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13 responses total.
This item is about an interview Jim Brown did with Sports Illustrated this week during a jail term he's serving on domestic violence charges. I've expurgated it both because it has been transcribed in its entirety (but without the preliminary exposition included in the magazine) without permission and because it is rather long. It is, however, extremely interesting. I encourage everyone to take a look at it who is interested in the state of the African American community. Jim Brown certainly is, and he has taken steps to try to improve things. He also has some very interesting ideas about what is and isn't productive for the black community. Take a look, it's worthwhile. There are diversions off-topic (well, they're not off-topic for the mag, but they are for me), but there's a lot of fascinating stuff there.
Okay, now that I've put down the "real" #0 in resp 1, let me finish: Jim Brown is a fascinating person. He was, at one time, the dominant American professional athlete, and many still consider him to be the greatest football player that every lived. He retired at the peak of his career to take up acting, and has since gone on to devote endless time to public service. In particular, he has done considerable work in prisons and with gangs to turn around the lives of many African American youths, and he is a strong supporter (and executor) of economic and educational improvements within the black community. He is also a man of contradictions, having been accussed of domestic issues on multiple occasions, including one which led to his most recent arrest (if people are interested, I can post the details as paraphrased from the SI article's exposition). It's worth noting that he spends most of his time talking about men in the article, though never to specify them separately from women. He has very interesting comments on black athletes (whom he feels focus too much on money, and not nearly enough on making fundamental community changes), the focus of young African Americans on succeeding in sports as opposed to education, Martin Luther King Jr (I'll let you read that one for yourselves), and his own situation. I don't agree with everything Brown says by any stretch, but I've alwasy respected the way he presents his views and tries to live out his specific calls for action. And with his unfortunate anger management and violence problems, he is full of contradictions that make useful speculation. Even with a number of critical comments, what impresses me most is that his general tone appears to be "I don't really think these <people, things, attitudes> are bad, but we could be doing a lot better. "
Most people can just "view hidden response" to see #0, but can someone remind me what to do to read an expurgated entry in picospan?
Jim Brown played his college football at Syracuse. Spike Lee was on campus last year to film for his documentary. Sadly, that's about the extent of my knowledge on the Jim Brown/Syracuse connection. I suppose I should probably try to see the documentary, and lookup some of the old history.
Re #3: To view an expurgated response in Picospan, type "set noforget" first. (After you've read the response, type "set forget" or you'll see everything you've forgotten.)
Re #3: "read noforget". Fascinating article, and I agree with this guy 100%. Unfortunately for his cause, it's not going to attract any popular exponents because it doesn't add to their power and authority. You're not going to see Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton talking sense like Brown. What a pity.
Re #6: Please read #5. "read noforget" doesn't work, "set noforget" does. Nyah nyah etc.
I really like what he has to say about education. He mentions the success of the Jewish and Korean communities, attributing it not to some racial issue but to "local" leadership and strong values. He also eats around the edges of a related problem in the African American community, the reliance on sports (prominently basketball) as a path of success. I'll have to give more time to that later.
Definately worth reading. Moderate and well-reasoned on the surface, fueled by a lot of anger and frustration just below the surface. Justifiable anger and frustration.
Where do you see that anger and frustration, out of curiosity (and desire to fuel discussion)? Not that I disagree, necessarily. We know and he admits problems with anger in other areas of his life, and I think that is pretty obvious in places. His style of play was a bit... nasty, though hardly unethical or unusual in the NFL at the time he played. It's alleged to help him be a better player, but I wasn't there at the time to verify this. He's venting in a productive manner, in my opinion. He's trying to take productive paths to solve the problem, rather than complain about who's responsible for the problem. It is a natural human reaction to revert to complaining about the way things are without trying to change them or cope with them, I think, and it takes effort to move beyond that. That's the best explanation I can think of for why so many people just complain about their lot in life rather than work to improve it. :)
(Re #7: I don't know what's wrong with your configuration, but "read 87 noforget pass" is how I saw the text of #0. Have you tried that?)
(Ah. I was at the "Respond or pass" prompt, you were at the "Ok" prompt. So near and yet so far...)
So run Fronttalk instead and do "only 0" at the OK prompt. It assumes that if you are asking for only one response then you probably want to see it, even if it is hidden.
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