If Only Lewis Hamilton Was Nico Rosberg…
What began as a simple comment in reply to someone – the author, as well – at f1fanatic.co.uk became something much more. The myriad contrivances used to explain away Lewis Hamilton’s internal combustion engine blow up in Malaysia, when AMG Mercedes themselves can find no reason for the failure, is bewildering. What can only be described as “best guess opinions” concerning Hamilton’s engine are being passed off as facts.
However, there are a set of facts and events relative to AMG Mercedes F1 led by Team Principal, Toto Wolff, and de facto Mercedes F1 Chairman, Niki Lauda, that are factual. They are likely to be dismissed by the very people who believe the sound of their own voices — and the nonsense that utters forth from them.
So be it.
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Lets get to brass tacks here.
The most baldly obvious sign that all is not what it seems at AMG Mercedes F1 stems from —— The Panama Papers. Some 200,000 offshore accounts were revealed to a select group of journalists. The primary law firm in Panama used to hide trillions of dollars is, Mossack Fonseca.
While many of the names released were those of well-known global politicians and entities with well-known corporate ties, one name popped up that is of interest to 2016 Formula One: Nico Rosberg. It turns out his previous F1 contract with Mercedes was drawn up signed and hidden in Panama, all with the aid of the Mossack Fonseca firm.
There are a basic set of questions then, that beg to be asked. Unfortunately, the journalists who cover he sport of Formula One racing have not come close to asking. The so-called independent, blog-style websites with their writes who also closely follow the sport with many who are fed information by team members have also been derelict in probing Wolff, Lauda, or Rosberg concerning his secret contract.
So, let us ask for them…
If everything is on the up-and-up with Mercedes this season why was Nico Rosberg’s previous contract drawn up, signed, and kept in an offshore bank best known for storing illegal contracts associated with secret deals, and money laundering? It cannot be taxes because every resident pay’s 19.4% sales tax on items purchased in Monaco, other than those who own businesses there and can prove 75% or more of their business income is generated in Monaco?
If everything was on the up-and-up why would Toto Wolff take the unprecedented maneuver to switch Nico Rosberg’s garage crew members with those of Lewis Hamilton? Drivers in successful garages relative to their car’s capabilities, go to great lengths to cultivate and maintain close relationships with their crew members.
Why, if Lewis Hamilton is Mercedes so-called “cash cow” or “primary corporate face” as he’s been called by many in F1 media, would Wolff severely hamper his alleged main charge’s chances of winning a third WDC in a row with such a disruption?
The better questions, though, are for the media.
Wolff overtly admitted a negative, defeatist attitude had permeated Rosberg’s side of the garage. Wolff went on to say he was concerned with the psyches of these people and wanted to give them a positive experience, so he switched them to Lewis Hamilton’s side. Conversely Wolff mentioned that Hamilton’s crew members could aid Nico Rosberg in maintaining a positive attitude throughout the long Formula One season and give him a better chance at winning a driving championship in 2016.
Why has the media failed to take Toto Wolff to task for his switch? Why has no one in the media surmised that Wolff’s move was and is so utterly specious, that it, in effect, forces Hamilton be responsible for bolstering the attitudes of these former Rosberg mechanics s he is attempting to forge a relationship with them that is in line with his inner strength, while at the same time trying to perform his job which is to compete at the upper echelon in one of sport’s toughest and most ruthless environments?
In retrospect, the move has been a detriment to Hamilton’s pursuit of a Formula One World Driving Championship. With all of the alleged mysterious car-related issues occurring on Hamilton’s side of the garage, what does anyone think the default attitude is for what are were Nico Rosberg’s mechanics? How much does this, losing once again, environment result in micro-errors that manifest themselves on-track, compromising Hamilton’s car’s performance and his 2016 season?
Further, how is it possible Toto Wolff has never mentioned the peril in which he has placed Lewis Hamilton relative to his garage crew switch? How is it at all possible that not one writer in the entirety of Formula One accredited media and in the world of F1 blogs has asked Wolff, if, relative to the season as it stands, does he see his grand garage switching experiment as a total failure and also see the folly of this maneuver?
And in the hyper-opinionated world of Formula One journalism, how is it at all possible that not one so-called journalist has failed to call out Wolff and flat out stated that the garage switch has acted to compromise Lewis Hamilton’s 2016 quest for a third straight World Driving Championship?
More questions: Why would Niki Lauda make multiple trips to Nico Rosberg’s home to boost the driver’s psyche during the F1 season break just when it appeared Rosberg had completely lost his grip on the WDC? No other team would ever consider doing such a thing for a driver. Yet here is Mercedes taking yet another in a line of unprecedented steps to provide Nico Rosberg with every possible advantage over his teammate, Lewis Hamilton.
How is it possible that, out of the break, Hamilton suddenly has incurred mystery failures that hamper his races? This is not some lowly back-marker team but the best team on the F1 grid with with eight power units in cars on the grid per race, 46 PUs in total. How is it possible the power units in one car and one car only fail?
This is not a roll of the dice, this is not gambling with a mishmash of disparate car parts thrown together in the hope of having a running engine; this is mechanical engineering at its highest level. In the world of mechanical engineering we have ample examples from the world’s auto companies concerning what happens with failed designs or aberrant parts.
If there is an issue with one engine, the great likelihood is that ALL the power units have the same problem. This is why auto companies have recalls, sometime on hundreds of thousands of cars and engines they produce for the public. The errors made with one engine are repeated errors, not singular errors. As some F1 pundits have claimed, perhaps the problem is with a supplier’s part or parts. If true, the chance of the same part-making error arising in each of the 46 power units is far greater than it is for the error to be isolated to one part of a power unit, or in this case, one part of an internal combustion engine within a power unit.
How is it possible the three races with Hamilton having radio communications where he has aired clutch problems during the race, that neither Nico Rosberg, nor Paddy Lowe, nor Toto Wolff ever mentioned those problems —- until after Rosberg won the race and after Hamilton mentioned the issues again in post-race interviews? And what happened recently at Singapore when Rosberg, pre-race said something about a clutch issue? Toto Wolff responded and was shown – caught – immediately after talking with Rosberg —- laughing? Yet at race’s start Hamilton’s clutch fails him just 50 yards yards down the track while Rosberg has smooth sailing from the start throughout the race. How is it possible that, in three recent races, Hamilton led all cars throughout FP1 and 2 until his car was mysteriously not functioning correctly – “set-up issues,” in each of the three — on Saturday morning?
Why would a longtime, well-known F1 media member write a commentary titled, “Destiny,” and state that no driver has ever lost a WDC while winning eight races, which, he said, means Nico Rosberg is destined to be the 2016 WDC?… with SIX races remaining on the schedule and with his main rival having won SIX races?
Entering the Malaysian GP Hamilton was but eight points behind Rosberg despite have some sort of car issues in nine of 15 races. The six in which Hamilton was relatively issue free, he won.
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Even with all the aforementioned issues and media failures now laid on the table, there is still one more important piece exculpatory evidence favoring the thought that Lewis Hamilton could well be being placed in a set of circumstances that make his winning a third F1 World Driving Championship as close to insurmountable as possible.
Formula One teams are notorious for letting drivers know, in no uncertain terms, that they are hired hands, it is the brand behind the team that is king. At one point early in the 2016 F1 campaign Nico Rosberg and Toto Wolff were deep into contract negotiations. Wolff, frustrated with Rosberg’s demands, publicly announced that Rosberg had three weeks to settle the negotiations before Wolff began to consider, “our (Mercedes’) options.”
Initially, the F1 press hopped all over Wolff’s statement. There were whispers that a Rosberg-Mercedes split was possible. Three weeks came and went. Suddenly the F1 press went silent other than what appeared to be press Mercedes releases where someone from the team was indicating that negotiations were on going.
Several weeks later, Mercedes announced the contract was done.
However, between Wolff’s time limit declarations and the contract signing, it was apparent all was not well between the parties of Rosberg and Wolff-Mercedes. In fact, Rosberg enlisted the aid of a family friend and former F1 driver, Gerhard Berger, to negotiate in his stead.
Rather than quietly work to get the deal done for his client, Rosberg, Berger went on the offensive… and attacked Lewis Hamilton. To the German newspaper, Bild, Gerhard said of Hamilton, “When you hear how many times he [Hamilton] jets between America and Europe between races, and think of the effort and energy that 1,000 people put into a race weekend, it is important that they have the perfect balance in the team.
“In Rosberg, they have an equally good driver from the sporting point of view and also highly reliable.”
In the sometimes contentious atmosphere of contract negotiations to attempt to juxtapose a client versus another person’s alleged morality is a no-no. In this regard, Berger’s statements far more often than not become deal breakers.
Not so for Toto Wolff as spokesperson for AMG Mercedes F1. In fact, neither Wolff nor longtime Berger F1 buddy and Mercedes F1 “chairman,” Niki Lauda uttered a word in dispute of Berger’s comments. There were no very public defenses of Lewis Hamilton’s reputation or statements of Hamilton’s worth to the team; no telling any journalist who would listen that Berger’s comments were so out of line that unless he apologized they could damage the negotiations.
In fact, for Hamilton, Wolff and Lauda’s silence was tantamount to telling the world of Formula One that their two-time WDC was no longer welcome on the team. Had Hamilton, shortly after the Rosberg negotiations completed, announced he was leaving Mercedes, no one could legitimately blame him for doing so.
As for the press? Nothing. There were no articles or commentaries questioning the motive of all involved in the contracts, no putting Wolff’s feet to the fire for his failing to utter one word in defense of Lewis Hamilton.
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Today, we know the story of James Hunt’s “miraculous” 1976 Formula One World Driving Championship is a lie. We know history has been rewritten to give the public the impression Niki Lauda was in each race and Hunt did not have six weeks to accrue points unencumbered from the burden of dealing with Lauda.
Yes, in the telling, Lauda’s accident is always mentioned. But the end of the story is NEVER, James Hunt was gifted the 1976 WDC, and even with his chief rival missing six weeks of the season due to a near-fatal accident and returning to his car with injuries that would have sidelined other drivers from the remainder of the 1976 season and with his chief rival refusing to participate in the season’s final race, the deluge that was the Japanese Grand Prix, James Hunt still nearly lost to Niki Lauda.
Should Nico Rosberg go on to win the 2016 WDC how far will the F1 media and assorted bloggers who have been gifted viable voices within the general F1 media landscape go to make it seem as if Rosberg overcame insurmountable odds to win over his teammate and so-called chief rival – a “chief rival” who Rosberg, after being passed by Hamilton and losing a bitterly-contested 2015 China GP whinged, “It’s just like when we were teens?”
Should Nico Rosberg go on to win the 2016 WDC will Sky F1 media, produce a sham of a “mini-doc” selectively “detailing” Rosberg’s 2016 season? In it will they begin to cement forever the notion that Hamilton’s ill fortunes were merely the whims of “the F1 gods.”
Will they also insinuate that Hamilton’s “lifestyle” caught up with him? Will they enlist the aid of Sir Jackie Stewart who already claims Hamilton is more concerned with jet-setting around the globe, pursuing a bigger party rather than pushing a driving championship. Will Sky use Stirling Moss to remind English and European viewers, referencing Hamilton, about the way, “‘We’re’ more reserved,” and how Hamilton goes about his life not in the manner in which “‘we English’ do,” implicitly implying that Lewis Hamilton isn’t “really” British?
Will erstwhile and venerated Formula One journalists pick up the baton from Sky and rerun their stories about Hamilton at a festival in a far-flung land not called England or Europe, being seen and photographed in the presence of Rhianna? Will they pull out Daniel Ricciardo’s “hater” tweet “calling bs” of Lewis Hamilton when Hamilton was photographed working out while on vacation?
The F1 press has already proven it won’t take the ever-smiling Ricciardo to task for deciding he was in good enough shape not to work out at all. Instead, Ricciardo and his “mates” decided taking a frat boy, spring break-type road trip across America to Los Angeles. Notice how no one called out Ricciardo for his dangerous journey, as the chances of him finding himself in a career-ending or fatal accident are far greater than all of Lewis Hamilton’s air flights during the break. And no one will call out the fact that Ricciardo made it fairly clear that he and his buddies were drinking alcohol at a fairly consistent rate throughout the trip.
Additionally, was it this Ricciardo trip and infidelities on it that led to Ricciardo’s breakup with longtime girlfriend Jemma Boskovitch? Where are all the headlines reading, “Has the F1 Lifestyle Gone to Daniel Ricciardo’s Head?” Alas, they are nowhere to be found.
It’s far more important to look in every cranny for someone saying something negative about Lewis Hamilton than to report anything salacious about a driver who, outside of Hamilton and Rosberg is the closest to them in points and is being hailed as an upper echelon Formula One racer destined to win a WDC in an upcoming season.
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To end, unless the mysterious internal combustion problems spread to Nico Rosberg’s car, unless his clutch actually does fail him causing him to leave a race unfinished while Lewis Hamilton wins, or unless Hamilton sweeps the remaining five races with Rosberg coming in second, Nico Rosberg will win the 2016 F1 World Driving Championship.
Toto Wolff will be saluted by the F1 press as the man who presides over two WDC-winning drivers wile winning three World Constructor’s Championship titles in a row. Wolff can tell a fawning slew of journalists that, beginning with the garage crew switch, most of his planned moves worked to win Rosberg the WDC crown. Wolff can bemoan Lewis Hamilton’s bad luck and vow to set things straight with Hamilton ——— next year. The lapdog F1 media will duly report Toto’s musings and begin with their winter-long assailing of Hamilton while opining about whether or no the new regulations set to take effect in 2017 will result in the end of Mercedes’ reign as the best F1 team. On we go. Nothing to see her except what we tell you to see; move along.
Nico Rosberg will enjoy the victor’s spoils. Everywhere he and his family travel they will be photographed, smiling and overjoyed. Rosberg’s value as an endorser will rise exponentially. Hell, Rosberg might even find it in his heart to start a charity in his name so as to posit himself in the eyes of the public as a thoughtful philanthropist.
Meantime, Lewis Hamilton will likely be left to mull over and over his team’s myriad shortcomings, the many team decisions that resulted in his losing his WDC title, and be left to think long and hard about how to deal with team management members who showed themselves in 2016 to definitely not have his best interests in mind.
I, for one, cannot wait for the chapter, “The Mercedes Years,” in the book Lewis Hamilton promises to write once his career is done.
Addendum…
After the writing of this article this author contacted, by phone, two fellow “Deep State” researchers and embarked on a conversation in which we speculated about why Nico Rosberg was, in 2010 (his 2014 contract was made public, valued at $75 million over there years, so we surmised the Panama Papers contract was his initial dealing with AMG Mercedes), compelled to have a contract drawn up and signed in secret in a country best known for housing contracts in which certain elements of said contracts are to be expressly kept from prying eyes.
Our conversation led to the following possible scenario: 1. Lewis Hamilton signed a contract with Mercedes worth somewhere between $140 and $155 million and Rosberg, because of his perceived worth to the development of Mercedes from 2010 to 2014, wanted money that would equal or surpass Hamilton’s contract; 2. as a result, Toto Wolff arranged a deal where Rosberg became a shareholder in AMG Mercedes – NOT the F1 team, but the company; 3. because certain “valued” shareholders receive added bonuses Rosberg negotiated for a bonus as a valued shareholder that would enable him to garner far more than Lewis Hamilton ever could earn from a driver contract with Mercedes, or any other team for that matter.
In this way Nico Rosberg, forever runner-up to the teen and now man he considers his “chief rival,” Lewis Hamilton, will always know in his heart that, no matter the outcomes on track, he will have one-upped his primary foe in the world Rosberg, ultimately, values most — the world of finance.
Don’t Be a King, Unless You’re Prepared to Mob and Rob (originally written 9.19.09
The man above has spoken. And it’s like Hollywood out there is the “real” world where images are made to be broken. The man above in his position on high believes he can act unprofessionally and never be held accountable for his acts. He can lie about your professional experience and threaten your future in your profession, all because the truth of his agenda lends an unflattering light to his facade.
You see, to anyone who fails to want to know, he will point to his limited experience as a journalist and tell you it is vast. He will tell you that content is of utmost importance to him, yet he will oversee employees who write a hit piece full of spin and and personal attacks, enlist the aid of the “competition,” and allow no one to comment on the tale told.
That is how important content is to the man above.
To the man above, who is not a major in English, who is steeped in understanding the vagaries of the look of what we read, not what we read, it is more important for the agenda of his masters to be replicated than it is to provide a balanced view of this thing we call sports. He and his minions with the microcassette players in their hands, who attend the press conferences and ask the banal questions under sanitized conditions, then who wade into the locker rooms and clubhouses to get a sniff of a jock, who hate the men who jump high, throw far, and run fast because of their money and comparatively limited educations – whoops! I just let on that I actually spent 12 minutes inside a press box, not the requisite 10, or was that number a figure of speech or an attempt at being collegial, like using “Hey” as a salutation before ripping me to shreds for providing you with the information you asked for, oh four times on the telephone, or did I not understand that we were having a beer and pretzels conversation (and was doing the same with your underling) and showed a pattern of misconstruing compliments. Or do you really believe that I haven’t done “the beat thing”; that I actually was not voted the Beat Reporter of the Year award by the SID at George Mason University (that would be the B.O.Y. which is what you so badly want to say wanted to call me: “Hey, BOY!”). I’m sorry, SID is an acronym for Sports Information Director.
You know, come to think of it – there I go again, thinking – when you explain to someone that you can no longer share ideas with them unless an offer is imminent and a few weeks later the person call for ideas as if you worked for the man above, there can only be one understanding of that request; an offer is imminent, yes?
But in your world the answer is, no. Oh hell, it’s only shits and giggles and what’s 97 days to the man above and his underlings, they eat juuuuust fine. and they sleep juuuuuust fine – knowing the hole in their behinds still exists.
Now, I am willing to wager that the experience you say I do not have, is more than yours. That I have written the equivalent of four years of work in 14 months should provide you with a clue as to what I am and what I do. But you wouldn’t notice that, you’re too wrapped up in the content, right?
I’ll be the first to say that myopia should be declared a national epidemic.
And you know how I found out that, though you are the man above and there’s a man above you, one of your underlings advised me to seek an audience with that person – only after you showed exactly how unprofessional you are by not acknowledging the umpteenth email sent with clips; I did that at the behest of the same underling who advised me to talk to the man above the man above (who would be you).
Spygate: Cracking the J-School 101 Code
The most interesting portions of all the pre-Super Bowl XLII shows were those in which “Spy-Videogate” was discussed. While the “talent” and ex-NFL players at ESPN, almost to a man, freaked out about the possibility of the New England Patriots taping the St. Louis Rams walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI, the reactions of the pregame crews of the NFL Network and FOX were vastly different. There was one person at each of the other two networks who appeared to be genuinely offended by the thought of videotaping the Rams’ final on-field maneuvers before Super Bowl game day. At NFLN Adam Schefter, former Denver Post sportswriter and NFL.com writer and Curt Menefee, the host of FOX’s pregame show.
It made me seriously wonder why and how those men at ESPN banded together and were so vehement in their seeming hate – or extreme dislike – of Bill Belichick and so willing to blindly believe what they heard about the videotaping of the Rams’ walk-through. They appeared to act with a hive mind and speak as one, with each trying almost too hard to trumping the other’s self-righteous stance.
Meanwhile at NFLN Schefter was fixated on the fact the Patriots won each Super Bowl by three points as if it was some sort of magic number while Menefee was going crazy over the lack of concern over the alleged incident by Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmy Johnson.
Trent Dilfer told Schefter that if there was anyone to blame in the incident it was Dick Vermeil for having a final walk-through that was any more than a glorified excuse for the team to get together and expend some energy the day before the game. Dilfer, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the Baltimore Ravens, went on to explain that there was no way the Rams’ offensive players were walking through their goal line plays.
On FOX, the ex-players and Johnson, Super Bowl winners all, took turns dispelling any importance on the videotaping of a walk-through, if there was one. However, when it came time for Johnson to talk, illuminating comments spilled forth from the ex-Dallas cowboys and Miami Dolphins head coach’s mouth,
Johnson told Menefee and the nation that one of the producers at FOX witnessed the Rams’ alleged walk-through. He then dropped these bombshells: the Rams did nothing more than drift around the field and gather for a team photo and, no one from the New England Patriots was there videotaping anything.
Menefee replied weakly and posed a hypothetical, what if there was someone would you be angry, question. After Long and Bradshaw laughed at Menefee, the host quickly quieted down and adroitly changed topics.
With all their resources, with Mike Fish and Gregg Easterbrook, NFL specialists John Clayton, Michael Smith and Chris Mortensen pumping up the volume on the importance of former Pats employee, Matt Walsh, who worked in the New England videotaping department, how is it that they all failed to know this information?
Easterbrook went so far as to play the “Journalism 101 card” in his article which acted to castigate anyone he must have felt who is an outsider and is questioning the veracity of ESPN’s reports of New England’s videotaping practices. That Fish and Easterbrook are hot-wired to Walsh, who might have breached his confidentiality agreement by possessing videotapes that are the property of the Patriots organization, and seem ready to stake their reputations on the seemingly shady character, there is ample information to quell the notion that the Patriots engaged in taping a St. Louis Rams walk-through the day before their Super Bowl game against New England.
In the pre-production meeting before NFL Countdown on the Super Bowl XLII Sunday, who met with or talked by phone the Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, Steve Young, and Mike Ditka? How is it possible that no one at ESPN had the information Jimmy Johnson had? NFL Countdown producer Jay Rothman surely had a hand in what information was to be disseminated to the public. But Rothman and/or his assistants probably – and rightfully – leaned on the information provided to them by the reporters covering the alleged taping incident.
At the same time, we were and are left to wonder what Steve Young’s Super Bowl Saturday “walk-through” experiences were. How about Emmitt Smith’s? After all, he played for Jimmy Johnson when the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in the 1990s. How about Ditka? He in played in Super Bowls for legendary Cowboys head coach Tom Landry and was the head coach of the Chicago Bears Super Bowl-winning team. Perhaps they, unlike their peers on other networks lined up in various formations and discussed the execution of given plays; yet it is difficult to imagine Smith did, since he played for Johnson.
It appears that faulty information provided by ESPN journalists allowed for the NFL Countdown crew to tow the line and report the distinct possibility that a New England Patriots staffer – Matt Walsh? – videotaped the St. Louis Rams walk-through the day before their Super Bowl game against the Pats. Through this lens the countenance of Countdown crew can be understood and much of their vehemence toward the Patriots can be absolved.
However, what cannot be absolved is the J-101 lesson readers were treated to at the hand of Easterbrook:
Flash back to September. After the league made its strange decision to destroy the materials, then refused to say what they contained, several media figures, including me, did this Journalism 101 exercise: Current scandal involves current taping by the Patriots. Are there any former Patriots video officials from New England‘s Super Bowl runs? That led to a former New England scout and video department official named Matt Walsh, who now lives in Hawaii. Simultaneously, the NFL grapevine was alive with rumors — caution, rumors — that the Patriots were guilty not just of taping sidelines during games but rather of much more serious transgressions. The primary rumor, which was reported Saturday by the Boston Herald, was that the Patriots secretly taped the St. Louis Rams’ private walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI, that the Pats knew some of the Rams’ plays and formations in advance.…
Saturday morning, the Boston Herald ran a story asserting the Patriots secretly taped the Rams’ private walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI. The Herald cited an unnamed source and did not name Walsh as the person behind the camera.
Also Saturday, Mike Fish reported on ESPN that St. Louis‘ walk-through was devoted to red zone plays — all new plays and new formations the Rams had not shown during the season. Going into that Super Bowl, the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” was the league’s highest-scoring team. In that game, St. Louis was held to a field goal in the first half. The Rams kept getting bogged down, as if New England knew what plays were coming. If the Patriots secretly taped the Rams’ walk-through, then stopped the red zone plays the Rams showed in that walk-through, then won that Super Bowl by three points, then logic says New England materially benefited from cheating in the Super Bowl. If true, this would be the worst sports scandal since the Black Sox.
Let’s put that in capital letters: IF TRUE. We don’t yet know whether the Super Bowl allegations are true. Then again, we are into only the second day of information going on the record and the league finally answering some questions about the subject.
The words scream out, ‘the worst scandal since the Chicago Black Sox!’ And these are preceded by the ominous-sounding:
“The Rams kept getting bogged down, as if New England knew what plays were coming.”
Be afraid of the hoodie, be very afraid; the boogie man cometh.
The words scream out, ‘Journalism 101’, if you didn’t take it, no one wants to hear a peep from you, your voice does not count.
I wonder if Jimmy Johnson took Journalism 101 long, long ago at the University of Arkansas because he seems to have remembered more from his class than either Easterbrook or Fish. Then again, isn’t investigative reporting an art unto itself?
Either way, with Jimmy Johnson’s divulging that the Rams did not walk through their goal line offense plays, that they had no walk-through at all, makes one think that J-101 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Chad Johnson Is…
Chad Johnson is what happens when the black “athlete,” the black “player” begins to act as a man.
Chad Johnson is what happens when the hardest-working player on the team becomes a scapegoat for an immature team’s failings.
Chris Henry, on the other hand, is what happens when an immature member of the team is allowed to keep his immature behind on the team because he can catch passes. Chris Henry should have been jettisoned from Cincinnati as soon as the clock went to “0:00” in Week 17 last season.
Chris Henry exemplifies the problems in the Cincinnati Bengals locker room. While Chad Johnson has honed his craft to a fine point, which shows in the statistics he put up over the last five seasons.
It is Chad Johnson’s “opinion” when he says the Bengals need to change their culture to win. It is fact when a sports columnist or television pundit says it is so. To demean Chad Johnson people preface their remarks about him with, “He likes to talk” as if he is speaking just to hear himself speak, not to enact change in the Bengals’ organization.
When you are Chad Johnson, your coach says the following about you:
“It’s unfortunate that Chad has put himself in that situation, because a lot of people who really had affection for him now see him in a different light.
If (Chad) shows and does things, and does (them) the right way, I’m willing to take the bullets for him again and allow him to come back the right way,”
That situation was Johnson thinking about holding out for the 2008-09 season. And it is curious that his head coach, Marvin Lewis, insinuated that he took criticism for defending Chad Johnson in the past and that Johnson, the player who spends entire nights at the Cincinnati Bengals’ facilities studying film and working out, does “things” the wrong way. While many Bengals do things the wrong way, unless there is a set of circumstances that is beyond the purview of the press, Chad Johnson does not do “things” any way but the right way.
But Chad Johnson is what happens when the press chooses tearing you down is better for ratings than is explaining to a readership – viewership, too – how the stereotypes you built for Black athletes don’t apply to Chad.
Before the “Afro-Saxons” Get Hold of Cam and Mike…
Just to get ahead of the neo-negroes who are in the process of attempting to coon their way to prominence (even if it means signing in Mickey Blood or donning Minnie’s dress)…
When Black QBs – e.g. Cam Newton or Michael Vick – are written about in context of the team around them, it is interesting that neo-negroes await to pounce on any writer – but particularly Black – who would do so; who would actually perform the duties of a journalist.
You see, there is an adage about black people who feel animus toward the glaringly few Black writers who do write about athletes, including black athletes, in their proper context. And the adage fits all “minorities,” no matter their standing: whenever a person not of the dominant culture seeks to mimic the actions, beliefs, or social mores of people of the dominant culture, they become caricatures of the people they mimic – and, therefore, caricatures in the eyes of all who would see them.
This blind mimicking, this Laconda-like want to NOT honor self but so yearn to be of a dominant culture that acts as a macrocosmic cancer to anything not of itself with which it comes contact, is so deep that these afro-saxons will sell Black people out, as did Lacondas who were injected back into Africa and used as African-selling middlemen for their White masters.
You see, these lawn jockeys whose main purpose is to ensure that racism is condoned in America, never talk about Tom Brady after a debilitating loss; the “pouting Tom” who can barely speak during press conferences who, like Cam Newton And Michael Vick, always speaks of how everyone, including him, must play better the next time around. They never throw Peyton Manning under the bus when his teammates lose games and Manning launches into one of his diatribes where he subtly blames everyone but himself, as he has done his entire career.
No, no, these “we sick boss” negroes cover their ears when their adopted idols speak, so that they remain ignorant of the post-loss sulking and pouting of White quarterbacks. They then turn to White-owned media outlets and read and listen to the soliloquies about the NFL’s prescribed QB heroes written by their White sports-writing masters.
And like the crabs in a barrel they are, when they see a crab free of the barrel, they become angered to the point of exhibiting pathological behavior, seeking with malice to do everything they can to pull the free crab back into their clutches.
Few pundits in any field would have ever thought that in 2012 Black people in America, as a collective, would be farther than ever from self-actualization.
The clicking of claws grows ever louder.
ISU-OSU Officiating Embarrassment: In Response to the Author of a Yahoo Sports Article on. “The Call:
It’s easy for you and your peers to protect yourselves from retaliation by the NCAA – like access to games, coaches, athletes, NCAA officials – by ensuring you place blame for ridiculously poor officiating on ISU’s lost opportunities.
The reasons for including the result of one ISU possession aside, the facts are these: NCAA tourney games involving Big 10 teams, where “let ’em play” is the rule of the day automatically favors the, “foul constantly because the refs can’t call them all,” teams, many of which are in the Big Ten. Aaron Craft was only in the game at its end due to the largesse of the officiating crew, as a cursory glance of a replay of the game shows that Craft committed at least a dozen clear, easy-to-call, fouls.
Now, if we take the block-charge play specifically, you need to take a look at the replay. Notice that the ball is on the right side of the court (televised view) but the baseline official never moves from his position on the left side of the baseline until the Temple player begins his drive. Suddenly the ref flashes into the picture. A dribble before the Temple player rises for the shot the ref is standing on the “Dayton” decal in front of the stanchion. As he runs – ridiculously late – into as poor position as possible, BEHIND the play, he ONLY stares at the Temple player, never once glancing in the direction of the late-arriving Craft; the ref is never truly in a “set” position to view the play.
The play and the proper ruling: the Temple player is in the air BEFORE Craft is set. By rule, this results in an automatic blocking foul, as, a defender must be in position BEFORE the offensive player leaves his feet. The correct call here means the “foot in the arc” kerfuffle never occurs, the basket is made, a free throw attempt follows, and there can be no complaints.
However, since the baseline official failed to perform the most rudimentary portion of his duties, i.e,. follow the ball form side to side, and then failed to perform his next duty, which is to check the position of the defender in relation to the offensive player with the ball, he utterly failed on all accounts by automatically – if you cared to notice – calling a charge, when EVERY part of the play dictated that he call a block on Craft.
In ending, it’s the easy out for the television studio members – Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith, et al. – and writers like you crew to let the NCAA off the hook by omitting everything the ref did wrong before making the wrong call. This way you can place blame on ISU for the loss – as if OSU never made similar errors that led to swings in the game – which acts to deflect blame from the only place blame should lie: the inexplicably shoddy job performed by the referee.
The Quest for Global, Human Supremacy – via “Conquest”
What began as a simple response to a comment on Taki’s Magazine article titled, “How Black Studies Avoids Studying Blacks,” became a series of thoughts on the nature of racism. Though not at all intended to be a treatise, hopefully these musings will incite thought and discussion.
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The alleged “Founding Fathers” (of a stolen country) were, in fact, racist. We know this from the “three-fifths compromise” between the Northern and Southern delegates to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. Slavery – human beings as resources – was a means to an economic end, as long as the the “resources” were not White. What is now, fashionably among Whites, called “triangular Atlantic trade,” is little more than an attempt to make inert can be more accurately seen as, “The African Holocaust.”For the entire breadth of Western Civilization White polemicists and their less mentally adroit but like-skinned fan base, have taken it upon themselves to use negatively-manipulated, race-based thought to demean and vilify the peoples of “outsider cultures” with the intended end being, “Conquest,” of what they termed and term today, the “Other” – the Other being peoples of non-White, non Western cultures (a primary historic example of arguing the false premises of race-based thought are the 16th c. Las Casa v. Sepulveda debates).
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There is a certain, all-encompassing, fallacy to American “White-on-Black” race-based social thinking. Its intent to broad brush an entire people is inherently biased – and inherently biased. Never has a book with the premise that White people are more inclined toward criminal behavior, or more apt to be corrupt, or found to be more intellectually deficient, hit the book stands of your local Barnes & Noble.Yet, any college student who has taken a freshman-level anthropology class knows that the study of humans is subjective and therefore biased. In fact, an entire school of thought developed within the fields of social studies that attempted to ensure that biases were stated in hypotheses before an investigator entered a foreign environment for his or her study.But, in the end, it doesn’t take a college-educated person to know that an element of the uniqueness of human beings is the fact that we, each, perceive the same event through an individual/different lens. So, while overreaching portions of a perceived event may be perceived quite similarly by disparate people, details perceived within an event will almost always vary, person to person.Every college student who has taken a rudimentary statistics class should know that statistics are especially malleable. Especially so, because they are often used to mask a biased argument or mask the bias in the fulfillment of a hypothesis, rather than strip bias from an argument or result of studies based on a given hypothesis.To apply statistical analyses to race or race-based acts does little more than establish a person’s personal wish fulfillment. For every statistic a White person can apply that negatively impacts on perceptions of Black people, a Black can person can apply statistics that impact negatively on Whites.
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In ending, racism, defined as bias toward a person of different skin color where power – economic, political, social, etc. – is held by the person with biases exists, is a fact.That racism must be a foundational element of the pursuit of what is known, even by White, Western standards as, “Conquest” – the violent intrusion of a distinctly separate culture of non-White peoples with the goal of remaking said peoples into assimilated Others – is a fact.That post-Conquest institutions of racism are immediately and automatically erected with the sole purpose of separating the victors from the defeated, is a fact.
That all post-Conquest teachings are derived by members of the Conquest group, or by members of the defeated Other who seek to curry favor and spare themselves the wrath of the Conquest group, and will be teachings that render a largely favorable perception – positive in paternalism, benevolent even while killing, altruistic to mask the truth of their efforts, religiously “correct” and always in touch with a “supreme being” unknown to the defeated of which they are its likeness, all-powerful and therefore impregnable – of the Conquest group, is a fact.That once erected, all people who identify with the victors of the Conquest will assert personal notions of racism toward the Other, knowing with certainty that all institutions are geared to defend their notions of racism, is a fact.
That today, the people who are the beneficiaries of Conquest and its primary device of philosophical perception, racism, are attempting to remake not only the United States, but the non-White peoples of the planet Earth into a powerless, subjugated Other, is a fact.
The only question, then, left for discussion is ——- why?
NFL Parity: Not So Loved After All
Parity, n: the quality or state of being equivalent (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). Parity, esp. in sports: where all teams in a league can bring their fans with intense joy and hope one game and intense sadness and anger the next (see, “American Football Conference” – AFC – East Division).
In the 2012-13, Week 6 version of the National Football League, 11 of 30 teams have .500 records. Another five are one game under .500, at 2-3. All four teams in the AFC East are 3-3. Since the NFL merger in 1970 this is only the third time the NFL has actually achieved this type of equality after six weeks of play and only in Week 6 of the 2001-02 season were more teams – 17 – at or one game above or below .500.
And the football community of fans, writers, pundits, and fantasy team members are beside themselves in their attempts to assess the star of the league, or any given team.
How did we get here?
Tennis: The Sport of Kings Is Dead, Long Live…
Most casual observers of tennis believe the sport is in a great state with great players at the top of the men’s game and more women than ever with chances to win grand slam events. However, what is not known and is rarely said, is that the game has little resemblance to what was meant to be.
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Rafa: proof that mediocre is the new “great.”
For two weeks 256 men and women entertained millions of people around the world as they played the sport of kings… and queens.
Unfortunately, though, those in attendance for the 14 days and the millions of enthralled viewers that span the globe were, for the 11th year, cheated. What was, before 2001, the most important sporting event in the world outside of the World Cup, is but a shell of its former self.
Thus, we saw the Wimbledon fortnight. And by Friday of the first week of tennis, the tournament was in shambles.
By Thursday Rafael Nadal was gone. Friday Roger Federer found himself down two sets to none and had to play deep into an English evening to survive a third round match. By Friday a slew of seeded women found themselves either focusing on doubles or on a plane to elsewhere – gone from Wimbledon’s Ladies Singles Draw. Also on Friday we saw Radek Stepanek, the last of the late 1990s- early 2000s tennis player fruitlessly attempt to serve and volley his way by world’s #1 Novak Djokovic.
The players who vanquished these kings and queens of the courts weren’t players rising through the ranks with a bullet. They had names like Julian Benneteau, a lanky, underachieving French dirtballing journeyman, for whom clay courts are his best friend. They had names like Lukas Rosol, the #100 player in the world, who wound his way through three qualifying matches before he blew Nadal off center court while barely breaking a sweat. They were women of little-defined tennis pasts and even less-defined tennis presents.
Sports Goggles 