With basketball mogul Donald Sterling in the news for hatefully and irrationally objecting to his mistress publicly appearing without him in her Instagram photos with slugger Matt Kemp and beloved HIV-positive role model Magic Johnson, it's worth taking a look at what Bill Simmons, editor of ESPN's Grantland website, has to say about Magic. From Simmons' The Book of Basketball:
[In the late 1980s,] off the court, [Magic] emulated Jordan's marketing savvy and reinvented himself as a commercial pitchman and celebrity, even launching a Rat Pack of sorts with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall *...
Footnote: Eddie: Sinatra; Magic: Dean; Arsenio: Sammy. I always thought The Black Pack would be a great documentary: they were on top of the world for four years, then Magic got HIV, Eddie's career went in the tank and Arsenio had financial problems. And that's just the start of it. I'd say more, but my legal team just electroshocked me.
... And just like that, he became the face of HIV: November 7, 1991. ...
After riding high for fifteen years and getting the "magic" carpet pulled from under him, poor Earvin spent the next decade hanging around like Wooderson from Dazed and Confused. *
Footnote: GQ's Charles Pierce believed that Magic and alter ego Earvin battled like Superman and Bizarro Superman. Earvin had a longtime girlfriend named Cookie; Magic cheated on her relentlessly. Earvin had an illegitimate son; Magic carried on like the boy didn't exist. Earvin was a shrewd investor who tripled his NBA income off the court; Magic behaved like a college kid on spring break. Post-HIV Earvin educated everyone about his virus; post-HIV Magic bragged about his earlier, wilder ways.
... He wasted a curious amount of time squashing rumors about his sexuality, even releasing a 1993 autobiography colored with tales about his (very hetero!) escapades and shamelessly plowing through the talk show circuit as "the (very hetero!) stud who banged so many chicks that he ended up with HIV, which means this could happen to you as well!" (Important note: This relentless campaign inadvertently hampered the sex lives of all red-blooded American males between the ages of eighteen and forty for the next eight years. For the first four years, everyone was terrified to have unprotected sex unless they were s***faced drunk. For the next four, the guys weren't terrified but the girls still were, although it's possible that they were just out of shape and didn't want us to see them naked. Then the Paris Hilton / Britney Spears era happened, women got in shape and started dressing more provocatively, we figured out you had a better chance of winning the lottery than getting HIV from conventional sex, and it became a sexual free-for-all. Of course, I was married by then. Awesome. Thanks for ruining my twenties, Magic.) Did we really need to know about his elevator trysts, threeseomes and foursomes, or bizarre philosophy about cheating on longtime girlfriend Cookie? *
Footnote: The philosophy: If his one-night stand didn't share his bed all night, the event was somehow okay. I wish I had thought of this rule in college. Wait, why am I making fun of this? Can't the Supreme Court pass this as a law?
Was Magic educating America's youth about HIV or affirming and reaffirming his heterosexuality. The lowest point: Magic appeared on Arsenio's show right after the HIV announcement and was asked about his sexuality. Magic said that he wanted to make it clear, "I am not gay." The crowd applauded like this was fantastic news ...
Sometimes Bill Simmons is on with Magic Johnson and other blacks doing commentary for NBA games. What's jarring is the contrast between the soft-spoken, articulate and intelligent Simmons and the much less intelligent Johnson and the other black commentators who have trouble putting coherent sentences together. In the past the networks would never put these black commentators on because it's embarrassing and painful to watch people mangle the language so badly, but now they just don't even care and just put them on. Also you can tell that Simmons often deliberately dumbs down his comments and refrains from making complex points because the black commentators won't understand his points.
ReplyDeleteOf course, what's the chances that the "very hetero!" face of HIV would have a gay son?
ReplyDeleteHave there been any fame-seekers coming out of the woodwork claiming homosexual encounters with Magic?
ReplyDeleteI suppose he could've shielded himself from this by only engaging w/ other closetted guys who are of means and have some measure of stature that would need preserving.
Why is the guy who wrote that lamenting unprotected sex with strangers like it was ever a smart thing to do...?
ReplyDelete""""Have there been any fame-seekers coming out of the woodwork claiming homosexual encounters with Magic?"""""
ReplyDeletePost of the month re: All things Magic.
You'd think that in 20yrs plus time, there would've been at least one, right?
Narry a one. How come? If there were that many, there's got to be at least one.
Remember when Tiger's wife found out? And then about a dozen bims came forward to claim that they had trysts with him? Very little in the way of prompting, it was like, boom! Here they come, and ready to tell the tale!
But nothing regarding Magic.
michael fumento on Magic:
ReplyDeletehttp://fumento.com/aids/specmagic.html
"I am not gay."
ReplyDeleteWould love for that video to be replayed in 2014.
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-24/sports/sp-636_1_magic-johnson
ReplyDelete"Remember when Tiger's wife found out? And then about a dozen bims came forward to claim that they had trysts with him? Very little in the way of prompting, it was like, boom! Here they come, and ready to tell the tale!"
ReplyDeleteTiger is known world-wide, by every waiter who ever served him, by gambling friends like Charles Barkely, by commentators, by golfers, by everyone, to be as cheap as cheap can be. No pays, I'd imagine.
Besides, those girls wanted FAME, and they got it for a while.
I'd guess Magic's male partners were likely to be in entertainment....or fellow sportsmen.
Then too, many, like the man who is rumored to have passed on the bug to him, are dead of AIDS.
Sometimes Bill Simmons is on with Magic Johnson and other blacks doing commentary for NBA games. What's jarring is the contrast between the soft-spoken, articulate and intelligent Simmons and the much less intelligent Johnson and the other black commentators who have trouble putting coherent sentences together. In the past the networks would never put these black commentators on because it's embarrassing and painful to watch people mangle the language so badly, but now they just don't even care and just put them on. Also you can tell that Simmons often deliberately dumbs down his comments and refrains from making complex points because the black commentators won't understand his points.
ReplyDeleteMaybe but he's been especially annoying this weekend with his commentary on Sterling. The self-righteousness is super thick with this one.
Of course, what's the chances that the "very hetero!" face of HIV would have a gay son?
ReplyDeleteGood point. His son is known to be very flamboyantly gay. Homosexuality may be genetic or caused by a pathogen, and many pathogens are passed from parent to child.
Hilarious. Today on ABC, Simmons and Magic were joking and laughing like two old buddies. Simmons has a penchant for "noticing things," as Steve likes to put it, but he's gotten so successful now that he has to come across as an eager participant in these public shaming rituals.
ReplyDeleteMaybe but he's been especially annoying this weekend with his commentary on Sterling. The self-righteousness is super thick with this one.
ReplyDeleteRight, this is true. But I don't think they'd even let him on TV to make blacks look stupid unless he did this.
Speaking of his gay son, a common physiological view is that homosexuality can be "influenced" (not pre-determined) in the womb based on androgen levels, which may or may not vary genetically. Depending on the environment, some people with a certain androgen exposure level could go homosexual or heterosexual. Our environment today... is bizarre to the least
ReplyDelete"Homosexuality may be genetic or caused by a pathogen, and many pathogens are passed from parent to child."
ReplyDeleteSide effect of an infection by a pathogen or an autoimmune reaction to a pathogen (Cochran and Ewald's Gay Germ hypothesis).
As sexually active as he was, and in particular having had sex with men, Johnson would have been that "walking petri dish" that science calls gay men. I wonder if his father was esp. active as well.
The Fumento article answer the poster's question well, Steve.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing Fumento got wrong was thinking Magic would die fairly soon.
Serious question: are we even sure Magic even has HIV? As the Fumento article says, being the first hetero spokesman of the AIDS industrial complex is very remunerative.
ReplyDeleteLet's not jump to conclusions that Magic's son is gay. Here are some pics of him hanging with some hot girls.
ReplyDeletehttp://thejasminebrand.com/2013/04/04/my-son-is-cooler-than-yours-magic-johnsons-openly-gay-son-is-fresh-to-death/
Magic's son is the I'd in the feathered boa FYI
Dan in DC
OT: Cartoon pictures, namely of Bugs Bunny, would be a great source of photos for you to use in future World War T posts if the picture of the actual person isn't available, e.g. https://bowmansinbavaria.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/600full-whats-opera-doc-screenshot.jpg
ReplyDeleteApropos of nothing, this article seems to me like one Sailer would really want to read:
ReplyDeletehttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ede.12077/abstract
-- SoCal philosopher
"I am not gay."
ReplyDeleteWould love for that video to be replayed in 2014.
youtube
Pretty anti-climatic...but the interview sort of makes for an interesting case study in body language.
I can't tell if I'm the kid from The Emperor's New Clothes or if extended exposure to the blogosphere has turned me into a crackpot, but Sterling's girlfriend looks a lot like a transvestite. After looking through her Instagram, where she's rarely seen posing in a way that doesn't exaggerate her boyish hip girdle or artificial cheekbones or both, I'd lay at least 20:1.
ReplyDeleteSo, as I asked in another thread, when can we expect a Magic-led investment group to swoop in and save the Clippers and the NBA from the evil man who was willing to run his business as if his customers might be racist.
"Let's not jump to conclusions that Magic's son is gay. Here are some pics of him hanging with some hot girls."
ReplyDeletehttp://thejasminebrand.com/2013/04/04/my-son-is-cooler-than-yours-magic-johnsons-openly-gay-son-is-fresh-to-death/
Holy crap.
"This relentless campaign inadvertently hampered the sex lives of all red-blooded American males between the ages of eighteen and forty for the next eight years."
ReplyDeleteI doubt that. But I do think that whatever you call him, Magic Earvin was and is gay.
BTW what does "V" stand for anyway? Vulva? Vajayjay>
Americans are really weird.
ReplyDeleteWe Australians are know for out love of sport, but the intellectual calibre of our sports writers and commentators does not come close to the American's.
Why on earth is a smart guy like Bill Simmons writing thousands of words about hoops and balls?Is there really all that much to say?
And why is a dork like Nate silver obsessed with baseball?
"And why is a dork like Nate silver obsessed with baseball?"
ReplyDeleteBaseball generates a lot more statistics than the average sport. Nerds like stats.
White guys are becoming utterly pussified as hot white chicks all go black. No wonder white guys go yellow. That's the only way they can feel manly.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tmz.com/videos/0_q6jc89t9/
http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_0nu68kt0/
http://www.tmz.com/2014/04/23/russell-wilson-divorce-ashton-seattle-seahawks/?adid=tmzhero8
http://www.tmz.com/2014/04/25/jason-kidds-son-unimpressed-dad-nba-coach/?adid=tmzhero2
Is Eric Holder going to be filing civil rights charges against Donald Sterling ?
ReplyDelete"White guys are becoming utterly pussified as hot white chicks all go black"
ReplyDeleteLOL. You list a few links that show white women with RICH men.
Go to any college campus and see if you find many white girls with jungle fever. Nope.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/04/27/naacp-sterling-will-not-be-awarded-humanitarian-of-the-year-honor/
ReplyDeleteDamn, damn, damn.
I wish the scandal broke AFTER he nabbed the award.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/376641/racist-clippers-owner-donald-sterling-democrat-tim-cavanaugh
ReplyDeleteRotfl
Hey Steve! Did you notice who shows up in that Fumento article you shared? Your old buddy Malcolm. I thought he was supposed to be some kinda genius regarding statistical aberrations or something? Doesn't look like one here, eh?
ReplyDelete"Any epidemiologist can tell you this, which is why the media circumspectly avoid talking to epidemiologists, preferring instead to rely on AIDS activists. (There are a few exceptions, such as the New York Times’s Gina Kolata, who for her troubles has been bitterly attacked by AIDS interest groups, and the Washington Post’s Malcolm Gladwell.)"
If you believe Satoshi Kanazawa's study, Black men are ranked the most sexy by women of all races, and Asian men the least. And conversely the study found that Black women were ranked the least sexy by men of all races and Asian women the most.
ReplyDeleteThis makes sense if you believe that Black men were selected for male sexiness -- Low IQ to enable High Testosterone (the two are largely incompatible it would seem, you on average never find HIGH IQs and Testosterone levels in men together, again on average); dark skin, high aggression (Nicholas Wade in his latest book reports that Blacks have fifty times the MAO-A "murder gene" than Whites) and so on. All factors that make men sexy in an environment where women do all the work, don't need a beta male provider, and men compete to be the most sexy singer, dancer, fighter and spread their seed. West Africa comes to mind.
It would seem for the moment that we have a West African future, an endless and of course, utterly resilient Welfare State that can provider "forever" and no need for Lily Bride of the Obama Administration to choose a dutiful beta male provider who will work himself to death providing for his family. When she can have a sexy bad boy as sperm donor and raise the kid herself (with the aid of your tax dollars of course!)
And that will last as long as the Welfare State and the ability to provide a decent living lasts. Given the utter fragility of modern technology and the green idiocy (the LAT reports electricity prices will rise AT LEAST 47% in the coming years as coal plants are taken off line and gas fired plants back up "green" renewables with natural gas being highly volatile in price) ...
The conclusion is that we are one big shock (earthquake, supply disruption, oil embargo, whatever) away from severe blackouts, rationing, etc.
There is a reason Whites are selected for female sexiness not male sexiness. We evolved in environments that are/were highly volatile, resource poor, and require IQ and cooperation among more limited populations to survive.
OT: A few days ago Drudge highlighted a claim from a Japanese MP that Obama was having an affair, with an assist from the Secret Service for logistics. Not mentioned was the name of the other person(s) . Or their sex.
ReplyDeleteDrudge has been dropping a lot of heavy hints on that score for years via "drudgepositions", placing ostensibly unrelated photos next to stories that suggest...things. He did it for a while with Reggie Love and Obama. The photo he used in this case was Obama in a less than manly composition with George Clooney.
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2014/04/24/20140424_165450.htm
Mickey Kaus used to call stuff like this the undernews. (I assume Drudge has good rumor intelligence in the gay world.)
If Magic Johnson came openly came out as a Homosexual, would he still have a large fan base among urban inner city Black males who have aspirations of being a future NBA player or a future rapper that is signed to Cash Money Records ?
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that urban inner city Black males have in common with White very socially conservative Evangelicals is that both of them have a negative opinion of Homosexual men.
But for different reasons, urban inner city Black males believe being a Homosexual male makes you a weak emasculate beta male. Being a Homosexual in their eyes is not gangsta.
White Evangelical Christians do not dislike Homosexual males for the emasculate beta male factor because many White Evangelical males themselves are also beta males as well. They dislike Homosexuals for purely religious reasons. They believe hell has a special place for men who like to have sex with other men.
He says something like society assumes that women who publicly hang out with black jocks and entertainers are having sex with at least one of them, especially if their alternative source of sexual satisfaction is a rich octogenarian.
ReplyDeleteFrickin' lol, Sailer! Comedy gold!
Three quick points:
ReplyDelete1. There haven't been any gay men coming out of the woodwork saying they had relations with Magic, but the same is true about many other celebrities who have long been rumored to be gay like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
2.To Anonymous from Australia- it is quite odd how some Americans pretend that sports matter much more than they do and put deep intellectual observations into things that are really pretty uncomplicated.
3. Some of the hottest black women in America "go white". Just think of Zoe Saldana, Halle Berry, Paula Patton, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington and Naomi Campbell, among others.
"If you believe Satoshi Kanazawa's study, Black men are ranked the most sexy by women of all races, and Asian men the least. And conversely the study found that Black women were ranked the least sexy by men of all races and Asian women the most."
ReplyDeleteI don't believe his study at all... read this:
http://www.epjournal.net/articles/is-there-and-own-race-preference-in-attractiveness/
I don't think Magic is gay but I'm sure he got his freak on at some point hanging out with Eddie and Arsenio … probably caught the bug from one of Eddie's trannies ...
ReplyDelete"Why on earth is a smart guy like Bill Simmons writing thousands of words about hoops and balls?Is there really all that much to say?
ReplyDeleteAnd why is a dork like Nate silver obsessed with baseball? "
Simmons is a low-test beta pussies who thinks sniffing the jocks of pro athletes makes him more manly. His comment on how he couldn't get laid the his twenties thanks to Magic Johnson is hilariously un-self aware.
Nate Silver is gay and probably has locker room gang-bang fantasies.
"If you believe Satoshi Kanazawa's study, Black men are ranked the most sexy by women of all races"
ReplyDeleteThe Kanazawa study claimed black men were the most attractive "net of intelligence".
Just based on attractiveness alone, whites were rated more attractive. But Satoshi provided the reasoning that intelligence and attractiveness are highly correlated, smart people being more attractive. By "controlling for intelligence", his conclusion is that blacks were relatively more attractive for any given IQ they attained than were white people. Of course, since many whites have IQs unattainable for most blacks, their “relative attractiveness” is a moot point. The White people were more attractive. To claim otherwise is a manipulation of data.
It is frustrating how often that point gets lost on people.
Magic Johnson doesn't have to be gay or straight...he could be bisexual. That seems most likely, right?
ReplyDeleteBill Simmons main black ex-player sidekick is Jalen Rose, and Rose is very sharp and a good TV commenter.
On Arsenio in 1991 3:50.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0UDc1Ohwb0
Magic Johnson's sexual status might be a little easier to understand if instead of homosexuality people focused on anal versus vaginal sex.
ReplyDeleteIt is the connection between homosexuality and anal sex that leads to the connection with AIDS. The mammalian vagina has evolved for at least a hundred million years to accept the mammalian penis. It has gotten real good at it. It accepts sperm and rejects pathogens very well indeed. But the female or male anus was designed by evolution for another task altogether.
The mucosa of the vagina is thick and well lubricated. The walls of the anus are thin and not lubricated. Anal penetration often leads to cracking and tearing which allows blood to blood mixing - something that almost never happens with the well designed vagina. Presumably the lines of mammals which had vaginas that were torn during intercourse were all selected out of the gene pool.
African men in Africa I'm told prefer anal sex with women. They also have a lot of AIDS - although it seems to be another species of virus.
In America gay males who are obligate anal penetrators are the ones who get most of the AIDS. The other high AIDS populations are the other groups who have blood mixing life styles like hemophiliacs and intravenous drug users.
So the fact that Magic Johnson has AIDS means only that he has mixed his blood at sometime with someone who had the virus. It could have been a gay tryst or it could have been heterosexual anal sex. That's probably the most likely explanation but there are others. Maybe he went to the wrong acupuncturist or maybe he was shot up for anabolic steroids with a dirty needle.
Pat Boyle (AKA Albertosaurus)
'Don't believe' A Facial Attractiveness Account of Gender Asymmetries in Interracial Marriage either. It's not like there was lots of polygyny in Africa or anything.
ReplyDelete"If Magic Johnson came openly came out as a Homosexual, would he still have a large fan base among urban inner city Black males"
ReplyDeleteDoes Magic Johnson in fact have a large fan base among urban inner city Black males?
We Australians are know for out love of sport, but the intellectual calibre of our sports writers and commentators does not come close to the American's.
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth is a smart guy like Bill Simmons writing thousands of words about hoops and balls?Is there really all that much to say?
And why is a dork like Nate silver obsessed with baseball?
Sports is a tool to distract the American people from the theft of their country.
i just always wondered why no sexual jokes about magic johnson having a magic johnson, or something along those lines. the obvious joke about this guy yet no comedian ever took it.
ReplyDeleteMagic Johnson's son is on E! Chanel's "Rich kids of Beverly Hills."
ReplyDeleteHe is a fabulous out and proud Homosexual who seems to be be preoccupied with fashion and women's fashion,
"White Evangelical Christians do not dislike Homosexual males for the emasculate beta male factor because many White Evangelical males themselves are also beta males as well. They dislike Homosexuals for purely religious reasons. They believe hell has a special place for men who like to have sex with other men."
ReplyDeleteGive me a break. OF course, these white evangelicals dislike homosexuals for the same reason other males do. Beta. Alpha. It doesn't matter. The basic, and, I might add, innate gag reflex is a biological reality.
Look, natural selection resulted in olfactory receptors that told the brain, "eww, puke" so that we wouldn't put spoiled food that was loaded with deadly pathogens in mouths.
Christians (and other faiths) simply use their religious texts as their "evidence" that a practice is considered so un-natural, so deleterious to life that it is an "abomination" to God.
In other words, in argumentation, they use their religion as support for what they already feel, which is "no way, achhhh."
3. Some of the hottest black women in America "go white". Just think of Zoe Saldana, Halle Berry, Paula Patton, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington and Naomi Campbell, among others.
ReplyDeleteZoe Saldana = Biracial (Mulatta from Latin America)
Halle Berry = Biracial (U.S. American Mulatta)
Paula Patton = Biracial (U.S. American Quadroon/Octoroon)
Rosario Dawson = Biracial (Latin American Quadroon/Octoroon)
Kerry Washington = Almost biracial too (nears mulatta looks)
The only black woman there is Naomi Campbell. U.S. Americans need to stop putting biracial mulattos in the "black box".
It's ridiculous.
re: magic gay
ReplyDeleteIt's true that heterosexual hiv/aids is largely a non issue for regular White or asian people, but wasn't Magic sleeping with thousands of women, presumably most of them black women ?
re: black male attractiveness
I think one can reconcile the Kanazawa findings (assuming they're valid) with the fact that black men don't score that well with white women, in the end.
They might be attractive on a purely physical level but carry so much baggage that the vast majority of white women say no thanks. I imagine that there is a sizeable proportion of youger white women who don't touch black men not necessarily because they find them categorically ugly, but because of the baggage* and the fact that they just don't relate.
Steve, did you model your writing style on Fumento's? Or is it just a coincidence? In any event, I guess we might have to credit Fumento as the first guy to comment about how some things are "terribly important to the media" regardless of the facts.
ReplyDeleteMagic Johnson and his billionaire backers, the Guggenheim Partners, want a chance to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers, league sources told Yahoo Sports. "Magic's absolutely interested," one source closely connected to Johnson's business interests told Yahoo Sports on Sunday night.
ReplyDeleteThat didn't take long.
"Serious question: are we even sure Magic even has HIV? As the Fumento article says, being the first hetero spokesman of the AIDS industrial complex is very remunerative." - 1)its a wasting disease. 2)does it look like magic suffers from a wasting disease?
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those "noticing" types -actually as a state employee I don't have that much else to do. Having been on a major (45,000+) UC campus almost every day from 1993 to 2007, I can say that I don't remember a single instance of any obviously amorous relation between a white girl and a black guy. Maybe it's so embarrassing that they keep it on the DL, but I doubt it. The last such coupling I saw on a UC campus was in 1977 when I was an undergrad, and one of the Tri-Delts was dating a very nice-looking small forward. Incidentally, I think I just caused some social change. At McDonald's, I've been making noise about how all the managers are obstreporous Mexican women, and that the men underlings ought to bring an action. So now there's a male "red shirt," but he's gay.
ReplyDelete"It's true that heterosexual hiv/aids is largely a non issue for regular White or asian people, but wasn't Magic sleeping with thousands of women, presumably most of them black women ?"
ReplyDeleteStill, no matter his promiscuity, unless he contracted it through needle sharing, it's unlikely an insertive male having sex with a female contracts the virus that way. I don't think even hetero oral sex is a big risk.
It's much easier for the virus to pass from an infected male to a female through vaginal sex, esp. if the sex gets a bit rough and the vaginal lining tears.
It's much, much harder from an HIV+ woman to pass the virus to a man through vaginal sex.
"Magic Johnson and his billionaire backers, the Guggenheim Partners, want a chance to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers, league sources told Yahoo Sports. "Magic's absolutely interested," one source closely connected to Johnson's business interests told Yahoo Sports on Sunday night."
ReplyDeleteMagic has been trying for years to purchase a big share of a bb team. Not surprising at all.
Magic wants to buy the Clippers apparently. The coup was set up and now it's ready to be finished.
ReplyDeleteI always liked how Magic Johnson, in the press conference announcing his HIV+ status, said that he had "attained" the HIV virus--like he had attained Nirvana.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdOQUARrEU
Thanks for the excerpt from Simmons' book, Steve. I don't think anything like that would get published in Grantland today (especially after the golf/transvestite fiasco).
ReplyDeleteFrom Grantland, a celebration of how leftist orthodoxy is much easier to enforce now:
ReplyDelete. Something pretty interesting has happened to sports opinionating in recent years. You can see it in the torching of Sterling just as you can see it in R*dskinsgate and the fight to end NCAA amateurism and the welcoming of openly gay athletes and the defense of Richard Sherman. A certain opinion — and I’d argue that this is, in nearly every case, an opinion that falls on the lefty side of the political spectrum — is articulated. It surfs Twitter. The opinion builds momentum until it becomes, with a few noisy exceptions, the de facto take of the entire sportswriter intelligentsia (perhaps the wrong word).
That opinion then becomes something like a movement. Pressure is exerted on people and institutions — in this case, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Sterling’s fellow-owners, even Michael Jordan. The sportswriterly consensus doesn’t necessarily match the fans’ take — see the case of NCAA amateurism, where I’m pretty sure the writers are ahead of many or most of their readers. But watching the speed with which this happens has been astounding. It’s something like the sports-page equivalent of community organizing.
Veteran readers of the sports page know that social justice wasn’t always Topic A, and if it was, it was often that only for a few lonely crusaders. What changed?
We have finally blown away the false politeness of the old sports pages. Sports pages weren’t all bad. They could be very good. But they practiced a certain “civility” of speech, and they erected Green Monster–size walls to get news into print (a secretive TMZ recording wouldn’t have passed muster), and they enforced the dreaded “stick to sports” ethos. Now go read Dave D’Alessandro’s Sterling column in the Newark Star-Ledger. It’s not only a satisfyingly bloody act of hatchetry, but it also includes the terms “anti-gay marriage,” “subprime loans,” and “fracking.” This is a new world.
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/donald-sterling-audio-racist-remarks-los-angeles-clippers-nba/
Heterosexual AIDS in southeast Africa has a lot to do with a lovely practice called "dry sex." I'll spare you the details.
ReplyDeleteAnon, what's surprising is that no one is allowed to suggest Magic orchestrated a plot to diminish the value of the Clippers to Sterling and essentially force a sale. We have to pretend an extremely well cared for golddigger decided to publically humiliate her billionaire sugar daddy because she just couldn't stand his racism anymore, or something. Please. That's not how golddigging status whores work.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I said yesterday that Magic arranged this whole she-bang, and I think that remains a damn fine guess.
I assume Magic tested positive for HIV antibodies, since that's what's really tested for. It's pretty hard to test for the virus itself, and I don't know if it was even possible back in his day.
ReplyDeleteBut as far as I know, there's never been any indication that he had AIDS (or to be more precise, any of the 30-some diseases that are called AIDS when combined with HIV+ status). There were rumors way back when that he went off the AIDS drugs (AZT at the time, I think) because they were making him so sick. (Duesberg and some others think the early AIDS drugs may have actually caused AIDS-type diseases in otherwise healthy HIV+ people.) I don't know if Magic has ever tried to explain his surprising longevity.
Steve Sailer said...
ReplyDeleteHeterosexual AIDS in southeast Africa has a lot to do with a lovely practice called "dry sex." I'll spare you the details
---
Steve,
I know about it but just didn't want to go into too much detail.
In southern Africa you have all factors from my previous comment plus that abhorent practice. It results in heterosexual aids rates noticeably higher than in the rest of the black world. Though I'm not sure the rate is quite as high as usually quoted, because a country like Botswana would be a ghost country by now if the official aids rate was real.
Go to any college campus and see if you find many white girls with jungle fever. Nope.
ReplyDeleteHe probably lives in Israel and figures it's like that everywhere.
No, wait, he's the wog, never mind.
If you believe Satoshi Kanazawa's study, Black men are ranked the most sexy by women of all races, and Asian men the least. And conversely the study found that Black women were ranked the least sexy by men of all races and Asian women the most.
If you believe Whiskey's characterization of Kanazawa's study, and the GSS data, white women apparently don't give a crap about sexy (less than 4% of white women had ever had a black sexual partner).
Maybe it's so embarrassing that they keep it on the DL, but I doubt it.
Yeah, the whole idiotic argument ultimately hinges on this (GSS respondants are lying cuz taboo), which is another pretty ridiculous argument. Being a white woman who is unwilling to sleep with blacks is more taboo than being a white woman who has slept with blacks.
...Eddie's career went in the tank...
ReplyDeleteYes, right after he got busted w/ a black tranny prostitute.
As I write this, we're almost at 70 comments and no one has speculated the possibility that Magic Johnson got HIV from sharing needles - likely from steroids but also possible narcotic use. My understanding is that is extremely easy to catch HIV from a dirty needle - it could have resulted from a one-time experimentation with heroin.
ReplyDeleteBut my guess would be steroids. The juicer who provided him the stuff hadn't been careful about cleaning his needles.
I believe back in the 1980s it was most common to inject them as opposed to now, where there are pills and creams etc.
Any further attempt at a "magic Johnson" joke would be but a flaccid sequel to the 1991 apex of the genre:
ReplyDeleteBeavis: I have a magic Johnson! (Heh heh)
Bulkhead: Yeah, Beavis' magic Johnson: it disappears into his hand.
Magic: My A## Got Infected Coach
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ReplyDeletePat said,
"In America gay males who are obligate anal penetrators are the ones who get most of the AIDS. The other high AIDS populations are the other groups who have blood mixing life styles like hemophiliacs and intravenous drug users."
I think you got that wrong. Those who ARE PENETRATED, rather than those who are the penetrators, are the most likely to get the virus.
Further, while the vagina has several cell layers compared to the anus' thin layer, and while the vagina is protected by thick mucosa (as long as there's been sufficient foreplay), women are much MORE susceptible to getting HIV from an infected male through vaginal sex than is a male likely to contract it from vaginal sex with an infected female.
DRY anything causes tearing and makes the transmission of the virus easier.
ReplyDelete"We have finally blown away the false politeness of the old sports pages. Sports pages weren’t all bad. They could be very good. But they practiced a certain “civility” of speech, and they erected Green Monster–size walls to get news into print (a secretive TMZ recording wouldn’t have passed muster), and they enforced the dreaded “stick to sports” ethos. Now go read Dave D’Alessandro’s Sterling column in the Newark Star-Ledger. It’s not only a satisfyingly bloody act of hatchetry, but it also includes the terms “anti-gay marriage,” “subprime loans,” and “fracking.” This is a new world."
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As newspapers continue their death spiral (see Charles Murray's chart showing the decline of ad revenue), hacks fear for their jobs and so write about anything that pleases the progressive editors/owners.
Don't forget too that our colleges have let in people who couldn't do anything other than major in the silliest of things.
"Is Eric Holder going to be filing civil rights charges against Donald Sterling ?
ReplyDelete"
What civil right did Sterling violate? Did he fail to sign their checks?
Pat said, "So the fact that Magic Johnson has AIDS means only that he has mixed his blood at sometime with someone who had the virus. It could have been a gay tryst or it could have been heterosexual anal sex."
ReplyDeleteNot likely at all that he got it through "heterosexual anal sex" unless the infected semen of another male was already in the anus he penetrated.
The guy who inserts is not likely to contract the virus; the other person is.
People, read the links Steve has given, links of many years ago. The LA sports and news people seem to have known BEFORE Johnson was ever diagnosed with HIV that he fooled around with men.
ReplyDeleteSvigor said...
ReplyDeleteGo to any college campus and see if you find many white girls with jungle fever. Nope.
He probably lives in Israel and figures it's like that everywhere.
No, wait, he's the wog, never mind.
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I wrote "Go to any college campus...".
I'm an American. I'm a female.
I still remember Magic and Isaiah Thomas kissing each other on the cheek before the tip-off of games. Of course, those of us who snickered were told we were just being ignorant, that European men do that all the time and it didn't mean anything untoward at all.
ReplyDelete"don't know if this has been confirmed but I remember reading that people of sub-saharan descent were more at risk of being infected after contact with HIV,"
ReplyDeleteI have read that too.
"""""""Go to any college campus and see if you find many white girls with jungle fever. Nope."""""""
ReplyDeleteShe does have a point. After all, except for FB and BB teams, you generally aren't going to find many black males on campus and even fewer who actually stay long enough to graduate.
""""""I wrote "Go to any college campus...".
I'm an American. I'm a female. """"""
Yes, but are you currently in college?
Barry Bonds did not like Matt Kemp and Earvin Magic Johnson is associated with LA's other franchise so maybe he did not wnat her appearing with reprobates?
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that is extremely easy to catch HIV from a dirty needle
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time in the UK the press Went apeshit on Oasis's Noel Gallagher because he said that he hoped Damon Albarn of rival Blur would catch AIDS. The journalist who went into high dudgeon said that you did not catch AIDS.
A journalist wrote that Freddie Mercury caught AIDS.
She had the same forename surname combination as the one who had a problem with what Noel Gallagher said.
What ab amazing coincidence that these two women shared the same name though not the same journalistic standards.
someone sed:
ReplyDeleteGive me a break. OF course, these white evangelicals dislike homosexuals for the same reason other males do. Beta. Alpha. It doesn't matter.
The basic, and, I might add, innate gag reflex is a biological reality.
anon sez:
I'm not a homophobe because of the innate gag reflex.
My dislike of lgbts is pretty much intellectual/ideological in nature and it came as a result of my taking sides in this worldwide culture war we're fighting.
I worked in P&P for one of the major movie studios in Hollywood for just over a decade. One post here insinuates that Magic must be straight because no one has come out of the woodwork admitting to keeping it on the down-low with Magic. I can tell you of dozens of celebs who are "secretly" gay and no one has jumped out of any closets to tell stories. Some of that might be due to the legal hellfire that could be brought down on them by these celebs via their fortunes.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't only certain celebs who were playing straight either. Lots of big name studio people, business people, and politicians. Considering what's going on, very few people say anything.
I lived and worked in L.A for 5-6 yrs 1989-94. I was driving home from work when MJ gave his press conference-they broke into the music like it was 9/11 or JFK getting shot, and went live to Magic and his admission of HIV.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, some time after that, which was late 1991, I was in an upscale LA restaurant/bar where I used to be a semi-regular. Everyone went/goes there, including a lot of Lakers (only one I met was Jerry West) Other than celebs, it was mostly white--one time I got to talking w/ 2 black guys-actually fairly nice guys and fairly smart--one owned several fast food restaurant franchises--fried chicken (I'm not kidding). It may have been somewhat soon after MJ's big news--they both had met MJ several times, and knew a lot of people who knew him very well. They started carrying on-shooting each other looks and laughing--then said "Think about it-these guys all bang the same girls in every town--those same women get w/ football and baseball players too--the groupie ho's in LA have sugar daddies on the side-show business guys--they might dabble in porn or do high priced call girl work. So they get passed around like a joint at a party--and there's consequences--all kinds of VD-how many of these guys get herpes? Many. Pregnancies, pregnancy scares, black mail, scams......and it's been going on for years, but how many of those guys have AIDS? No one but him.
Same thing with rock stars. Remarkably few rock stars died of AIDS. Of course there was Freddie Mercury, but he was the leader of Queen, so I'd put that in the exception that proves the rule category.
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