUCKS! I mean, its one thing for the top LB in the game (at one point anyway) to get jobs despite killing a man but an utterly replaceable adequate receiving TE to keep getting employment despite being a general drain on society (granted-not a murderer) really tells me NFL organizations don't give a crap.
And I'm sure Mr. McMorris knows the exact answer to that. Even disregarding the general evilness of being in the KKK isn't obvious how being a KKK member would lead to questions with every disputed play ever involving a black, Latin, Catholic or Jewish player he's ever called?
Given their history, why is the KKK not outlawed as a terrorist orgainization? Their members seemed every bit as intent on overthrowing our government as Al Queda; they've killed thousands of innocent people over the years.
And given the fact that this is a question that I think is fair to ask, how can the WUA actually act appalled that MLB would want to know if an ump (or any on- or off- field personnel) are members?
Eh, I don't think they have been behind any sort of serious, organized anti-government plots or crimes recently that I can think of. And to me they don't really seem half as intent on overthrowing the goverment as Al-Qaeda... but I'm not expert. I can't think of anything they've done recently that is really "anti-government"
Guys like McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph, while white surpremacists and anti-goverment, didn't have any connection to the "offical" KKK from what I remember.
CIA is a terrorist organization?
I do think it is ridiculous for the MLB authorities go sniffing around the guy's neighbors asking that if they don't have any real reason to suspect that. The WUA has every right to be appalled about that.
I don't know how any group can be "outlawed". What exactly are you calling for? I'm pretty sure the FBI does go after white supremacy groups quite a bit.
And can someone summarise the noose thread?
They were at one point. The NRA started up in the wake of it.
Now, I believe there are constitutional issues which would not be ignored as then. Second, it doesn't really accomplish anything.
I was just looking that up. On wikipedia, it says they have 8000 members and 150 chapters.
There is a list of groups (it predates and goes beyond the current list of militant Islamic groups) that it is a felony to belong to.
There is nothing in the article that says they have no "real reason to suspect that"; neither the press release in general, nor the quote from McMorris, denies it. They're saying only that MLB has no right to ask.
The NRA has nothing to do with the KKK, it was founded in 1871 in NY by two ex-Union officers to promote marksmanship.
So you're saying they did have good reason to ask?
Who cares?
Now if you have a juicy rumor that he was doing roids, well please dish!!!!
the KKK reached its peak (as far as overall membership and geographic distribution) in the 1920s and 30s. It really declined in the 1960s, partly because the FBI successfully infiltrated it and disrupted its activities. It was one of the few things you can actually thank J. Edgar Hoover for. Of course, at the same time he was using the same techniques to disrupt the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements, so it wasn't all rosey.
But seriously, when do the congressional hearings about white supremacy in baseball get started?
But super seriously. Um. Um. Aw hell. I got nothin.
I think that list is exclusive to foreign based organizations however.
one of the funniest parts of US immigration law is that you can't enter the country if you were a member of the Nazi Party ... between 1939 and 1945. So if you joined in 1946, you're in the clear.
An investigator's job is to search for clues and part of that comes with asking questions that would try to uncover behavior that has been deemed abnormal or unacceptable by our society (or [MLB] organizaton). These questions are indeed leading and frequently overly specific. They are not indictments.
This is how investigators, private or public operate. The investigators just don't sit around and wait for a phone call, when trying to stiffle crime, or in this case, behavior deemed unacceptable by a private organization.
I'm giving MLB the benefit of the doubt here (which I fully expect to be flamed for) but perhaps they've got a line or two on one of them and are checking it out. Maybe?
From what I understand this was at a time when they had "toned down" their activities and publicly voiced beliefs...and the whole funny hat thing too maybe.
I can't believe 8000 people still belong to the KKK in 2008. Good grief. I weep for my country some days.
Answer: Because Rule #1 to be listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is that it has to be...foreign!
group A: Nooses are bad, and should be seen as bad by everyone
group B: Nooses are bad, but we don't know that this was a noose
group C: Nooses are mostly from westerns
group D: It's worse for everyone when situations like this get blown out of proportion.
group E: David Nieporent
like Mr. Hilter and Heinrich Bimmler
seriously, though, you couldn't have a KKK umpire--he'd never give Catholic players the corner
You can expect me to voice my outrage about the KKK in baseball during my first State of the Union address. I am politically courageous enough to go out on the anti-KKK in baseball limb. Who among my opponents would be as willing as I?
Unless, of course you were spirited out of Europe as part of Operation Paperclip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
THE Nazi party ceased to exist by 1946, I believe membership in some successor organizations woudl theoretically bar membership after that.
Also, if you were a member pre 1939, but quit before 1939 that's apparently ok... I'm not sure many, if any, such individuals made it out of Germany alive however...
In other words, No Noose is Good Noose.
Repoz...I get the intro!!! Bravo.
Oh man, there are at least three easy jokes there about Mormons, but as I'm trying to get Romney's endorsement now that he's a lost cause, I won't make them.
:)
And hey, all three of them have been chased out of town since last July....
A friend of a friend was trying to get into the FBI. He claimed his ex-wife lied about him, and that's why he didn't get in. Knowing him (and his wife), the only part of the story I believe 100% was that he wasn't an FBI agent.
A good friend of mine was trying to get security clearance for an internship at the CIA about 7-8 years ago. I got asked all kinds of bizarre questions about him. It's been long enough that I can't remember them, but I remember doing my damndest not to laugh at some of the things I was asked.
How useful a question would this actually be if you're really interested in finding out if somebody's in the KKK? Isn't it a secret organization, so, in theory, the only way you'd know if your neighbor was a Klansman would be if you were also a Klansman, right? And if you're a Klansman, you're not likely to rat out your brother Klansman, are you? So, isn't it more likely that the only time you'll get somebody to say, "Yeah, that dude's totally in the KKK" would be if the person being questioned just happens to hate the guy you're asking about and thinks that saying he's in the Klan would be a good thing to say about somebody you hate.
First KKK was a terrorist group created after the Civil War that Grant and the Feds suppressed.
The next KKK popped up in the teens of the 20th century and at least in my opinion it was a money making scam preying upon peoples fears and hatreds. It fell apart due to the truth of its nature and the scandals and fueds surrounding the men running it.
The third Klan is the Klan of the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
The present day Klan is a small hodge podge group of people.
Heh, I'm surprised it's not higher.
Apparently the KKK was quite prevalent in the 1929 provincial election...although they seem more concerned about Chinise restaurant owners scandalously hiring white women as servers, and the lax enforcement of liquor laws.
I guess the paucity of black people in 1920s Saskatchewan meant they had to get creative.
The present day Klan is a small hodge podge group of people.
A local paper decided to do an investigative piece about the local Klan. They found it was just two guys hanging out in a basement.
There are many more groups that have replaced the KKK. There was a pretty effective ridiculing of the KKK the last few decades, making them more of a joke than a cause.
In that period, it was fueled by Birth of a Nation, and partially taken down by the Superman radio show. I wish more historical events were keyed by pop culture.
There was a devastating wave of race riots around 1920, mostly involving white mobs attacking the black neighborhoods of cities. Did the Klan of the time have anything to do with those, or were they organized and instigated by entirely different groups? Anyone know? (This may be a question for Dag Nabbit.)
Oh, and in the 1920s, the KKK was popular in many non-southern states such as Indiana. It wasn't then so much an anti-black organization as it was a "pro-Americanism" group. Its hatred was directed mainly towards Jews and Catholics (the old canard about if Al Smith was elected, the Vatican was going to build a tunnel to reach the White House so the pope could run the country). In Indiana, the Klan briefly wielded genuine power -- and in Richmond, Ind., where Louis Armstrong cut his first records as part of King Oliver's group, that same recording studio (Gennett) also was the site of Klan recordings.
ROFL. Too bad Primeys are now considered passe.
Interesting. So they were intensely hateful of religious groups. Sounds familiar.
The Klan was the dominant political force in Indiana for a period in the 20s, with Klan-backing instrumental to electoral success (including Gov. Ed Jackson). But its clout was short-lived and not very effective, and crashed spectaculaly when Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was convicted of raping Madge Oberholtzer. And yes, it was less anti-black than it was anti-Catholic and anti-Jew.
But even as late as the 1990s, there were several pockets of the state that were considered Klan communities, most notably the despicable city of Martinsville.
Bit more to it than that. They held up both negative beliefs (anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-immigrant) with positive beliefs (belief in Protestantism, support for law & order - frequently meaning prohibition, clean government, and love of country). This mixture allowed the Klan to ennoble the petty hatreds of middle America. Yeah, there was a money making scam to it (those robes & hoods cost money) but there was more to it than that - people genuinely believed in it as a cause.
As for the scandals . . in the north, it's head was D. C. Stephenson. Officially Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, he had wide ranging powers in the norht due to his helping Hiram Evans become Grand Wizard. He feuded with other Klan leaders.
In early 1925, at the inaugural ball for Indiana's new governor (who like the secretary of state and a majority of both houses of the state legislature had been elected due to Klan support), Stephenson met a young girl named Madge. He took a liking to her. He had his goons kidnap her, where he raped her so viciously that the doctor who later he saw her said it looked like a wild animal had bitten her repeatedly. She was so distraught, she swallowed mercury. Stephenson panicked, and initially denied her medical treatment. When she finally got it, she was a goner, but still had enough strength to dictate and sign a deathbed confession.
Stephenson felt the governor should give him a pardon because D C was the reason he was elected. The governor didn't feel like committing poltiical suicide. So Stephenson ruined him anyway, by releasing to authorities two black boxes full of info on bribery and other corruption involving the Klan and government officials.
For the Klan, which had ennobled petty hatred by proporting to support clean government, all-American living and the defense of white womanhood, was destroyed by this. The northern branches of the Klan essentially ceased to exist in a year.
In that period, it was fueled by Birth of a Nation, and partially taken down by the Superman radio show. I wish more historical events were keyed by pop culture.
Its resurrection was inprired by Birth. Superman? Nah, that happened 15-20 years after DC Stephenson went to jail. One key intersection between mass culture and the Klan was advertizing. It really started to take off around 1920 when it hired an early advertizing firm to promote it.
Apparently the KKK was quite prevalent in the 1929 provincial election...although they seem more concerned about Chinise restaurant owners scandalously hiring white women as servers, and the lax enforcement of liquor laws.
I guess the paucity of black people in 1920s Saskatchewan meant they had to get creative.
The Klan has always been a locally based group. A national organization, but the focus lay in the local lodge, called a Klavern. They'd hate Catholics where there were Catholics, blacks where they were blacks and smurfs where there were smurfs.
There was a devastating wave of race riots around 1920, mostly involving white mobs attacking the black neighborhoods of cities. Did the Klan of the time have anything to do with those, or were they organized and instigated by entirely different groups? Anyone know? (This may be a question for Dag Nabbit.)
This has more to do with the Great Migration, when WWI caused a rapid upsurge in the number of blakcs in the north for the first time ever. Klan cause them? Well, these things ain't exactly planned in advance. Often, it was just whoever happened to live near blacks that rioted. Chicago's Irish youth clubs led the way there in a riot that killed 38 in 1919.
The one place that might have Klan involvement would be Tulsa, which had the deadliest of all, in 1921. I'm not even sure there was much of a Klan presence there, frankly it's been a while since I've read about it. It erupted spontanesously, but once it got into gear, the whites very clearly organized. Perhaps Klansmen took part in it, but it was far far far more widespread than just a Klan thing. Any white who wanted to could pick up a rifle, and they set out to destroy the entire black section of town, and for about one day it worked. Officially, 36 died, but the Chamber of commerce made hat number up. Some estimaated say 80-100 dead. Others say 250-300. Its the worst riot of the 20th century, in terms of death.
The Klan didn't cause the 1917-21 riots, they just drank from the same well, as it were.
I've read The Fiery Cross - DC Stephenson's weekly Klan newspaper. It certainly discusses Catholics far more than blacks. But from little I've gleaned over the years, the Klansmen who didn't like Catholics also didn't like blacks. They may not have spoke about it as much, but Klansmen never like blacks.
Oh, no doubt. It just wasn't as pressing an issue to the majority of residents, since most of the blacks in the state were concentrated in a few communities.
And I'm pretty sure Stephenson knew Oberholtzer well before the rape, even employing her occasionally as a stenographer.
Aww, you're no fun. I cheerfully retract my assertion, although I've heard the anti-KKK episodes, and they're pretty cool.
I remember when that movie came out, but never saw it.
Aww, you're no fun. I cheerfully retract my assertion, although I've heard the anti-KKK episodes, and they're pretty cool.
Best part of it: the KKK used various passwords to enter into Klavern meetings. In the first Superman-KKK episode, they used the actual passwords by the Atlanta Klavern. The guys met up a few days later, fuming about how all the kids in the neighborhood were rooting for Superman to take down those no-good Klansmen, and not only did a mole within their klavern leak the passwords to the radio show, but they realized that anyone who wanted to show up and sit in on their meeting that night could do so. They changed their passwords right away.
Impressive knowledge Dag. I think it is critical that groups like the Klan are accurately studied, documented so we don't forget the truth. Without this careful consideration, it would be easy for someone to spin lies out of the giant shadow of the klan or any other similar type of condemned organization. For some reason, people think learning about the dregs of society should be taboo. To the point people avoid all conversations about the given subject.
Not to mention the Governor of Oklahoma who suspencted Habeas (IIRC) to combat the Klan, and got booted. Jack Walton.
Doing some more searching.. Ohio re-elected a Democratic Klan Governor in 1924 while Coolidge won 59%
Martineau (The Gov of Arkansas from 1927 to 1929) had Klan backing in 1924.
Maine also had Klan involvement in elections
And Indiana still narrowly elected a Republican in 1928, even after the Klan Scandals.
Ah, yes. Martinsville. I've driven through it many times on the way north from Bloomington. When I first got to IU, people told me that if an African-American got a flat tire in Martinsville, he just kept going, no stopping until safely out of town. When Konstantin Chernenko died, the local paper's headline was "Hell's Population Up By One."
Well, duh.
Pre-Hoover, the Dems would've been much more closely associated with that kind of overtly racist behavior. Remember, it was the GOP who freed the slaves.
Dag's said just about everything there is to be said about the rise and fall of the second coming of the Klan, but one thing I'd add was the slamming of the door on non-Northern European immigration after 1924. The 1920's Klan movement was far more directed against immigrants and Catholics than it was against blacks, and the strict new immigration quotas took a certain amount of wind out of its sails.
As for pop culture and its influence on aiding and curbing hate groups, several Hollywood movies took up this theme in the 1930's, most notably Humphrey Bogart in Warner Brothers' Black Legion, which was based on a northern hate group affiliated with the Klan, and centered in the Detroit area.
BTW if anyone is interested in some of the graphic ephemera of this period, here are two interesting pieces:
A 1917 Klan recruiting pamphlet, actually drawn by William J. Simmons himself. Simmons was the founder of that particular incarnation of the KKK.
And a 1921 anti-KKK pamphlet distributed by the ACLU.
Depends where you were. The Klan had been Republicans in Indiana in 1924. The Dems were the liquor drinking Catholic ethnics in that state. I don't know how blacks voted in Indiana in the 1920s, but then again, there were hardly any blacks in Indiana in the 1920s.
Will Rogers once joked during the 1920s "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat." A great joke, but never more true than in the 1920s. The 1924 DNC had a prolonged deadlock over whether or not to pass an anti-Klan platform. The northern members primarily consisted of urban ethnics (re: Catholics) who were main targets of the Klan. The southern members often were Klansmen. Can you imagine? A political party consisting of a hate group and the target of the hate group? The mind reels. No wonder the Indiana GOP still won in 1928, the Dems were in deep disarray. 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith - a wet Catholic - would've had little appeal in Indiana, but he helped ensure that northern ethnics stayed solidly Democrat. A majority of American Catholics didn't vote Republican until the 1994 congressional elections.
but one thing I'd add was the slamming of the door on non-Northern European immigration after 1924. The 1920's Klan movement was far more directed against immigrants and Catholics than it was against blacks, and the strict new immigration quotas took a certain amount of wind out of its sails.
Well, in hte south it was very much an anti-black organization. A scandal erupted over the murder of some blacks in Louisiana. There's no reports that I know of where they killed Catholics anywhere.
The Klan itself helped back this, though. The Klan still had other causes - like prohibition, but people were getting sick of that as well by the mid-1920s.
One other thing hurting the Klan - people who supported it thought of it as a grand cause to make America a better place. I know that's not how anyone here views it, but that's immaterial. They thought it was part of a great crusade to improve the nation. The timing was key for this - WWI had sparked an inflated sense of remaking the world. All the noble rhetoric of the war led to an odd amalgamation of idealism (make the world safe for democracy, war to end all wars) and utter intolerance (there's no such thing as a loyal opposotion when making the world safe for democracy, so destroy German language newspapers, lynch a German coal miner in southern Illinois, pass the Espionage and Sedition Acts, toss Debs in jail, say Schenk has no right to speak against the draft, and destroy the IWW). It also helped pass the 18th Amendment - a lotta German brewers, don't you know.
The war's end didn't satisfy the idealism kicked up by the war, nor sadly did the intolerance disappear. Instead you had a new crusade - instead of attacking Germans, you focused on commies. You get the 1919-20 Red Scare, with 6,000 arrested for little more than belonging to a disparaged political party. The great commie revolution never happened, but the Scare subsided right when D. C. Stephenson joined the Klavern in Evansville, Indiana. Welcome to a idealistic intolerant crusade, part 3. The fading of the Klan aided this all.
I feel weird saying "idealism" and "Klan" in the same sentence, but then again idealism itself doesn't necesarily mean your fighting for something good. It just means you're fighting for something that you genuinely believe to be good. I can't imagine too many people would agree with both Irving Kristol and Ralph Nader, but you damn well better both believe that they're idealists. Like I mentioned above, the Klan had enough of a positive campaign centered on law & order, love of country, clean government, and so forth - that it made people feel good about embracing their prejudices. Once the positive campaign had been discredited, people still had their hates, but that by itself couldn't support a movement.
For some reason, people think learning about the dregs of society should be taboo. To the point people avoid all conversations about the given subject.
Yeah. I think in part people are loath to understand the movement from the point of view of those in it - heck I feel weird using words like idealism in this post. Among academics, I think a second reason blends in. Most are over on the left, adn they have more interest in studying groups on the left. The best and most extreme example is Zinn's People's History of the United States. Its avowed goal is to do a history of America from the point of view of grassroots movement to show how average citizens impact the nation's course. But Zinn stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the existance of conservative grassroots groups. Thus there's no 1920s Klan, no John Birch Society, and his idea of a 1980s popular movment is the Plowshares 6 instead of the Moral Majority.
Yes, that was one of the first things I learned about the state when I got here in the mid 80s. I assumed it was somewhat exaggerated, though later events confirmed that it pretty accurately reflected the city's attitudes toward African-Americans.
I'd agree with this. On a personal note, the people I enjoyed listening to the most when I was in school in Mississippi were the blatant racists who used the N word as commonly as I use the F word. I would just sit with them at the bar and let them talk. It seemed pointless to get into a fight with them about their views and I think I learned more about them than if I'd been a good liberal and put my hands over my ears and screamed a John Lennon song at the top of my lungs. Anyway, those were interesting times, to be white and just listen to people in Mississippi. I had a great conversation with an older woman who remembered Faulkner as the man who wrote those dirty books, too. Good times.
In the 1960s, a young black woman not familiar with the town went door-to-door selling Bibles. Evidence & witness accounts show that at some points she became fearful that a man was going to attack her based on her race, but she couldn't get help. That night, someone murdered her. It was her first day in town, she had impeccable moral character, and the motive was clear - she was murdered for being black.
When state and/or federal authorities looked into it, the town circled the wagons and refused to help in anyway. Previously it had been no better or worse than many other sundown towns, but this incident defined it to the outside world and more importantly to its own residents as a racist haven that murdered blacks. Stories of treatment of blacks became worse over the years. By the 1980s or 1990s, Sports Illustrated did a story on how the residents treated black athletes who came to the town for high school contests. It was deplorable - trash thrown at them, one Martinsville basketball player punched a black so hard in the stomach that he threw up - and the Martinsville ref refused to call anything, and of course name calling. Not just isolated racist insults, but a gym full of hatred spewing on the opposing bench. The state refused to let Martinsville host sporting events for a time after that.
The murder was actually solved a few years ago, and it turns out the killer wasn't even from the town. He was from the surrounding area. They solved it when his daughter (a kid at the time) turned him in. Yes, that's right, he murdered someone in front of his daughter. The murder might be solved, but the town character has been forever marked. After 9/11, the police chief (or some similar local offical) gave a speech where he blamed the terrorist act on groups like Hindus and homosexuals. The audience, including the town council, gave him a prolonged standing ovation.
Holy crap. Anyway we can let Martinsville out of the Union?
Dag,
There have been a lot of incidents. In a game in the late 1990s, Martinsville fans were absolutely spewing racist insults at the players from Bloomington North (whose roster comprised a lot of foreign-born kids whose parents were at IU). Some players had messages written on their shoes that were presumed to be racist taunts.
The officiating crew that worked that game worked another game in my area the following night. They said there were a lot of suspicious fouls, but since there were no "hate fouls" on the books, all they could do was call them as fouls. After the game, they flatly told the Martinsville coach they would never return there.
And just as they had 30 years earlier, most of the city leaders defended the behavior (including the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce director), claiming Martinsville was no different than any other community and the criticism was unfounded. This time, however, the Martinsville Ministerial Association actually stepped forward and admitted the community had a problem that it needed to address, which I believe was the first time any kind of community leadership group ever made such an admission.
And, though it wasn't a racist incident, I must share my personal experience with Martinsvillians. I was covering a baskeball game between Martinsville and Columbus East, and the host CE squad was in the process of pulling off a sizable upset. As you can imagine, in the eyes of the Martinsville fans, it was primarily the fault of the referees. Well, late in the game, after a questionable call against the Artesians, a Martinsville fan charged from the third row of the stands and blindsided the referee. As the guy was getting hauled off by the police, the Martinsville fan to my left says matter-of-factly, "Well, he deserved it." And the guy to my right, who worked for the Martinsville radio station, says, "The referee did kind of start it."
Honestly, I've never been more frightened covering a ballgame.
I can't imagine John Wooden thinks of his old hometown.
Wow. You sure he wasn't being sarcastic?
No, he was just stupid.
when Hideo Nomo broke into the league, he signed a deal with somebody (Nike I think). The commercial showed him wind up and deliver a pitch ... followed by a big white K appearing on the screen. Another windup, another big white K. Another windup, another big white K.
I swear I'm the only person who noticed so I probably hallucinated it.
On the NFL draftee being asked if he killed a guy. One offseason, the Bulls were interested in power forward (really a rebounder) Jason Williams as a replacement for Rodman (who was an FA). He interviewed and took a psych test. The next day the Bulls resigned Rodman. Williams, known for his light-hearted humor, joked "My God, how badly did I do on that psych test if they chose Rodman over me."
A couple years later, Williams was involved with the "we were just playing around with a shotgun" killing of his chaffeur.
After George Wallace got shot and paralyzed in 1972, his American Independent Party nominated California congressman John Schmitz for President, and Schmitz in turn chose a right wing Tennessee editor named Tom Anderson as his running mate.
Schmitz was best known as being a member of the John Birch Society (whose founder claimed Eisenhower was a Communist---think about that the next time you pop a Junior Mint), but he also was a Catholic with a rather droll sense of humor.
And one evening on a radio show, he came out with this:
He then broke out laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation.
And Christ kill me dead, I'm not making that up.
-----------------------------
No time to read thread but ...
when Hideo Nomo broke into the league, he signed a deal with somebody (Nike I think). The commercial showed him wind up and deliver a pitch ... followed by a big white K appearing on the screen. Another windup, another big white K. Another windup, another big white K.
I swear I'm the only person who noticed so I probably hallucinated it.
Hell, ever since the days of Nolan Ryan I've been free associating whenever I see those rectangular strips of bedsheet hanging from the upper deck commemorating some pitcher's third or fourth strikeout of the night.
I've always thought this should be treated like the 13th floor of a tall building. Put up two Ks and just leave a blank space for the third. KK K instead of KKK. Maybe that's going too far. It's just that KKK simply jumps off the screen at you.
I've always thought this should be treated like the 13th floor of a tall building. Put up two Ks and just leave a blank space for the third. KK K instead of KKK. Maybe that's going too far. It's just that KKK simply jumps off the screen at you.
I wonder if John Rocker ever got the K-counting honors? Probably not, since it was usually reserved for starters, but man, would that ever have been a hoot, right there in the shadow of Stone Mountain.
My experience is that the people holding up the K signs in the outfield are usually pretty good about holding the third K upside-down, at least until you have number four on the board.
Except that "KKKK" stands for "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan," and has been forever.
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