All posts by Amok

blog, diversity, Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum, news, race, SF Giants, sports

Linceblog: If you were the fan who threw that banana at Orioles’ Adam Jones, you are a jerk; incident adds racial ugliness to SF Giants loss; UPDATE: SF Giants issue apology; UPDATE: Fan comes forward says not a racial incident

It was a good day for Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones in San Francisco in all ways except one.
The banana part.
First the good. In the top of the 8th, Jones gave his team some insurance with an RBI double that padded the O’s lead over the Giants to 5-2.
Just for good measure, in the top of the 9th, Jones hit a a three-run homer to pad the score even more, 10-2.
In the last inning, some frustrated  fan apparently got Jones’ attention.   And Jones tweeted the incident.

 

 

The Giants are reviewing the surveillance shots to see what exactly happened. If it’s true,  and there’s no reason to doubt Jones, then it’s a sad fact of fan hooliganism. When the game is uninteresting, fans can be unruly. Giants fans, generally are better than that.  But fans are fans and the lack of civility in our culture only encourages behavior like a banana throwing incident.

What’s worse is that a banana thrown at a black athlete like Jones, is a racial thing. Hadn’t heard of that, though I have  heard bananas used in context of Asians and Asian Americans. Specifically,  Filipinos were often referred to by racists as “monkey.”

This I know because my father told me stories of being called that regularly in San Francisco—in the 1920s, where “monkey” was a racial epithet.

So a thrown banana isn’t so innocent when the target is a  person of color.

San Francisco of the ’20s is a much different  city from the tolerant, multi-cultural San Francisco of today. Or at least, we’d like to think so.

If Jones was a victim of a stupid and ignorant act, the Giants, their fans and the city, owe Jones and the Orioles, an immediate and unequivocal apology.

Let’s hope one comes quickly, and because Jones is an avowed “foodie,” maybe  the Giants can toss in some Dungeness crabs. Jones probably has enough of those Blue Crabs from the Chesapeake.

Sports is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. But that shouldn’t mean we’ve lost our values and sense of  sportsmanship.

 

UPDATE FROM SF CHRONICLE’S JOHN SHEA, regarding apology from the San Francisco Giants:

Statement from the San Francisco Giants Regarding Incident at AT&T Park Yesterday

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — We were extremely disappointed to learn about the incident involving Adam Jones at AT&T Park yesterday. The Giants have a zero tolerance policy against this type of behavior, which results in immediate ejection from the ballpark. While we have been investigating the matter since we learned of the situation, unfortunately we have been unable to identify the person responsible. We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Adam and the entire Orioles organization for this unfortunate incident. The inappropriate actions of this individual in no way reflect the values of our organization and our fans.

UPDATE : 8/14/13  2013

New report yesterday identified  a fan coming forward saying banana throwing wasn’t a racial incident. He threw the banana out of frustration. It was just a coincidence it went Jones’ way.

Jones still concerned about safety. We should be too. Not sure about fan’s credibility. According to the report I saw on (KOVR-TV),  fan grabbed a banana from a cart and hurled it on the field. Of course, just like that lost verse from  the ballpark anthem,  “Take me out to the ball game,” the part that goes,”Buy me some peanuts and bananas, I don’t care if I never get back….”

Doesn’t rhyme.

Maybe the fan should throw crackerjack next time. Won’t be seen as a slur, though it is caramel in color.

Certainly won’t do any physical harm. Or how about not throwing anything, period. It’s baseball, not soccer!

More concerned about surveillance cams. I suppose at a ball park you are in a de facto TV studio. And you do give up your rights. If fans thought of that, maybe they’d behave better. Though we see how well they behave on Kiss-Cam, Fist-Cam, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) blog, blog, diversity, news, race

Federal judge declares “stop-and-frisk” policies in New York unconstitutional

When you consider the policy resulted in more than 4. 4 million stops  of primarily African American and Latino males  between 2004-2012, the court ruling puts a  major dent in the law-and-order legacy of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The judge found nearly 88 percent of the stops resulted in no arrest or ticket. Stop-and-frisk was a free pass to stop and harass.

 

See more of my commentary at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education fund blog.

 

 

 

blog, journalism, news

Washington Post sold for $250 million to Amazon’s Bezos–probably with free 2-day shipping and zero taxes….(UPDATED 8-6)

If you are a journalist, the idea of the Post being sold is stunning. The New York Times just ran a piece on Sunday about the “next edition,” talking about how Katharine Weymouth would follow in Kay Graham’s footsteps, so the expectation was that the family would keep control and do what it’s always done–produce the best all-around newspaper in the nation.

But I suppose the business pressures were just too high.

Still, $250 million is just depressing in terms of what it says about the value of newspapers.

$250 million is what a baseball team pays for a couple of starting pitchers. Maybe an outfielder.

That’s for perspective.

To keep it to just newspapers, in 1993, the New York Times bought the Boston Globe of $1.1 billion.

Last week, the Times sold the Boston Globe for $70 million. Slate reports that with the pensions involved the actual price is around -$40 million. That’s minus $40 million!

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos may be the best possible buyer for the Post. As an internet baron, he’s well  positioned for any upside in newspapers’ digital future. How can he not succeed fabulously?

Not only has he purchased a massive content machine for all his Kindles, as the Post’s owner, Bezos’ starts at the top, poised to go higher. In an instant, he becomes the industry leader in a new age of journalism.

UPDATE:8/6/13  8:31 a.m.PDT

But is it a “golden age”?

As I thought about Post being bought, I first was shocked by the amount. $250 million? As I said, this is what a star athlete makes. The Giant’s Barry Zito and a player to be named later come to mind.  That’s not exactly Woodward and Bernstein.

I tweeted something about old Posties like Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, who now do their thing on TV, and what the Post could have fetched when they were there. And then it  dawned on me that indeed, newspapers are becoming like sports teams, the play things of  billionaires.

So, of course, the Red Sox John Henry buys the Boston Globe. And Amazon’s Bezos, of course, buys the Post.  And for just $250 million?  And they threw in some local shoppers? That’s not full retail, is it?

So now the question is if the Post, and the public,  got the right billionaire.

From reading Bezos’  memo to the staff (posted by Poynter), it’s hard to tell. I thought it was straight forward.

But I didn’t become more skeptical until I saw this from Robert McChesney, the co-author of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America and author of Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, both published this year. He is professor of communications at the University of Illinois.

    Said McChesney: “As the commercial model of journalism is in free fall collapse, those remaining news media franchises have become playthings for billionaires, generally of value for political purposes, as old-fashioned monopoly newspapers still carry considerable influence. The United States went through this type of journalism at the turn of the last century and it produced a massive political crisis that led eventually to the creation of professional journalism, to protect the news from the dictates of the owners. Today professionalism has been sacrificed to commercialism, and the resources for actual reporting have plummeted.
    “Perhaps nothing better illustrates the desperation facing American journalism and democracy better than the fact we are reduced to praying we get a benevolent billionaire to control our news, when history demonstrates repeatedly such figures are in spectacularly short supply, and the other times we relied on such a model crashed and burned. America meets an existential crisis with an absurd response. No wonder this is a golden age for satire. We have to do better.”
In December 2010, Amazon.com cut off WikiLeaks from its computer servers after the group released a trove of State Department cables.  See this letter to Bezos, “Human Rights First Seeks Answers From Amazon in Wake of WikiLeaks Drop,” written at the time.
I wish I knew more billionaires to judge Bezos, and what his stewardship of the Post might mean.  But McChesney and the Institute of Public Accuracy raise some issues that don’t automatically make Bezos journalism’s savior.
Consider this. It could be much worse. Is Bezos better than a Koch brother, or two? And a billionaire to be named later?
In that way, Bezos doesn’t look all that bad at all. But let’s see what type of return policy comes when you buy a newspaper–and if it works both ways.