On the cover of all of the nation’s newspapers, news websites, and television stations is this breaking ‘news’ that is of utmost importance to the nation: Barry Bonds has been indicted.
Barry Bonds is a very polarizing figure, you either hate him or you appreciate him and his contributions to the game of baseball. I’d place Bonds’ approval rating just ahead of President Bush and Congress. The problem with this is that people care more about Barry Bonds being honored as a hall-of-famer and getting considered as one of the best players ever, as well as the implications of having a player that used steroids as the all-time home run leader.
I understand that as Americans, we like to fight for what is right and we like hard-working guys that play by the rules. And if he’s an underdog, well that’s even more American. But is this really more important than our President and Congress who in the past few years have prepared and enabled martial law, created massive domestic surveillance, invaded two countries (and wants to invade a third) that didn’t attack us directly costing thousands of American lives and millions of civilian lives, not to mention 1.6 trillion dollars, all while our dollar is plummeting?
Don’t get me wrong, I love sports, but I understand the role that sports plays. It is a leisure activity that provides entertainment. When a story about Barry Bonds is the leading story and gets more air-time/inches in a newspaper than real news, there is a serious problem with people. I don’t really know how to say this eloquently or nicely… Wake up! Get with the program! Face reality! You’re living in a dream world that is about to come to a crashing halt. However, since Barry Bonds is so important to everybody, I would like to use his case to show the bigger problem with our society: the media.
Most everybody believes that Bonds took steroids even without the evidence of a failed drug-test (I think the growth of his body and his head in one off-season are enough evidence). Was this wrong? Sure. However, what Bonds is being indicted for is perjury and obstruction of justice because unlike Jason Giambi, he lied and said he knew nothing about what he was taking and knowingly withheld information pertaining to the BALCO case.
Even through all of this overwhelming evidence, Bonds has found many supporters, and most of those supporters are African-Americans. One such defender of Bonds is Charles Barkley. After hearing him talking to Bob Ley on ESPN over the phone, I was inspired to write this article. Barkley was contacted to weigh on the subject in using his expertise (in what I don’t know). He called the Bonds case a ‘witch-hunt’ and cited Mark McGwire, Marion Jones, and Giambi as cases to prove his point. Barkley is not a legal expert and, in my estimation, not a very smart man either. As earlier stated, Bonds indictment has everything to do with his involvement with the BALCO case and withholding information and nothing to do with his performance on the field. McGwire was not cited in that case thus he does not apply. Jones and Giambi however were involved in that case, and to jog Barkley’s memory, both cooperated and publicly apologized for their actions. Bonds did neither. Hence the reason why Bonds is in trouble and the others are not.
Barkley specifically said he did not want to play the ‘race card’, however race is unfortunately still a very big part of the way we identify ourselves and others. So is race truly behind his defense of Bonds? One can only speculate, but linking the Bonds phenomenon with OJ Simpson and Tim Duncan, I would suggest that in many cases race is directly related to people who defend or attack Bonds, at least that is what the media has demonstrated to me.
The OJ Simpson murder trial experienced the same racial polarization, with mainly African-Americans defending OJ Simpson while mainly White-Americans called for his head. When OJ was found not guilty, the African-American community felt vindicated and celebrated the fact that a black man beat the justice system for once. The problem is that the African-American community rallied around the wrong case. For all the African-Americans that were unfairly treated by the justice system (the historical case of Emmitt Till, the staggering statistic that more blacks now live in prison than college dorms, or the most recent unfair treatment that griped the media: the Jena Six), African-Americans, steered by the media, chose to support the guy who was accused of killing his ex-wife and her boyfriend in cold blood with a preponderance of evidence that suggested he was in fact a murderer.
So how then does Tim Duncan relate? This guy has done everything right. He was the 1st overall pick, he led his team to the finals three times, has averaged 20/10 nearly every season of his 11-year career, except one when he averaged 18.6 ppg and 11 rpg, he’s one of the best leaders in any sport, he plays the game ‘right’, he’s a good guy, and has a stellar record with public service and charity. How has he been received and rewarded? Not particularly well. He lost his shoe-deal after winning his 2nd MVP, he’s often referred to as a ‘white’ player or an Uncle Tom, and doesn’t get half the media recognition of guys like Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury, both horrible representations of the human race and the African-American race. Duncan, who has seemingly done everything right and by the book gets punished and shunned by the media, while the bad guys are embraced and dominate the story lines so we all know their names.
Going back to Barkley, I maintain his argument was sloppy, misguided, and guided by a hidden agenda. Welcome to American society, where truth, thoroughness, and full disclosure are not only unimportant, they are discouraged. Again, this is another phenomenon created by our infotainment media culture, which has served to dumb down our society, perpetuate racial divides, and alienate us from our government, which was created for the people, by the people and now exists for the rich, by the rich. The media is here to make sure WE THE PEOPLE don’t get in the way. They give us 500 channels, Barry Bonds, Bill O’Reilly, and we give them power to control and herd us.
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