We all live in that "twisted world".

Man this Incognito Miami Dolphins story will not go away.  It seems that everyone has their two cents worth on this ever evolving story.

Now here comes former coach, Bill Parcells, to defend Incognito's behavior.

"Bill Parcells reportedly says Richie Incognito was "a model citizen" when the Hall of Famer brought him to Miami, questions whether Jonathan Martin really wanted to play football and cautions that outsiders can't understand the NFL locker room environment but "it works."

Clearly this type of behavior doesn't work if Incognito was kicked off multiple teams because of his behavior in the locker room.

Anyway, this is the type of reaction I would expect from Parcells who was somewhat of a bully himself.

The best take on this story comes from a guy who I am not fan of, but who, from time to time, will make a good point.

While I don't quite agree with the NFL locker room prison analogy, and as bad as Richie Incognito was he is no George Wallace, I think that Jason Whitlock's take on this sad episode is required reading for all.

"Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate.

According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito "honorary" status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.

Welcome to Incarceration Nation, where the mindset of the Miami Dolphins' locker room mirrors the mentality of a maximum-security prison yard and where a wide swath of America believes the nonviolent intellectual needs to adopt the tactics of the barbarian.

I don't blame Jonathan Martin for walking away from the Dolphins and checking himself into a hospital seeking treatment for emotional distress. The cesspool of insanity that apparently is the Miami locker room would test the mental stability of any sane man. Martin, the offspring of Harvard grads, a 24-year-old trained at some of America's finest academic institutions, is a first-time offender callously thrown into an Attica prison cell with Incognito and Aaron Hernandez's BFF Mike Pouncey. Dolphins warden Jeff Ireland and deputy warden Joe Philbin put zero sophisticated thought into what they were doing when they drafted Martin in the second round in 2012.

You don't put Jonathan Martin in a cell with Incognito and Pouncey. You draft someone else, and let another team take Martin. The Dolphins don't have the kind of environment to support someone with Martin's background. It takes intelligence and common sense to connect with and manage Martin. Those attributes appear to be in short supply in Miami.

"Richie is honorary," a black former Dolphins player told Miami Herald reporter Armando Salguero. "I don't expect you to understand because you're not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It's about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you've experienced. A lot of things."

I'm black. And I totally understand the genesis of this particular brand of stupidity and self-hatred. Mass Incarceration, its bastard child, Hurricane Illegitimacy, and their marketing firm, commercial hip-hop music, have created a culture that perpetrates the idea that authentic blackness is criminal, savage, uneducated and irresponsible. The tenets of white supremacy and bigotry have been injected into popular youth culture. The blackest things a black man can do are loudly spew the N-word publicly and react violently to the slightest sign of disrespect or disagreement.

Yeah, Richie Incognito is an honorary black. And Jonathan Martin is a sellout.
"I don't have a problem with Richie," Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace was quoted in Salguero's story. "I love Richie."

Yeah, the Dolphins are circling the wagons around Incognito. I get Ryan Tannehill's defense of his Pro Bowl left guard. He needs him. He doesn't believe the Dolphins can protect him or win games without Incognito. There's a popular belief you can't consistently win football games without a few "thugs" like Incognito in your locker room. Makes you wonder how Stanford competes with USC, Oregon, UCLA, etc., every year. You wonder how Nebraska and Oregon survived after booting Incognito. You wonder why three NFL teams let him go. Maybe he's not as essential as the myth-makers would have you believe.
But what makes me want to check into a mental hospital is Miami's black players' unconditional love of Incognito and indifference to Martin.

It points to our fundamental lack of knowledge of our own history in this country. We think the fake tough guy, the ex-con turned rhetoric spewer was more courageous than the educated pacifist who won our liberation standing in the streets, absorbing repeated ass-whippings, jail and a white assassin's bullet. We fell for the okeydoke.

We think Malcolm X was blacker than Martin Luther King Jr.
I'm as guilty as anybody. I've read X's autobiography a half-dozen times. I own Spike Lee's movie about X and watch it a couple of times a year. I love Malcolm X. But I'm not an idiot. MLK liberated me. MLK blazed the proper path to respect, progress and achievement. Barack Obama stands on MLK's shoulders. And so does Jonathan Martin."

Richie Incognito is an "honorary" bigot, standing on the shoulders of Gov. George Wallace. The fact that a group of young black men in the Dolphins' locker room can't see that speaks to the level of ignorance unleashed by Mass Incarceration, Hurricane Illegitimacy and commercial hip-hop." [More]

Well, MLK AND Malcolm X liberated you, but I get the point.

The Dolphins players are not school teachers, they are football players, so I don't expect them to be as sophisticated about this issue as the author. But I do expect them to have a certain amount of knowledge about the culture and the society in which they live, and it's about time some of these brothers start learning to embrace that which is good and not being benighted and ignorant all of their lives.

Mr. Whitlock, your article (this time) was spot on. It was written for ESPN, so hopefully some of these brothers in the NFL will log on to read instead of watching just for their highlights.

This is no way to get the "caterpillar" vote.

Fellows, like most of you, I pretty much "outkicked my coverage" when it comes to the woman I married. So anyway, I am looking at the beautiful Mrs. Field and I am happy to say that she looks nothing like the picture that goes with this post.

Sadly, however, this is what Reince Priebus, the head of the RNC, believes that Mrs. Field and all other A-merry-can women look like.

Read what Vanessa over at Feministing wrote:

"RNC Chairman Reince Priebus had the loveliest thing to say yesterday about the discussions around the GOP’s “war on women” that’s been dominating the political landscape as of late:

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

I’ll admit I’m kind of loving how these GOP tactics to try to dismiss this conversation as silly and meaningless are just further trivializing the issues that women and other folks with uteri care about, and just keep diggin’ themselves deeper and deeper into this hole of voter abandonment." [Source]

Well Mr. Priebus, eventually caterpillars become beautiful butterflies. But unfortunately for you and your party, they won't be flying your way come November. 

Finally, I hate to agree with Jason Whitlock, but the issue he raised about the Trayvon Martin case has been bothering me as well.

Why is it that during the entire O.J. Simpson circus white folks were saying that he was guilty before we even had a trial? Why did they excoriate and berate the jurors who found him not guilty? In their minds they all thought he was guilty, and they made no bones about it. (BTW, I thought that he was guilty as well. Yes black folks, I hate to break it to you, but O.J. killed his wife and that young man that night.)So why does George Killerman get the benefit of the doubt? Why can't these same people convict Mr. Killerman in the court of public opinion the way they did O.J.? That was a rhetorical question. I know the answer:Trayvon is not a woman, and he is not blond.

"..long before Geraldo Rivera preached to Trayvon Martin’s parents about the evils of hoodies, he sat on CNBC during the mid-1990s and led the media prosecution of O.J. Simpson. Geraldo was so good at it and the American public so enamored by it that smart TV executives quickly launched MSNBC (July 15, 1996) and FOX News (Oct. 7, 1996) to capitalize on the ratings gold Geraldo discovered.

So forgive me for pointing out the obvious: At best, the whining about the left-wing media’s passionate belief that Zimmerman should be arrested and charged with a crime in the death of Martin is embarrassingly hypocritical and delusional. At worst, it reveals an appalling racial bias.

There is significantly more evidence that Zimmerman committed a crime on Feb. 26, 2012 than there ever was that Simpson committed one on June 12, 1994. The Trayvon Martin case isn’t a who-done-it. We don’t have to speculate about motives or opportunity. We know who was carrying the gun and who was carrying the Skittles. We know who a police dispatcher advised to abandon pursuit. We know who was the 28-year-old wannabe cop complaining about “f---ing ‘oons” and who was the 17-year-old boy talking to his girlfriend.
It took five days for the police to arrest and charge O.J. Simpson. Thirty-six days after police listed Martin as John Doe, George Zimmerman is a free man and apparently being elevated to martyrdom in some influential circles."

Correction Jason, it's been 39 days. But who is counting?




     

Some things you just don't do.

This is a memo to Mark Cuban from the field:

Mark, I know that you hire a lot of black men to play on your team and you are an owner in the NBA, which means that you have a lot of interaction with black men by default. But there is something you should know: DON'T YOU EVER EVER DISRESPECT A BLACK MAN'S MAMA! I don't care how much of those "dead presidents" you have just sitting around collecting interest. Some things you just don't do. I know you got caught up in the heat of your team's playoff series, but don't let that shit cause you to end up in a Dallas hospital some damn where. And for the record, your apology on your blog was lame.

Your actions the other night, as you walked off the court, towards Kenyon Martin's mother, had me wanting to kick your ass. There is a reason we say "your mama" to each other if we really want to rumble. Not your wife. Not your daddy. (Well, most of us don't know our Daddies) And not your grandma. Your mama is what gets our blood boiling. Because, for better or for worse, we just love our damn mamas.

And let's be clear; the real villain in this sad episode is not you, Mark. No, the real villain is that coward, David Stern, for not slapping you with a big fat fine. (I guess there is a different standard for owners) You have created an environment in Dallas that could lead to something nasty, and leaving the family members of visiting players exposed to that Texas mob (ahhh Texas, again) in your arena is just downright irresponsible.

I never agree with Jason Fatlock, but I might have to this time. He is right when he says this:

"Right or wrong, disrespecting a black man's mama publicly has always been a drop-the-gloves moment. When a billionaire white man does it, it becomes a ride-or-die episode for the entire neighborhood.

Last I checked, Martin plays in a league dominated by black men hailing from the don't-talk-about-my-mama culture. I don't have any doubt that La La Vazquez and every other Nugget sympathizer who entered American Airlines Arena for Game 4 came with an attitude looking for tiny signs of disrespect.

I'm sorry. I don't blame them.
I'm 42. I'm mature. I'm a pacifist. I haven't been in a fight since college. I honestly can't remember the last time I was fighting mad. But had Cuban wagged his finger at my mother, loud talked her and told her I was a "punk" and/or a "thug" — after I pulled my mother (father and brother) off him — I would have delivered at least one mouth shot."

Mr. Fatlock, make that two of us.