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TiM THoMaS: A TRiBuTE
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I'm sorry, but it's getting a bit thick, here. I'm not into false heroes. tim Thomas is not a member of some violently oppressed minority. This is not John Carlos and Tommie Smith. He might just be an angry white guy who listens to right wing talk radio too much. The problem is, William, you don't honestly have any idea what Tim Thomas actually believes, and I hope you are not going to argue that one little soundbite and a selfish, principled gesture constitute a belief system. Why did Thomas choose to make his Tea Party patriot stand today and not, say, 9 years ago, when the program to spy on American civilians was implemented, or even 3 and a half years ago, when the perpetrators of that crime were given retroactive immunity? We don't know what Tim Thomas means when he talks about liberty, is my point.
My concern with all this knee-jerk, shallow, reactionary stuff is that it clouds what I felt ZH was when I first so blissfully discovered it, which was a legitimate, thorough, unapologetic outlet for people seeking the un-spun truth, but the last two days of Tim Thomas mania on the site has been a document dump by spinners of the unexamined truth about Tim Thomas' beliefs. We can do better.
williambanzai7
I'm in the wait and see where it goes category.
Fucking craack whores and Meth heads have a good one off observation every once in a while.
Compare his statement to what it cost the two Black athletes who raised their closed fists while waiting for their medals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute
The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute involved the African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black power salute at the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City. The event was one of the most overtly political statements[1] in the history of the modern Olympic Games.
Tommie Smith stated in his autobiography, "Silent Gesture", that the salute was not a Black Power salute, but in fact a human rights salute.
On the morning of October 16, 1968,[2] U.S. athlete Tommie Smith won the 200 meter race in a world-record time of 19.83 seconds, with Australia's Peter Norman second with a time of 20.06 seconds, and the U.S.'s John Carlos in third place with a time of 20.10 seconds. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium. The two U.S. athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty.[3] Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride, Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S. and wore a necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage."[4] All three athletes wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges after Norman, a critic of Australia's White Australia Policy, expressed empathy with their ideals.[5] Sociologist Harry Edwards, the founder of the OPHR, had urged black athletes to boycott the games; reportedly, the actions of Smith and Carlos on October 16, 1968[2] were inspired by Edwards' arguments.[6]
Both U.S. athletes intended on bringing black gloves to the event, but Carlos forgot his, leaving them in the Olympic Village. It was the Australian, Peter Norman, who suggested Carlos wear Smith's left-handed glove, this being the reason behind him raising his left hand, as opposed to his right, differing from the traditional Black Power salute.[7] When "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd.[8] Smith later said "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."[3]
[edit] International Olympic Committee responseInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Avery Brundage, deemed it to be a domestic political statement, unfit for the apolitical, international forum the Olympic Games were supposed to be. In an immediate response to their actions, he ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the U.S. team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee refused, Brundage threatened to ban the entire US track team. This threat led to the two athletes being expelled from the Games.
A spokesman for the IOC said it was "a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit."[3] Brundage, who was president of the United States Olympic Committee in 1936, had made no objections against Nazi salutes during the Berlin Olympics. The Nazi salute, being a national salute at the time, was accepted in a competition of nations, while the athletes' salute was not of a nation and so was considered unacceptable.[9]
The official IOC website states that "Over and above winning medals, the black American athletes made names for themselves by an act of racial protest."[10]
[edit] AftermathSmith and Carlos were largely ostracized by the U.S. sporting establishment in the following years and, in addition, were subject to criticism of their actions. Time magazine showed the five-ring Olympic logo with the words, "Angrier, Nastier, Uglier", instead of "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Back home, they were subject to abuse and they and their families received death threats.[11]
Smith continued in athletics, going on to play in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals, before becoming an assistant professor of Physical Education at Oberlin College. In 1995, he went on to help coach the U.S. team at the World Indoor Championships at Barcelona. In 1999 he was awarded the California Black Sportsman of the Millennium Award. He is now a public speaker.
Carlos' career followed a similar path to Smith's. He initially continued in athletics, equalling the 100 yard dash world record the following year. Later, he played in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles, before a knee injury prematurely ended his career. He fell upon hard times in the late 1970s and, in 1977, his ex-wife committed suicide, leading him to a period of depression.[12] In 1982, Carlos was employed by the Organizing Committee for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles to promote the games and act as liaison with the city's black community. In 1985, he became a track and field coach at Palm Springs High School, a post he still holds.
Norman, who was sympathetic to his competitors' protest, was reprimanded by his country's Olympic authorities and ostracized by the Australian media.[13] He was not picked for the 1972 Summer Olympics, despite finishing third in his trials. Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral.[14]
In 2005, San Jose State University honored former students Smith and Carlos with a 22-foot high statue of their protest.[15] A student, Erik Grotz, initiated the project: "One of my professors was talking about unsung heroes and he mentioned Tommie Smith and John Carlos. He said these men had done a courageous thing to advance civil rights, and, yet, they had never been honored by their own school." In January 2007, History San Jose opened a new exhibit called Speed City: From Civil Rights to Black Power, covering the San Jose State athletic program "from which many student athletes became globally recognized figures as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements reshaped American society."[16]
On March 3, 2008, in the Detroit Free Press editorial section, an editorial by Orin Starn entitled "Bottom line turns to hollow gold for today's Olympians" lamented the lack of social engagement of modern sports athletes, in contrast to Smith and Carlos.
Smith and Carlos received an Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2008 ESPY Awards honoring their action.[17]
[edit] Sydney muralIn Australia, a historic airbrush mural of the trio on podium was painted in the inner-city suburb of Newtown in Sydney. In 2010 the highly visible work was under threat of demolition to make way for a rail tunnel.[18] Painted on a house wall with permission of the owner, it faces a main commuter rail line. Local government is fighting to retain the monochrome tribute, captioned "THREE PROUD PEOPLE MEXICO 68",[18] including attempts to have it heritage-listed, though this move would not guarantee its protection.[18]
You and your Black Undertow racial group entitlement jocks can drop dead; do it soon. Save us the trouble. Better Whites Only than Coloreds Only, which is where your Globalist Jew masters have got things going now. Take a long look at the Black-ruled shithole that is post-Apartheid South Africa. Compare to Detroit, DC, every other collapsing US ethno-city. Same catastrophe, same reason.
Why isn't everyone in the public eye doing the same thing? I hope he is the first of many.
This guy deserves one award: US cheap propaganda award of the day.
US citizens are so deeply in love with cheap propaganda an award has to be deserved on a daily basis.
Doubt this US citizen, no matter how good he is, and he is good with purely fictional reports about the US government, his willingful ignorance of the past, will keep his award long.
Shut up and get me another egg roll.
Clearly your sport is table tennis....or worse. That aside Thomas is no propagandist.
I just spit coffee on the screen :)
WB7! This is madness!
Yes douches will always be with us.
Quite eloquent.
Yet, I can understand why US citizens connect so easily to Spartans. Even though Spartans did not dress slavery as freedom as US citizens do, they had slaves and ran an extortion business just like US citizens.
If you're not American, then you're our slave. ;)
Whatever. I ordered two orders of City Shrimp two days ago and anan still hasn't delivered them.
If you're not American, then you're our slave. ;)
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Ummmm, actually, the current tension among US citizens is because many thought that their priviledged status was marbled in stone.
As the Earth is short on resources to maintain that number of US citizens in their entitlements, some are slipping out of the coccoon and are falling on the wrong side of US citizenism.
So it is much better to tell
that if you are a slave,you are not a US citizen.
that if you feel like a slave, it means your status as US citizen is threatened.
There is no reciprocity.
As usually in US citizenism, the condition will determine the quality and not the reverse.
eg: if you are a slave, you are not a human being, used by US citizens at the start of US of A.
AnAnonymous
"Ummmm, actually, the current tension among US citizens is because many thought that their priviledged status was marbled in stone."
I agree. None of these assholes gave a shit when factories and family farms were going under. Now that their white collar lifestyle is threatened we are supposed to give a damn about their suffering.
Why should it matter if their idiot kids borrowed an ass load of money to pay for college partying and a Modern dance masters?
I have a BIL who lives well beyond his means, and still expects a glorious future. Fuck him, because when the bill finally comes due he only has himself and his ego to blame.
Good thing the wise ones are now in charge in America to get the serfs in line like in other crappy countries, eh, comrade?
Then you wihr get a rhittre surprise you Japanese dog! Oh, I mean, American dog!
Mind your word, the host is a Japanese half caste.
So I like WB for his talents and don't care about how he looks or his heritage so much. But you seem to? How did you get infected with this evil American racism? It is going global!
I'm certain it involved gerbils somewhere along the line.
dippin' Mickey, and, well, Mickey is on the back of a Milk Carton. - Ned
Let us start with a more basic character trait. I am a US citizen, something I am not embarassed to admit, despite all the shit I see going down and all the aggravation it creates. I have not given up on my country and I will not walk away from my friends.
What is your national origin pray tell?
Douche troll...
williambanzai7
"Let us start with a more basic character trait. I am a US citizen, something I am not embarassed to admit, despite all the shit I see going down and all the aggravation it creates. I have not given up on my country and I will not walk away from my friends."
But you don't live here. C'mon man being an expat isn't the same as say living in Michigan and being proud to be an American.
Wasn't there a Socratic dialogue where he claims his pride in Athens and that he stayed in his ctiy to make it better.
It's kind of like conflating Obama with Curtis James Jackson III.
Think about all the constant explaining I have to do on behalf of my fellow ugly Americans. Our brand is not doing very well these days. ;-)
in these here-parts, the mantra would be "fire the brand-manager"!
'course, that would be in a results-based situation.
- Ned
Have some compassion. He's a party drone trapped in a country that regiments itself like an insect colony. You'd be desperate for a scapegoat as well.
which country? Or, I'm coming to guess, which badly formed AI program super-thingie? - Ned
Waooo. And?
US citizens coming up with their old trick: brotherhood in crime.
Alas, for you and your sort, I have made it very clear that US citizens ('Americans') are proponents of US citizenism('Americanism') and it is therefore not an issue of nationality, race, gender or whatever othergroup category US citizens love to split individuals over.
You can hold US citizenship and not a proponent of US citizenism.
Feel relieved though, no matter your nationality, your state of mind is definitively of US citizenism.
And yours is douche.
Yet not douche enough to appreciate the subtlety of the claim that a government that stole an entire continent to distribute it to its citizenry starts to be a threat on property.
What are you, a foreign consultant for The American Indian Lobby?
He's an Abinaki...still po'd about what Rodgers Rangers did to his wigwam.
+ Kenneth Roberts, e.g.: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=roberts&sts=t&tn=northw...
- Ned
{but, of course, that was during the Brit regime, don't cha' know}
Hey, anan, yer breakin' my bahrs here. Yer breakin' my bahrs. Maybe rhet up on the Japanese American dog(!), we like his art.
we like his art.
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I already stated you have to be a US citizen to appreciate and praise this kind of incredibly cheap propaganda.
Expensive equals quality? I don't think that works so well for you.
Had to laugh. "Markets are up 60% and he took out OBL"? God help you all.
Tim Thomas is a legend for bringing a potentially new demographic to the important issues of the day, regardless of his pay packet and what he's done in the game.
Makes a change from every other sportsman, who put a photograph on the lawn before their ideals.
Go Tim!
Tim Thomas is a legend for bringing a potentially new demographic to the important issues of the day, regardless of his pay packet and what he's done in the game.
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There is no needs to bring a new demographic to the table.
US citizens are fully aware of the current situation; they have robbed their way up, they now own most things that be and can nolonger heroize theft because that would make them the primary targets for theft.
Some US citizens could claim brain damage to come up with such cheap propaganda. I doubt a hockey goal tender has any credibility in that.
Holy cow. Coming up with the idea that the US government might threaten property after it stole an entire continent to distribute it over its citizenry...
Woooo... Or maybe all the doping drugs this guy has taken, maybe, after all.
Fuck, I thought someone finally appreciated the genius of Tim Thomerson
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0859772/
Hs Brick Bardo was the essence of acting, Jack Deth made us laugh and cry,cryughter I call it.
He may be one of many overpaid athletes, but the fact is he put it at risk and spoke his mind. He could have just kept his mouth shut and quietly stood in the photo when his opportunity came.
He didn't risk his career buying hookers juiced on Ambien did he?
How many do we know have done that in the age of me, myself and I?
On ode to a goalie named Tim
His protest was not just a whim
He's willing to fight
For his God-given rights
We'd do well to emulate him
williambanzai7
I feel this observation by a fan may be closer to the truth.
You assume Thomas's absence is a political statement, but for all we know, he may have had a roll with the first lady and felt the situation would have been socially awkward.
Gully, then you don't really understand the Beez standing in Bean-Town ;-) - Ned
{TT is not in either the a) the girls all look purtier at closin' time, nor b) go ugly early to ensure success zones}
That would be some steep roll. ;-)
He is just a US citizen propagandist, a drugs addicted athlete who wishes to make money on the side.
You've got to love propaganda, to be hooked on it, to find any kind of merit for his BS manifesto.
He believes the federal government has grown so big it threatens the freedom, property and rights of the people?
Gimme a break, in a continent where the government has stolen an entire continent to hand it down to its citizenry?
Could havemade thesame statement ten years after the start of the US republic...
Wont absolutely not be surprised if that paid shill comes up and starts to speak on how he is bled to death by taxation.
Best is still this guy has reached his target and has found himself a herd of cultists to follow him in his fantaisist tale.
Back to your wigwam. Rain dance. Hunt buffalo. Chew pemmican.
I think you forgot your blabbering pills.
There will be plenty of discussion about what this man said, pro and con, which as far as I am concerned is infinitely better than no discussion at all.
Plenty of discussion?
Discussion of what?
The comment of this guy is so detached from reality I doubt US citizens will even bother about bringing that disconnection up. Would ruin their money making session.
This guy speaks about a government that stole an entire continent to distribute it to its citizenry. And he thinks that government starts to be a threat to property?
It tells it all.
US citizens will just as they are used to doing, monetize the controvery this guy has created. They will take their share of the traffic, of the activity it creates bu creating an echo chamber for this drivel.
USual US citizen business. Nothing new. Useless to claim otherwise.
Please feel free to rise me from my grave the day US citizens are able to discuss the lunacy of this guy's comment.
The difference between US citizenism and citizenism from your country is that after Tiananmen in 1989, you and your comrades lined up to offer ZZZZ Best tread cleaning services to the PLA tanks. Squishing a comrade is glorious!