- The Josh Howard controversy didn't seem worth getting into last night. A multimillionaire celebrity saying some ill-conceived and inconsiderate? It's not worth calling Reuters over, even with Skype.
However, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban defended his employee the best way possible late last night, by simply, wait for it, reprinting the ugly, hate-filled anti-Howard e-mails, complete with names and e-mail addresses. The balls it took to do that are not sold in any sporting goods store.
Who knows what NBA commish David Stern is going to think.
You'll love the one who refers to Steve Nash as "the anti-American Canadian pig vomit," and just to get the point across, types in ALL CAPS. Really, you made your point with the Canadian pig vomit.
Seriously, when NBA players are standing for the anthem (or anthems, if they're playing the Raptors), the War of 1812 is about the farthest thing from their minds. Meantime, Josh Howard could make nice by shooting all of his three-pointers from the right wing. - This is going to be heard all over the place in a couple weeks, so get started early on building up a tolerance to Eddie Vedder's Cubs song.
It's no surprise coming from Vedder. Pearl Jam was pretty much to grunge's Rolling Stones to Nirvana's Beatles -- they never apologized for not being first, or for selling more albums. Nor should have they. You play for the fans, not the bleedin' critics.
There's an obvious joke that you never would have seen Kurt Cobain, had he lived, writing an anthem about the 2008 Seattle Mariners. After all, their season's been too depressing to contemplate, even for him. Erik Bedard is probably out for about half of 2009, by the way. - As for the Vikings' QB switch, Tarvaris Jackson was betrayed, but his team isn't going to win with him in the No. 1 job.
The gut feeling, and it's more than that is that the Vikings' stadium push gets about as far as a run up the middle on third-and-8. They'll play at the U of Minnesota while the Metrodome gets gutted and renovated. - Ex-NHL pest Matthew Barnaby is reportedly headed for a gig at ESPN. Good for him.
- The Legend of Cecilio Guante visited Ottawa and found it much more to its liking than a certain husband of a former governor-general did.
- There's a video of Shaquille O'Neal being lifted by Wee Man from Jackass. Kobe Bryant probably say that and said, "Big deal, I carried him to three championships with the Lakers."
Did everyone see that the Carleton Ravens got a mention in a Sports Illustrated column? Also, three weeks later, people in Kansas still haven't got over Aaron Doornekamp's dad.
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It's too bad the Carleton game was barely mentioned in the Canadian media. The fact that they have won five of six CIS titles is apparently more impressive to Americans than it is to us.
Have I ever mentioned how crazy the Canadian self-hating attitude makes me?
Nice to see Carleton get a mention in SI, but the rest of Canada was hit pretty hard in the same column. Davis doesn't bother to mention the names of the "collegiate teams" Southern Illinois played (Western and Windsor, available with a 5 second Google search), which is annoying but perhaps understandable given the lack of respect the CIS gets. However, that pales in comparision next to "Missouri played three games in Ontario, all against teams of low caliber". Now, I don't know what the "Ontario All-Stars" and "Southern Ontario All-Stars" teams they played were like, but Brock as low calibre? They're only the national champions.
So you guys are more indignant over the media treatment of a university baskeball team, but no response to what's being done to Josh Howard?
Who's the self-hating Canadians again?
@ Duane: The National Post, CBC and The Score sent people to the game.
@ Andrew: Brock has lost six players out of their rotation. I don't have it right here, but they haven't played D-1 opponents as tough as Carleton has.
My issue is really more with the Canadian people, who typically downplay success and focus on failure. The Aussies coined the term, but we perfected it:
Tall Poppy Syndrome.
Hey, agreed, what's being done to Howard is far worse (and good for Cuban for having the guts to post those) but there's already plenty of people outraged about that and I didn't feel there was anything I could add to it. On the Canadian coverage of Carleton-Kansas, I actually thought it was pretty good for an exhibition game. On Brock, they certainly aren't as good this year and they don't have the recent history of Carleton, but you'd think the national champions would at least get their name mentioned when Carleton gets several paragraphs. My point was that it looked like Davis didn't bother to include who these teams actually played, which downgrades what's otherwise an interesting article and shows a lack of respect for CIS basketball.
This time, debate over Mr. Saul's ideas may last longer. Mr. Saul will be in Ottawa Oct. 19 to discuss his book and to kick off the annual Ottawa International Writers Festival at Library and Archives Canada. The public is invited.
That Citizen article is a GREAT read. I love that A) it's a straight news piece and B) it has the most loaded final line in the history of journalism*.
*Yes, I did put the hyper in hyperbole.
No one's denying it's a good read in the Citizen. You're supposed to play to prejudices and they did that, so huzzah.
At the same time, it is so stereotypical of Ottawa's big small town mindset that it can't see Saul for what he is. He's a pop philosopher who needs to be able to say something from "on high" that gets a rise out of people.
He's Lenny Bruce with a PhD and tenure, but one-10th of the wit, and incisiveness and ability to understand people.
By the way, Andrew Cohen's fine book, The Unfinished Canadian, has a great takedown of Ottawa as a city that has "given up" in terms of architecture and culture. Incidentally, what paper does Mr. Cohen regularly write for? The Ottawa Citizen. You could look it up.
I reviewed Saul's book for Q&Q and liked it for the most part. Not to steal the limited thunder of the still unpublished review, but I predicted that much of the response to the book would focus on the fact that he is criticizing the elites but lived in Rideau Hall. I know that's not really like Namath guaranteeing a Jets victory in Super Bowl III. But I feel vindicated. And this is all about me.
I hadn't thought of this before because I'm an idiot, but doesn't his access to and interaction with elites and direct experience with the vestiges of colonialism give him a privileged position to be critical of both?
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