Noah Counte

Today is the NFL - that's American football - draft. This is the day that college football players get to realize (or not) their dreams of playing professional ball. If you remember picking teams for any contest as a kid, you get the gist of the draft.

People actually sit and watch this travesty for the duration - and it takes hours (days, actually, but they only televise the first day). Chess is a more exciting spectacle for observers than is the NFL draft. This year, there have been some rule changes to make it more palatable: notably, a team now has only ten minutes to make a choice on their next player. That means, every hour, six things happen. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... There are 32 teams, so some one is going to sit for five hours before their ten minutes. Way better than years past, when something happened only every 15 minutes.

I'm not anti-football. In fact, I'm a classic "fan:" if I'm home and have nothing else to do, I'll turn it on. I'm not paying $250 per ticket to go see the game. I'm not rearranging my schedule, of finding a sports bar. I enjoy it from time to time. Not today, though. Tomorrow morning, I'll look at the paper, and in less than a minute I'll know who the Colts picked, and I'll know where the kids that played of the local University went. And I'll be done with football (again) until September.

I wonder if the Cubs play today?

Two great topics that go together.

Golf and racism have a long and storied history that has bubbled up again in the past week. It’s a story full of ironies – it would be worth laughing about, if people weren’t actually being hurt. Before you read on, you should know that a) I have never watched the Golf Channel or Kelly Tilghman. I’ve never watched golf at all, although it’s hard to miss the media juggernaut that is Tiger Woods. You should also know that when Al Sharpton speaks, I look for something else to do.

Background: Kelly Tilghman is a woman who played golf pretty well at Duke, and then went into broadcasting. By all accounts, she’s a hardworking, caring person, who has paid her dues. Recently, she was made lead analyst for the Golf Channel.

Tiger Woods is a black golfer. He’s played pretty well, made more money than any golfer in history, and is poised to break every record ever set. By all accounts, he’s a decent, hard working guy who just wants to be a good golfer, husband and father.

Al Sharpton is a black reverend with a storied past. By all accounts, accounts are all over the place on where his heart is, and his mouth seems to be always running.

Short story of irony: a woman in a man’s world says something denigrating about a black man in a white man’s world, and a black man with a history of saying hateful things about all sorts of people gets mad at the woman for saying hateful things.

Longer Story (read the article in the Chicago Tribune):
Kelly Tilghman was on the air last Friday, discussing the chances of anyone beating Tiger Woods. Her partner, Nick Flado, said it wasn’t going to happen, and her off-the-cuff response was that it might happen if they took him into an alley and “lynched him.” Whoops. If it was premeditated, it would be horrible. I can’t imagine that it was premeditated, but it remains an awfully insensitive remark.

Someone must have said something to her, because she apologized privately to Tiger Woods the next day. Sunday, she apologized (poorly) to viewers: "On Friday during our golf broadcast, Nick Faldo and I were discussing Tiger's dominance in the golf world and I used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended by my comments."

The Golf Channel apologized as well, and said Tilghman wouldn’t be punished, but suspended her for two weeks after Rev. Sharpton called for her to be fired.

Editorial content: I have no problem with Tilghman being chastised for choosing her words poorly. Become a TV personality, and you have to think about what you say before you offend a boatload of people. I think that her apology to her audience fell short. Saying something offensive and then apologizing to people who may have been offended is a little like punching people and then apologizing to people who may have been hurt. She should have said “I was wrong, and I am sorry.” When you say something that is offensive, it’s not appropriate to push it off on listeners (people who may have been offended) – take responsibility and move on.

I think the Golf Channel is run by a bunch of weenies. They said they were not going to punish her after her apology. Then Al Sharpton farts at them, and they change their mind. Plus, it’s Golf. Real men play rugby, right?

I think Al Sharpton is a racist and an ambulance chaser. I will not rehash his history now, but you can read a fairly unbiased account here. That we let this guy hold us hostage for our behavior is abhorrent to me. He is inflammatory, racist and unapologetic.

Happily, I think Tilghman will go back to work, I think Woods will continue to decimate the competition, and I think Sharpton will be marginalized until some other public personality says something they should have kept to themselves. Then we will be forced to listen to his ugly rhetoric again.

What will really make me happy will be living to see the day when skin color and religion means so little, and the present is so kind to all people, that history no longer provides the tools with which zealots a can fan the flames of hatred.

Live and dream, that's my motto.