In the sports arena normal societal rules do not and should not apply. If they did lots of team sports players would be charged with crimes ranging from assault (fan favorite) to loitering (lazy wage stealing asshole).

Every true fan knows the true essence of team sports. It's simulated warfare. Some times its not even simulated. It's about hating the enemy. It's about screaming abuse. It's about goading people. It's about being as horrible as possible. It's about wanting KILL, KILL, KILL, THOSE FUCKERS. It's about pure naked human hatred. Provided actual deaths are limited it serves a beneficial cathartic purpose for society. Don't take away the essential feature of team sports away - conflict, intolerance, tribalism, blood lust - and sanitize it so that it becomes simply a bunch of mentally sub normal guys in shorts playing with a ball. Only boring cunts, degenerate gamblers and guys with incredibly repressed homosexual urges would want to watch that.

If you go to a sports arena you better be prepared to fight your way in to the stadium, give it out, take it and fight your way back out, if you aren't stay at home and watch it on TV.

this is the most clear-thinking in the thread (with the Cap'n close second). Y'all should be 'shamed of yourselves. And Dr. Evil K... hooligan hogwash.

It's not hooligan hogwash Harry, it's quite the opposite. It's a sign of civilization. Do you honestly believe that violence isn't part of the human condition? Do you honestly believe that if violence is part of the human condition that cannot be altered (which it can't) it should not then be funneled off into something that is relatively harmless? Sports is primal scream for the masses.

All the great civilizations had violent sports because they understood the requirement for them in building and maintain those societies. The ancient Greeks had sphairomachia, or ball battles, which was a combination of soccer and boxing. Romans hurled abuse at each other and often clashed at performances of ballet.

Of course the first stadiums were built to hold gladiatorial contests, which incidentally, became most popular during the Pax Romana when most of the Roman empire was peaceful and law abiding. Medieval society had 'mob football' when two neighboring towns essentially had a riot with a pigs bladder tossed into the middle of it.

If you can't understand that sports stems for a human predilection for violence, and is in fact the product of a civilizing influence to stem that violence by containing it within a limiting and ritualized context, then you really don't understand human beings.

The workdays would be so much more entertaining if this were true.

I would love to see people walking by each others' desks...."what, you call that a report? Your mama writes reports like that you piece of shit!"

Also, if someone at your work had a skill so valued and rare that your work was willing to pay 20 million a year for it, he could probably get away with dropping the word faggot from time to time. Noah is not like Tim from accounting.

I don't condone the use of faggot but I also have experienced enough of life to understand that when your in the heat of competition and you loose your cool, things are said and done that are not an accurate reflection of the person who said them.

I might start this tradition at my office today.

Harry just wants to gawk at all the hot guys playing sports.

Wonder if it would have been OK with the gay and lesbian community is Noah had just said 'homo'.

I am fairly certain his "mispoken" words on radio are the thoughts by the average pro-player, which is why it should be dealt with

and why all the ruckus, Noah admitted and apologized, fined . . . and done

My take may be PC run amok but he has to fined because the NBA can't tolerate hate speech of any kind. I realize things go on in the heat of competition but people just have to sometimes be forced to understand that it's unacceptable.

I'm not naive. I know we live in a current culture that uses the term "faggot" as a catch all for all kinds of meanings but that doesn't make it right. I'm also not self-righteous. I'm as guilty as the next guy from my generation when I was growing up. In the end it's an anti-gay slur and shouldn't be tolerated.

Just as the N-word was used for hundreds of years to equate "stupid", "lazy", "less than". The term was as once ubiquitous as "faggot" is today. Hell, even public figures would use it in public forums. I honesty think in 30-40 years, that generation will look at us old folks and be horrified at the rampant use of the word. Much like how I saw my grandparents when they would refer to "coloreds" in regular conversation.

Also: the Miami fan got away with it. Your friend & mine Tim Tebow would have smote the MFer.

(By & by, Rashard Mendenhall & Chris Douglas-Roberts take heat for their bin Laden tweets, but Luke Scott is an OPEN birther & refers to Dominican teammate Felix Pie as a "sub-human animal", & he gets off Scott-free? Fuck that noise. If Kobe & Joakim are going to absorb a fine, if sportswriters are going to suggest Mendenhall should be cut in Pittsburgh & banned from the League, for inconsiderate/offensive statements, why not suspend Luke Scott from MLB for ten games, twenty games?)

(OHG ANG HEG WHIGTE.)

guys i just thought of how we can refer to this now: "Faggate" pretty good huh

really though, yeah it was a dumb thing to say in the heat of the moment. there have been much worse things said but he just got caught. i highly doubt the man is a homophobe. he apologized, paid his money, issue closed, moving on.

You mean you can't get away with being covered in terrible tattoos of your kids, misspelled words in English, and misused phrases in foreign languages from head to toe as a corporate lawyer.

The simpleton in me says "what would any player do if a fan reversed this course and dropped an N-Bomb?"

Why, the Ron Artest thing would look civil, wouldn't it?

And let's face it - the NBA is a billion dollar worldwide corporation with a brand to protect, the last thing it needs is more adverse publicity.

I would like to see polling on the average fans' thoughts about this - I bet the anti-anti-gay hate speech commercials makes the average NBA fan angrier than anything Noah or Kobe or KG slings on or off the court, based on the demographics.

It would be very interesting if they were in some way hurting their brand by doing the right thing -- or to see if fans can perceive the need to do things like this even though they don't agree (which I doubt, people be dumbg).

No, I mean actual public opinion polling. But I suspect the hunch is correct.

I think it's use as a catchall phrase analogous to "pussy", "cunt" or "motherfucker" far supersedes any anti-gay connotation.



I think gay rights is a civil rights issue and that those who try and deny homosexuals equal rights in our society are not only wrong but frankly unamerican. That being said, homosexuals have never been sold into slavery, owned as property, denied full citizenship, disenfranchised and systematically marginalized in our society. Forced to live in secret for fear or reprisal? Absolutely. Denied equal rights and equal protection under the law. Most definitely. But there is a major branch dividing the two groups' struggle and to compare them apples to apples is lazy and incorrect.

You are kidding right? I can't tell.

This is your opinion and it's a dominant one in our society but not everyone shares it.





I never compared either movement or struggle. I'm simply stating that language and words have power and their use and power can, and should, change. But to relegate the issue to it just being "saying faggot is just calling him a pussy" is lazy and incorrect as well.

This.

That may be what you would mean if you were to use it, but that doesn't make it ok. And homosexuals may not have been owned as property but they were most certainly targeted by germans and italians in world war 2, among other examples. That's where the pink triangle came from - I saw them at Dachau in the museum on inmate uniforms. Again, not to over-play it or to draw some kind of perfect analogy - does it matter if they're EXACTLY the same? I don't think it does. It's not the issue, to say whether homosexuals are in exactly the same position as blacks in 1960. In some ways no, in some ways yes. The point is (or is supposed to be) that wrong shit is wrong, and that bigotry isn't ok here. It takes time to change it, but this is what that change looks like, believe it or not... a fucking NBA fine. Little bit at a time.

Actually you did make that comparison when you said "I honesty think in 30-40 years, that generation will look at us old folks and be horrified at the rampant use of the word. Much like how I saw my grandparents when they would refer to "coloreds" in regular conversation."




A. We aren't talking about Europe or Nazi's. You're reaching.
B. Ditto the 1960 comment. Give me 5 similarities. They don't exist.

Here's the difference between calling someone a faggot and calling someone a nigger: When you call someone a nigger, there is no doubt what you are saying. No doubt. With faggot, there is a level of ambiguity because the word has different meanings to different people.




Here is where we mainly disagree. While it's true that bigotry is not ok, there is no bigotry here. none.

I understand that I can say this till I'm blue in the face and you're never going to believe a word of it is true, but calling someone a "pussy" or a "cunt" is exactly as wrong as calling someone a "faggot" and for exactly the same reasons. It is a problem, and in no way at all a coincidence, that our most potent expressions of disdain are euphemisms for gay people and women (and their sex organs). We may have repeated all of these slurs enough times that they're only loosely or subconsciously connected in our minds with their original meaning, but the meaning will always be there: we think that it is degrading to be compared to gay people or women. And we may call a man a "dick" but it doesn't have remotely the same connotations -- we don't mean he's lower or less manly, just (usually) that he's arrogant or a jerk.

I actually tend to think Haq's right. I just didn't wanna have to say it because I'm no pussy.

You either don't know this offends gay people, or don't care. I don't think either is really a great place to be.

is there a difference between saying something insensitive or prejudiced and being a bigot? how often do i have to say faggot or nigger to cross the line? does when/where you say it matter? can we beat this into the ground?