Packer/Eagle Great Reggie White has died!

[maren]

Big Al:"Also interesting how people put more weight on the comments rather than on the whole man's life.

Especially on one they've never met."

• Yes, one is reminded of all that fuss people made when Belafonte referred to Powell and Rice as House Negroes (to put it politely). Guess they didn't know that he was an accomplished singer/actor. And then there was Jesse Jackson's "Hymie Town" remark, and Rumsfeld's recent... and...and Billy Graham's anti-Semitic remarks, and Falwell's homophobic remarks... and Pat Robertson's gays-cause-hurricanes remark, and ...etc., etc. I mean, what is this world coming to when famous people are criticized for making racist, mean-spirited utterances--where is it not written that celebrity comes with a license to make outrageous, racist, slanderous remarks?
  
  What's even more shocking is that most of the people who dare take offense at offensive remarks have never even met these part-time bigots/full-time stars.
  
  Thank you for pointing out this inequity, Big Al.
  
  

Speaking of inequity, you're the one who decided to bring it to everyone's attention what an "outspoken born-again homophobe" White allegedly was.

I am sure there are millions who appreciate your little gesture of "equity."

Oh, and one other thing: none of the folks you listed have passed on. I suspect that when they do, you'll be just as "equitable" to those folks as you are to White.

I hope I'm not reopening a can of worms here, but...

Christiern is hardly the only one "who decided to bring it to everyone's attention what an 'outspoken born-again homophobe' White allegedly was." I saw this mentioned in every newspaper and TV story I saw about his passing. Maybe that's because I live in New York -- and maybe also because I'm originally from Wisconsin. He DID make those homophobic remarks in front of the Wisconsin state legislature!

If he has found himself in an afterlife, I imagine he'll have to reconsider whether the following dearly departed were "killing our people" -- or whether in fact he himself was contributing to a threat:

[Noj]

I was sad to hear about Reggie dying so young, and his political views didn't enter my mind once when I reflected on Reggie. Even if he was bigoted toward those he probably had zero contact with, I found Reggie to be an inspiring athelete for both his performance on the field and locker room leadership qualities. For football fans who have watched NFL films about Reggie and heard his locker room speeches, I'm sure there is a greater appreciation for him which supercedes the disgust with his prejudice.

[JSngry]

The pity about White dying so young is that he ran out of time to come to a truly personal awareness of how harmful his "controversial" remarks truly were. I have to feel that if his heart was truly a loving one, he'd have to eventually come to terms with that and deal with straightening it out (pun fully unintentional) as publicly as he messed it up.. And if it wasn't, and if he never did, well, then he'd be S.O.L. even if he lived to be 100.

[alankin]

Here's the best article I've that relates to this discussion.

White sometimes hurt others with his words

By BOB FORD

Philadelphia Inquirer, Posted on Sun, Dec. 26, 2004

PHILADELPHIA - It would be nice if the legacy that Reggie White leaves behind was really as neat and understandable as the legend that will be constructed after his sudden and sad passing on Sunday morning.

Reggie, and the public life he led, did not allow for such uncomplicated readings, however. Simple renderings can't do justice to this multi-dimensional man, and White would have hated it if the snapshot of his life were presented in soft focus. He was more just than a football player, although one of the greatest ever; more than just a friend to the disadvantaged community, although his work there was generous and sincere; but in the end, sadly, he was also less than the leader he could have become and desperately wanted to be.

This was through no fault of his own, because White knew his mind and he spoke it. But when he misspoke, White continued to charge forward as if pursuing an elusive quarterback. Too often he sacked common sense and threw good judgment for a loss.

I loved being around Reggie White when he played because he was always an interesting, provocative conversationalist, and because he was one of those rare leaders who can lift a team to his level.

But Reggie also was maddening to be around because the same fervor that allowed him to get around hundreds of offensive tackles in his career convinced him that he was always headed in the right direction. And he often punctuated the rightness of his points of view with references to the Lord, even if the Lord didn't seem to have a place in things such as football contract disputes or the wanderings of a free agent seeking the best compensation.

White's wranglings with the Eagles' organization at the end of his time here became acrimonious beyond what was necessary. It would be popular - and somewhat accurate - to blame those disputes largely on former owner Norman Braman, who was an easy target. The simple truth is that White wanted to make more money than the Eagles wanted to give an over-30 player, so he had to leave to get it. If White's career had come along a decade later, it's logical to assume he would have had the same issues with Andy Reid and Joe Banner, the same issues that sent Hugh Douglas and Duce Staley and Troy Vincent and the others off to seek their fortunes.

But White found it necessary to turn his quest into The Crusades. He said he would leave, and said he would sign with a team in a large city, with a large minority population that he could help and minister to. That was right before he signed with Green Bay, where he found a great contract but none of his other stated requirements. Reggie merely said he was following divine instructions.

There is no doubting the sincerity of White's beliefs, though. He was deeply devout and didn't use his faith as some athletes do, as a convenient cover for a wayward lifestyle. There were a few chapters of the book Reggie seemed to have missed, however, because while he cherished and proselytized his beliefs, he didn't have much time for those who differed with his.

This is a handy lesson about why it is dangerous to accord athletes any platform larger than their playing fields. As always, Charles Barkley's advice rings true: Don't look to sports for role models. Look to your parents, teachers and community leaders.

If Reggie White had not been a football player, it wouldn't have really mattered if he warned young black groups that the police were out to get them and wanted to find them dealing drugs and carrying guns. His words wouldn't have carried the added weight that is given to sports heroes.

When White spoke in front of the Wisconsin Legislature and said that blacks "like to dance," that Hispanics "can put 20 or 30 people in one home," that Native Americans excelled at "sneaking up on people," that whites "do a good job with building businesses," and that Asians "can turn a television into a watch," he was raising the walls of stereotypical thinking rather than knocking them down.

When he said homosexuality had "run rampant" in the United States, an indication of increasing Godlessness in the country, he added, "I'm offended that homosexuals will say that homosexuals deserve rights."

Whatever your personal beliefs on these matters, it has to be said that White didn't always advance the dialogue of brotherhood among all. And at a time when many of the terrible ills of the world can be traced to religious fanaticism and fundamentalism, the debate isn't furthered by anyone drawing deeper lines in the sand.

Eventually, White's words trivialized him and reduced his impact. CBS dropped him as a candidate for its pregame show because of his tirades. His work in the community continued, but only as isolated programs, not as the far-reaching change he would have preferred. If he had used his forums differently - how many chances does one have to address a legislature for an hour? - the result might have been different as well.

It is tragic that Reggie White is gone at 43. Time might have mellowed him and allowed statesmanship to overtake his stridency. We'll never know.

He should be celebrated and remembered as the great husband and father he was. Celebrated as the great football player he certainly was. And he should be mourned as the great leader he very nearly was.

[Christiern]

Good piece, Alankin, thanks for posting it. What a screwed up person White was--one can only hope that his ignorance and bigotry has not been passed on to his children.

[Jim Alfredson]

An excerpt from the CommonDreams website:

White continued to speak out against Gays and Lesbians, and in doing so, allied himself with a rogue's gallery of bigots and hate mongers. His "family spokesman" became a man named Bill Horn, president of the vociferously anti-gay organization "Straight from the Heart Ministries". Soon White was getting support, well-wishes and speaking engagements from the likes of the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA), Gary Bauer's Family Research Council, and the Christian Coalition. Unlike Bauer who resembles a Kermit the Frog Shrinky Dink, White could actually articulate the "Pro-Family agenda" equating Gays with child molesters and drug addicts, while not making the audience nauseas. His Blackness was also a plus for near all-white groups trying to shake accusations that their anti-Gay "pro-family" agenda was a kissing cousin to both racist and white supremacist ideas.

White spoke at one rally in Iowa protesting Gov. Tom Vilsack's executive order banning anti-Gay discrimination in state agencies. "Straight from the Heart's" Horn said the order "is a big political payoff to the governor's transvestite and cross-dresser supporters."At the rally, Horn wept as he introduced White to the Crowd, saying "Reggie doesn't hate homosexuals; he loves them so much he is going to be honest with them and tell them that what they are doing is destructive." White followed Horn by preaching, "Every black person in America should be offended that a group of people should want the same civil rights because of their sexual orientation." When several gay civil rights advocates attempted to question the speakers they were escorted out by force. "They were promoting anger and violence tonight," expelled activist Tina Perry told the Des Moines Register. "They slammed anyone who did not agree with their agenda."

White, as the Minnesota Family Council said, became someone who "defends the family the same way he defended the goal line." This is an insult. As a player, Reggie White never ran away from a battle and worked to inspire his teammates to greater heights, liberating the Green Bay organization from decades of futility. As a "defender" of family values, he stood for bigoted ideas that keep humanity in chains. He supported the vilification of Gays and Lesbians instead of, as White himself said so eloquently as he sorted through the burnt carcass of his church, "coming together as one force against hate."

[BERIGAN]

How long before someone mentions how Hitler was probably a swell guy and kind to his friends too?

Well, I am sure you would admire the fact he was an artist, writer, socialist, vegetarian, anti religion, for gun control....

He was a fascist, not a socialist, and he hated gays and Jews. Sound familiar? No, I'm not comparing Reggie White to him, but Hitlerism finds more allies on the right (the Klan, white supremacy groups, etc.) than on the left... and did so in this country back in the late 1930s.

Signed,

Red "liberaton theology" Menace

Hitler was a fascist, and certainly had some socialist tendences as well.

After World War I a number of extremist political groups arose in Germany, including the minuscule German Workers' party, whose spokesman was Gottfried Feder. Its program combined socialist economic ideas with rabid nationalism and opposition to democracy. The party early attracted a few disoriented war veterans, including Hermann Goering , Rudolf Hess , and Hitler. After 1920 Hitler led the party; its name was changed, and he reorganized and reoriented it, stamping it with his own personality.

By demagogic appeals to latent hatred and violence, through anti-Semitism , anti-Communist diatribes, and attacks on the Treaty of Versailles, the party gained a considerable following. Its inner councils were swelled by such frustrated intellectuals as P. J. Goebbels , and by the element of riffraff typified by Julius Streicher , while its public adherents were heavily drawn from the depressed lower middle class. Hitler minimized the socialist features of the program. National Socialism made its appeal not to an economic class but rather to the insecure and power-hungry elements of society. http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/N...eoftheParty.asp

Also on the web...

"True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt's: "Give back Alsace and Lorraine". For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?"

Have a look at the headline quote above and say who wrote it. It is a typical Hitler rant, is it not? Give it to 100 people who know Hitler's speeches and 100 would identify it as something said by Adolf. The fierce German nationalism and territorial ambition is unmistakeable. And if there is any doubt, have a look at another quote from the same author:

This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.

That settles it, doesn't it? Who does not know of Hitler's glorification of military sacrifice and his aim to establish a "thousand-year Reich"?

But neither quote is in fact from Hitler. Both quotes were written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author (See here and here). So let that be an introduction to the idea that Hitler not only called himself a socialist but that he WAS in fact a socialist by the standards of his day. Ideas that are now condemned as Rightist were in Hitler's day perfectly normal ideas among Leftists. And if Friedrich Engels was not a Leftist, I do not know who would be.

But the most spectacular aspect of Nazism was surely its antisemitism. And that had a grounding in Marx himself. The following passage is from Marx but it could just as well have been from Hitler:

"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time.... We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development -- to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed -- has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry".

Note that Marx wanted to "emancipate" (free) mankind from Jewry ("Judentum" in Marx's original German), just as Hitler did and that the title of Marx's essay in German was "Zur Judenfrage" -- which is exactly the same expression ("Jewish question") that Hitler used in his famous phrase "Endloesung der Judenfrage" ("Final solution of the Jewish question"). And when Marx speaks of the end of Jewry by saying that Jewish identity must necessarily "dissolve" itself, the word he uses in German is "aufloesen", which is a close relative of Hitler's word "Endloesung" ("final solution"). So all the most condemned features of Nazism can be traced back to Marx and Engels. The thinking of Hitler, Marx and Engels differed mainly in emphasis rather than in content. All three were second-rate German intellectuals of their times.

The Demand for Explanation

Now that more than 50 years have passed since the military defeat of Nazi Germany, one might have thought that the name of its leader would be all but forgotten. This is far from the case, however. Even in the popular press, references to Hitler are incessant and the trickle of TV documentaries on the Germany of his era would seem to be unceasing. Hitler even featured on the cover of a 1995 Time magazine.

This finds its counterpart in the academic literature too. Scholarly works on Hitler's deeds continue to emerge (e.g. Feuchtwanger, 1995) and in a recent survey of the history of Western civilization, Lipson (1993) named Hitlerism and the nuclear bomb as the two great evils of the 20th century. Stalin's tyranny lasted longer, Pol Pot killed a higher proportion of his country's population and Hitler was not the first Fascist but the name of Hitler nonetheless hangs over the entire 20th century as something inescapably and inexplicably malign. It seems doubtful that even the whole of the 21st century will erase from the minds of thinking people the still largely unfulfilled need to understand how and why Hitler became so influential and wrought so much evil.

The fact that so many young Germans (particular from the formerly Communist East) today still salute his name and perpetuate much of his politics is also an amazement and a deep concern to many and what can only be called the resurgence of Nazism among many young Germans at the close of the 20th century would seem to generate a continuing and pressing need to understand the Hitler phenomenon.

So what was it that made Hitler so influential? What was it that made him (as pre-war histories such as Roberts, 1938, attest) the most popular man in the Germany of his day? Why does he still have many admirers now in the Germany on which he inflicted such disasters? What was (is?) his appeal? And why, of all things, are the young products of an East German Communist upbringing still so susceptible to his message?

Modern Leftism

Before we answer that question, however, let us look at what the Left and Right in politics consist of at present. Consider this description by Edward Feser of someone who would have been an ideal Presidential candidate for the modern-day U.S. Democratic party:

He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter. He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.

He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies. His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out.! This call will echo throughout the world!"

The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state. They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group

There is surely no doubt that the man Feser describes sounds very much like a mainstream Leftist by current standards. But who is the man concerned? It is a historically accurate description of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was not only a socialist in his own day but he would even be a mainstream socialist in most ways today. Feser does not mention Hitler's antisemitism above, of course, but that too seems once again to have become mainstream among the Western-world Left in the early years of the 21st century.

There is, however, no claim that Hitler was wholly like modern Leftists. In ways other than those listed by Feser, Hitler was in fact very much like some much older Leftists. Ludwig von Mises speaks of those similarities. Writing in 1944 he said:

"The Nazis have not only imitated the Bolshevist tactics of seizing power. They have copied much more. They have imported from Russia the one-party system and the privileged role of this party and its members in public life; the paramount position of the secret police; the organization of affiliated parties abroad which are employed in fighting their domestic governments and in sabotage and espionage, assisted by public funds and the protection of the diplomatic and consular service; the administrative execution and imprisonment of political adversaries; concentration camps; the punishment inflicted on the families of exiles; the methods of propaganda. They have borrowed from the Marxians even such absurdities as the mode of address, party comrade (Parteigenosse), derived from the Marxian comrade (Genosse), and the use of a military terminology for all items of civil and economic life. The question is not in which respects both systems are alike but in which they differ..."

(For those who are unaware of it, Von Mises was an Austrian Jewish intellectual and a remarkably prescient economist. He got out of Vienna just hours ahead of the Gestapo. He did therefore have both every reason and every opportunity to be a close observer of Nazism)

And as this summary of a book (by Richard Overy) comparing Hitler and Stalin says:

"But the resemblances are inescapable. Both tyrannies relied on a desperate ideology of do-or-die confrontation. Both were obsessed by battle imagery: 'The dictatorships were military metaphors, founded to fight political war.' And despite the rhetoric about a fate-struggle between socialism and capitalism, the two economic systems converged strongly. Stalin's Russia permitted a substantial private sector, while Nazi Germany became rapidly dominated by state direction and state-owned industries.

In a brilliant passage, Overy compares the experience of two economic defectors. Steel magnate Fritz Thyssen fled to Switzerland because he believed that Nazi planning was 'Bolshevising' Germany. Factory manager Victor Kravchenko defected in 1943 because he found that class privilege and the exploitation of labour in Stalinist society were no better than the worst excesses of capitalism.

As Overy says, much that the two men did was pointless. Why camps? Prisons would have held all their dangerous opponents Who really needed slave labour, until the war? What did that colossal surplus of cruelty and terror achieve for the regimes? 'Violence was... regarded as redemptive, saving society from imaginary enemies.'

http://jonjayray.netfirms.com/hitler.html

[BERIGAN]

Good piece, Alankin, thanks for posting it. What a screwed up person White was--one can only hope that his ignorance and bigotry has not been passed on to his children.

I am sure you will be deriding Susan Sontag any moment now as a screwed up person, and that you hope that her ignorance was not passed on to her children.

[porcy62]

Usually, the next step of these factious self-called historians is to justifing Hitler as a reactions against communism, a further step is denying Holocaust in some way.

Quoting the early Marx and Engels out of the contest without a historic perspective is everything, but history.

I am sure one could depict you as a dangerous terrorist, like Tim McVeigh, simply quoting your posts in the forum in such way and adding the right dose of intellectual dishonesty showed by the guy you quoted

Edited December 29, 2004 by porcy62

[porcy62]

Good piece, Alankin, thanks for posting it. What a screwed up person White was--one can only hope that his ignorance and bigotry has not been passed on to his children.

I am sure you will be deriding Susan Sontag any moment now as a screwed up person, and that you hope that her ignorance was not passed on to her children.

You could accuse Sontag of everything, but ignorance.

[Shawn]

You know, I've been sitting here reading through this thread, trying to figure out how a simple "rest in peace" post....could turn into this meandering mess...with Hitler references no less...

Ya know, all you guys that are so "offended" by Reggie White...do you happen to have any Miles Davis recordings in your collections? If we were to judge Miles by his personal beliefs and the way he led his life...I don't think we'd be all that fond of him. The reason we dig Miles is because of the music he made and honestly, I don't give a flying shit WHAT his beliefs were or what kind of person he was. I just dig his music and don't have time in my life to sit around pondering what he was thinking or what his motivations were...and it doesn't fucking matter anyway.

[porcy62]

I just dig his music and don't have time in my life to sit around pondering what he was thinking or what his motivations were...and it doesn't fucking matter anyway.

Maybe you remember W. Allen in Manhattan Murder Mystery:

"I can't listen to that much Wagner, ya know? I start to get the urge to conquer Poland"

[Christiern]

Shawn, Miles never claimed to be a Christian and I don't recall hearing him make bigoted statements. Let's say it like it is: White was a phenomenal football player, a hypocrite, and a bigot. Ok, so some attribute this to ignorance, but it simply doesn't wash. This, apparently, was a selectively nice person who may deserve placement on a sports pedestal, but failed the more important test as a decent human being.

[Shawn]

Sorry...I don't buy that.

My Grandfather was born in 1903 in southern Virginia. He was racist because that's what he learned growing up. One time a member of our family married a black man and he was furious. I was about 8 at the time and I asked him why shouldn't they have gotten married. He said "If blacks & whites were supposed to marry they would be the same color". A stupid statement to be sure.

But you know what? He was a GREAT person. Loving parent, high school english teacher, Lion's club president, member of the volunteer fire department and about any other social group in town. I remember riding with him to people's houses in the winter to deliver food to people who couldn't afford it...taking a load of firewood to one of our elderly neighbors who was too sickly to cut their own...and countless other things like that. A person's beliefs are not always the sum total of their worth in this world.

I have never agreed with his thoughts regarding race...but I loved the man more than anything...and I'm PROUD to have known him.

[porcy62]

Sorry...I don't buy that.

My Grandfather was born in 1903 in southern Virginia. He was racist because that's what he learned growing up.

Don't take it personally, I am sure your grandpa was a great person, but the meaning of the word "progress" involves that you elaborate something better than what you learned.

I don't think as Chris does that RW "failed the more important test as a decent human being", (I am dubious about human being).

I never heard of RW before this thread, but he was a public person, his acts and his speeches were public, I think everybody has the right to criticize them.

I don't think that every dead man is equal. Talking again about Hitler, have you the same respect for the dead man "Hitler" and for the dead man "Ghandi"? In a religious perspective you could pray for their souls, but in a historic perspective death doesn't absolve all sins.

[sheldonm]

You know, I've been sitting here reading through this thread, trying to figure out how a simple "rest in peace" post....could turn into this meandering mess...with Hitler references no less...

No Shit, sorry to have started it; it won't happen again!

[Christiern]

"... in a historic perspective death doesn't absolve all sins."

Exactly! If we wish to be remembered kindly after our final departure, we must earn it while living. Had White come around and recognized how bigoted and (I assume) un-Christian) his public remarks were, and had he then acknowledged that recognition, we might have been able to remember him kindly. He scarred forever whatever good reputation he earned on the field.

Sorry, Shawn, but that's how I feel about it, and doing a PC number here would be too hypocritical for my comfort. We all die at some point, and what we leave behind is of our own making.

[maren]

Good piece, Alankin, thanks for posting it. What a screwed up person White was--one can only hope that his ignorance and bigotry has not been passed on to his children.

I am sure you will be deriding Susan Sontag any moment now as a screwed up person, and that you hope that her ignorance was not passed on to her children.

You could accuse Sontag of everything, but ignorance.

Interesting -- when I read the Susan Sontag thread yesterday, I was thinking of contrasting it with this Reggie White thread -- because right there in the Times obit, and specifically quoted by Deus62, was this string of adjectives:

"She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, trendy, iconoclastic, captivating, hollow, rhapsodic, naïve, sophisticated, approachable, abrasive, aloof, attention-seeking, charming, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, mannered, formidable, brilliant, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, challenging, ambivalent, accessible, lofty, erudite, lucid, inscrutable, solipsistic, intellectual, visceral, reasoned, pretentious, portentous, maddening, lyrical, abstract, narrative, acerbic, opportunistic, chilly, effusive, careerist, sober, gimmicky, relevant, passé, facile, illogical, ambivalent, polemical, didactic, tenacious, slippery, celebratory, banal, untenable, doctrinaire, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, aloof, glib, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull."

None of us who marked her passing thought it was cruel to say any of those things -- it was just honest --

Susan Sontag, of course, lived long enough to revisit and revise things she'd said earlier...

[Free For All]

No Shit, sorry to have started it; it won't happen again!

I think the spirit and intent of your gesture was certainly honorable. The fact that this thread has gone places you didn't want it to is something you can't control.

Don't let that discourage you from speaking your mind.

[porcy62]

Good piece, Alankin, thanks for posting it. What a screwed up person White was--one can only hope that his ignorance and bigotry has not been passed on to his children.

I am sure you will be deriding Susan Sontag any moment now as a screwed up person, and that you hope that her ignorance was not passed on to her children.

You could accuse Sontag of everything, but ignorance.

Interesting -- when I read the Susan Sontag thread yesterday, I was thinking of contrasting it with this Reggie White thread -- because right there in the Times obit, and specifically quoted by Deus62, was this string of adjectives:

"She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, trendy, iconoclastic, captivating, hollow, rhapsodic, naïve, sophisticated, approachable, abrasive, aloof, attention-seeking, charming, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, mannered, formidable, brilliant, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, challenging, ambivalent, accessible, lofty, erudite, lucid, inscrutable, solipsistic, intellectual, visceral, reasoned, pretentious, portentous, maddening, lyrical, abstract, narrative, acerbic, opportunistic, chilly, effusive, careerist, sober, gimmicky, relevant, passé, facile, illogical, ambivalent, polemical, didactic, tenacious, slippery, celebratory, banal, untenable, doctrinaire, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, aloof, glib, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull."

None of us who marked her passing thought it was cruel to say any of those things -- it was just honest --

Susan Sontag, of course, lived long enough to revisit and revise things she'd said earlier...

[jlhoots]

Reggie White was a great football player & a homophobe.

He also established homes for pregnant, unwed women, helped set up businesses in troubled urban areas & tried to bring people to G-d.

His family also appeared to care deeply for him.

Imperfect for sure, but not all bad.