Ebay Scumbags trying to Exploit V-Tech

Found this article today, about two college students that purchased tickets to the Peach Bowl 4 months ago on Ebay, from Seung Hui Cho. His Ebay name was released and somebody, apparently many somebodies, back tracked the transaction through his Ebay history. The two students were notified of their connection to the psychopath by these Ebay detectives, and have found themselves in a pinhole spotlight.

The big question now, what do they do with the ticket stubs? Somebody has already offered them $75 for them and want to get in contact. What kind of person wants this?

On their behalf, the two students have mentioned auctioning them off themselves only to donate to charity, but the whole thing stinks. Not to mention the guy poses with the tickets like some big game hunter on his catch Does the bidding start here, this quickly for the droppings of that murdering piece of shit?

My vote: Burn it.

Cho Seung-Hui, Poster Boy for Censorship or Bureacratic Failure?

Cho Seung-Hui, I won't commit his name to memory or learn to pronounce it, but everyone knows who he is, at least for a month or two, the psychopath that killed more than 30 people in Blacksburg Virginia, on the Virginia Tech campus.

As this tragedy is dissected in the national media, including the countless times this man/boy slipped through the grasp of safeguards in place to stop just such a thing happening, one thing jumps out at me; the way his writings are being used to bias a national public.

After this outrage, after the bodies are buried and grieving has been faced, will the only time we hear this sick, murderer's name be when some politician wants to advocate their issue on gun control or on censorship?

I've read the two plays that are up on AOL, they are bad. Yes, they are violent, but mostly they are just bad. In hindsight we can all say that they foreshadowed his actions, but it is not a direct line between violent, demented writing and killing spree.

Read the rest

Why I Want the Olympics to be in Chicago

Growing up nearly oblivious to Sports, and I guess that is saying that the Cubs don't count, I always knew about the Olympics. Every four years, Winter and Summer, I watched, along with everyone else in the neighborhood. I watched Ray Leonard win Gold with my Grandpa, one of the first and only things I ever got to share with him, and when I went to Germany for two years, I had something to cheer about on the televisions and against my German friends, nothing quite like having something to rub in or get rubbed in to make sure you are actually friends. Being in Europe for that one Olympics also made me realize just how seriously the international community takes it.

Now they are trying to get the 2016 Olympics in Chicago, and I am very excited about the prospect, because in 2016 my daughter will be nine years old, and to be able to take her to an Olympics game would be as special as anything I can think of.

Already, the traditional grumps are out. Talking about the traffic congestion, the constant media hype that will not stop, and how it will throw the city into debt. All of these issues are not enough to ruin my thoughts of taking my daughter into the city to see the spectacle of the Olympics. To realize that an entire world has sent it's best to compete. To see the greatest athletes of whatever sport she may admire compete, and to experience this with her Mom and Dad. It beats the Hell out of Disney world or the County Fair.

Hopefully, the Olympic committee will come through next year and make this Olympic bid a reality. Along with my dreams of spending countless precious moments with my daughter, downtown Chicago, watching it all.

Take Down Imus - Check ...Next?

It was an inglorious process, anybody celebrating the fall of Don Imus has missed the point as mush as he does himself. How it went from a stupid, insensitive comment on an obscure cable show to the nightly, news scrolling, cross platform beating that it was has been well chronicled, even I jumped in a little bit, because I didn't think that dragging his comments out into the public eye was good for anyone.

Am I glad he got fired? I'm indifferent.

He was less than a blip on my own radar, coming into my zone only slightly before the public put him in their cross-hairs. There are much worse people saying worse things out there, but he definitely had no business saying what he did. I'm glad those girls got to show the country they were not what he called them, and I'm glad that has been called to national attention.

Now I see some media people trying to throw others under the bus with them. One is Jay Mariotti(wiki), writer, Chicago loudmouth, and sometimes "Around the Horn" guest/host. I'm really not sure if he is on television anymore, because I definitley don't seek him out. He has a tired act in Chicago, acting like the Rosie O'Donnell of the Midwest by picking fights with everyone. There is a hater web-site that carefully chronicles Jay's misploits. What I did catch, was his Sun-Times column where he tries to lump Chicago radio personality Mike North of Chicago's sportstalk station, 670 the Score, in with Imus and the recently exiled Pacman Jones and Chris Henry. It is an undisguised hatchet-job on North, who didn't ask for or deserve it, but he can take the shots.

Speaking of which, he took another shot in the tribune from Ed Sherman for his Friday morning interview with Jesse Jackson, who wanted to grab one last bit of spotlight before he goes home to wait for the next 'national crisis' he needs to speak about. I nearly changed the station hearing that he was coming on, because I'm tired of the 'Jesse Jackson Show', but I'm glad I listened to most of it.

The interview is available online at the Score's web site if anyone else wants to hear it now, but this is what I took away from it. Jesse came on, I guess he insisted on doing the interview face to face with North, and wanted to talk about how he had helped rid the country of another evil man, and helped the cause of equality, and North made him work for it.

Very quickly, Mike North switched from the topic of Don Imus to that of the Duke Lacrosse Team, and tried to hold Jackson accountable for his condemnation of the accused boys now that they have been cleared. Jackson tried to wiggle of the hook, but North made it stick for a while. Mike North is not Mike Wallace, but he held up for some time.

In the end, we did get some of Jesse's personal agenda over the air, but I have to admit, that once he gets past his sensationalized sound bites, Jesse has valid things to say, if not original. He admitted that he actually felt sorry for Imus, who is now national media roadkill, but never admitted much of what he said about the Duke boys, though it is on videotape.

As for North, he came away even better in my eyes, because rough edges and all, he remained true to the image he portrays, which I really think is actual, and did whatever he could to pin down one of the most slippery politicians of his generation. I don't hold it against him that he didn't quite nail him down.

Don Imus and his circus - One Last Time

The media bubble is nearly at his fullest around the ignorance of Don Imus. He has channeled some pathetic, humbled, spirit to make his continuing watered down apologies, once again missing the point.

"I'm not thinking it's a racial insult that's being uttered at somebody at the time. It's in the process of trying to rap and be funny." he said. But he added, "I wish I hadn't said it. I'm sorry I said it."

He has been suspended for two weeks and made a slew of new statements, looking and sounding very defeated. He put himself in the Dunce chair for Al Sharpton. After years of making fun of buffoons in the media, he is one. Am I the only on that sees the justice in this, despite being annoyed with it?

The only way that he really goes away is if people stop listening to him. I have met one person that listens to Don Imus, a hospital patient transplanted from the east coast that had him on MSNBC every morning. I liked the patient but never found enough interesting to listen to or watch Don Imus. So why have I wrote about him three times? Because of the media circus it has turned into, and as I said originally, before, just his viewers knew what he said, now the whole country knows. If I was a parent, I would be asking every media outlet why it is okay for them to REPEAT his comments over and over. Hold him accountable, and move on.

The Usual Suspects Gather Up for Imus' head

Nobody can sniff a headline for Jesse Jackson, even if he isn't as quick as he used to be. The Reverend Jackson is planning a protest against Don Imus and his ignorance in Chicago now. The Rev. Al Sharpton has also stepped up, Imus will be on Sharpton's radio program, letting the whole region be a bug on the wall.

Imus' apology misses the point for me, he still doesn't get it.

"Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it,"

- Don Imus on his radio show," courtesy CNN.com

Sorry Don, to me it's not that they don't deserve it, nobody deserves it. If you can't find a better way to have fun with a subject(s), move to the next topic.

Worse to me is the bandying about that has come in response to him. Does Jesse Jackson have a strategic protest plan laid out in his office, a council that comes in the minute that race gets into a headline? Being from the Chicago area, I'm tired of him jumping on every bandwagon he can find. I'm not black, but I was offended. Now, I'm just irritated with the what was probably inevitable media blow-up around the simple, stupid, wrong comment.

Don Imus Makes A Stupid Comment - Why Do we Have to Keep Hearing It?

Don Imus Makes A Stupid Comment - Why Do we Have to Keep Hearing It?

On the radio this week, radio and sort-of-television morning personality Don Imus made a stupid, sexist, racist, insensitive comment. I won't repeat it because then I am just feeding the machine, even more than writing this column. If you haven't heard it,or read the transcript, a quick search at all the regular media outlets will get it for you. He crossed the line, even with someone like me that completely disdains political correctness. If I'd been listening to him, I might have just shaken my head and changed the station, thinking that once again I should have known better than to listen to him.

That's what everyone should do when they hear something like that coming out of the mouth of people that they allow to clutter their morning sounds. Turn him off, tune him out. More radio disc jockeys get run off for poor ratings than for poor taste. And when he says something like this, though Imus is surely far past being a shock jock in these days, he has achieved the same results.

Now there is buzz about him, ESPN is running a full segment of the clip on Sportscenter, which means that not only did he say it, it is echoing through the halls of todays media. As I said, it is everywhere on the web, it is all over the major news outlets, why is it okay to repeat something that was so offensive in the first place? They cloak it in self-righteousness, yet repeat the offending phrases for millions more to hear.

How about handling it like this, "In other news, if you feel like hearing an ignorant old man display just how little he cares what anyone else thinks is offensive, tune in to Don Imus, but seriously, don't waste your time." Instead, Rutgers head coach Vivian Stringer has lashed back and surely soon the usual suspects will step up to a podium somewhere to get their own names attached to the outrage. Or maybe just start an equally ignorant, low rung rumor to counter.

What he's saying is the kind of ignorant prattle you can get down at the dumpy tavern on the corner or at the drill press in your local sweat shop, and it should be left there.

What makes it okay for ESPN to replay it so many times?

John Kerry is a Snob

I’m not much for writing on Politics, or even following them. I vote my conscience and my gut instinct and hope the chips fall right. Today I saw an article on CNN.com about John Kerry making some comments to college kids that in education;

"You study hard and make the most of it and become a smarter person, and if you don’t you end up in Iraq." Now, that’s off the video, and even a little worse than CNN paraphrased it. But maybe I have it wrong,

Some of his own party have already jumped ship on him, telling him to just shut up, and therein is a little hope for the democrats. I don’t know exactly what I will vote next week, but I will vote, and not for anyone sounding like John Kerry.

Lastly, in my mind, this was just a jerk exposing his real self, one that I saw last time behind all the campaigning. The republicans are going to try to blow this up even worse than it is and distract from their poor performance lately. That has not escaped my notice either.

It is very possible that I have a different take on this than most who will write about politics, I am the quintessential fence-sitter, and from what I have seen in the media, it is people like me that are going to show up and vote this time around, and the next presidential election, which Kerry should not even bother to run in.

It's time to start paying attention to the little guys, not make light of them with arrogant "botched jokes". That goes for everyone.