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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOLE MISS HAS TO SUSPEND PLAYERS FOR GAY SLURS (a 'come to Jesus' rant by a TN sportswriter:
OLE MISS HAS TO SUSPEND PLAYERS FOR GAY SLURS
Published on: October 03, 2013 | Written by: Clay Travis
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Let's get right to the point here -- Ole Miss has to suspend every single football player who was involved in hurling gay slurs during a campus play about Matthew Shepard's murder.
Period.
I love the South, it's my home and always will be my home, but I hate stupid ignorance much more than I love the South.
And we have way too much stupid ignorance down here, always have.
Right now Ole Miss has to take a stand against stupid ignorance of all kinds and suspend the football players who interrupted a play about intolerance by behaving intolerantly. The school also needs a major wake-up call, I'd suggest a campus-wide examination of gay rights.
And if Ole Miss won't suspend these players then the SEC needs to do it.
Already people are tweeting me, "free speech," and asking why the "liberal media" cares so much about this story.
First, you idiots, learn how to make better arguments. You have the right to say or write anything in this country thanks to the first amendment. It's the single most important freedom we have. So you can type "your gay," to people you disagree with to your heart's content on Twitter and the government can't do anything to you. But what you don't have is freedom from consequences. Right now the government isn't arresting or investigating Ole Miss players for behaving like boorish idiots, the public is reacting with complete and total disgust to a story that shocks them.
Second, I'm not a member of the "liberal media," whatever that is. I'm about as middle of the road as it comes in the country. I'm anti-idiot and pro-markets, this means I can believe in evolution and support American industry. Shocker, I know. The reason this is a big story is for the same reason most stories become viral these days on the Internet -- because the story is shocking and people can't believe what they're reading. The rest of the country is in complete and total disbelief that Mississippi college students -- ostensibly the smartest, youngest and most cosmopolitan citizens of the Magnolia State -- would ever do something like this during a play about intolerance.
Per the article, which was receiving so much Internet traffic the entire website was unavailable for much of the morning:
According to the plays director and theater faculty member Rory Ledbetter, some audience members used derogatory slurs like fag and heckled both cast members and the characters they were portraying for their body types and sexual orientations. Ledbetter said the audiences reactions included borderline hate speech.
I am the only gay person on the cast, junior theater major Garrison Gibbons said. I played a gay character in the show, and to be ridiculed like that was something that really made me realize that some people at Ole Miss and in Mississippi still cant accept me for who I am.
It's not just hate speech, it's public hate speech in a university theater, hurled by the most famous members of the undergraduate student body. And it's not just one idiot, it's twenty, all acting together in a way that encourages stupidity to fester. This isn't a single individual's issue, it's a cultural one.
The rest of the country is completely and totally amazed that this could happen in 2013.
Just when you think the state of Mississippi and Ole Miss can't humiliate itself anymore, it goes and humiliates itself all over again.
You'd think a state that was so horribly wrong about racism, might be self-aware enough to see that it's repeating the same errors with gays.
You might think that, but you'd be wrong.
If the Onion had a headline, "Ole Miss students interrupt play about gay intolerance by hurling intolerant gay slurs," would you have thought it was too fafetched?
I would have.
Then last night happened.
It's not that I'm surprised many of my fellow Southerners are exceedingly homophobic, it's that college students at one of the state's flagship institution are too. These weren't slurs uttered in private by grandpas and grandmas, they were public assaults by people young enough to live in a multi-cultural society.
I spend a ton of time sticking up for the South, but here I've got no defense.
For some reason a decent segment of the Southern male population still feels like the biggest insult you can throw at another man is that he's gay.
Generally, if written, this insult is spelled, "your gay," and is accompanied by a Bible verse on a Twitter profile.
Rather than combat every idiot one at a time on Twitter and email, I've just co-opted their most stinging insult and raised them one level of "awfulness." Okay, I'm a gay Muslim. What else do you have for me? My hope was that by ridiculing the absurdity of an insult by accepting and embracing the absurdity of that insult and then raising it to another level, it might actually cause the idiots among us to think about how stupid they look. But then I see the first amendment and liberal media tweets and I just throw up my hands in disgust.
And stop hiding behind your religion too, "I don't hate the sinner, I hate the sin."
So being gay is a sin? So you really think gay people choose to be gay?
Is this real life?
Being gay isn't a sin because it's the way you're born.
But being stupid is a sin. Combat something you can actually control -- read a damn book.
Sadly, the only way to fight idiots is with punishments and consequences, not false and empty apologies.
That's why Ole Miss needs to take the right stand here and suspend every involved player from football this weekend. And if Hugh Freeze won't do it then Ole Miss chancellor Daniel Jones needs to act and if the chancellor won't act then SEC commissioner Mike Slive needs to act.
Every single football player involved in this incident needs to be suspended. And all non-athlete students who were involved should face severe sanction as well.
Ole Miss has rarely been on the forefront of social progress, but at least it can do the right thing here.
Otherwise, the past really is never past at Ole Miss.
http://outkickthecoverage.com/ole-miss-has-to-suspend-players-for-gay-slurs.php
Clay Travis was a lawyer, but he got way tired of that. He managed to turn his passion for sports into another career. He always gives as good as he gets. In covering the SEC for years, he has gotten a lot.
TxDemChem
(1,918 posts)And that isn't even my alma mater. In 2013 people still behave that way. Suspend them for the rest of the season.
kydo
(2,679 posts)I posted the link in another thread. The sports community needs to put pressure other wise the school will bend to the cavemen thinking from the small minded residents of the red teabagger cluster-fuck districts that dominate the region.
Sheldon Cooper
(3,724 posts)Shouldn't that be you're gay? But, I acknowledge that I'm quibbling - that was a righteous rant.
ETA - Wait a minute! I just realized that he was mocking the misspelling of the ignernt people on twitter. So, never mind my shit-picking.
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)"Generally, if written, this insult is spelled, "your gay," and is accompanied by a Bible verse on a Twitter profile."
He is merciless when people are complete idiots.
kydo
(2,679 posts)I mean gay used to mean happy so if someone says your or you're or you are, followed by gay, would that not mean my happiness?
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)Richardo
(38,391 posts)..for those who have been here awhile.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)Although Alabama just suspended one of their best-Clinton-Dix. Urban Meyer was horrible @FL. Spurrier is bad.He refused to suspend his best WR for breaking school rules. The AD did it.
SEC is bad but many schools have problems.
I love my alma mater, but I never assume that they are free from problems. I do know that FB coach will suspend players. Suspended one for a bowl game because he missed study halls. He suspended our best WR for important game for breaking a drug policy. Hope he keeps it up.
stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)The Crimson Tide may be slowed down by red algae this year.
You also better hope that Alabama suspended him when they found out and didn't wait until after the TAMU game.
The NCAA is under fire but they aren't gone.
Snake Plissken
(4,103 posts)He once suspended a player for the entire playing of the National Anthem
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)we are called 'bigots' for not accepting guys like the Ol Miss Genius Choir. Just a fact of the matter. 'Don't criticize the South' say the Southerners 'or you are the bigot, not Mississippi, you and Nina Simone are the bigots'.
Mississippi. Goddamn.
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)There are many people who don't feel like the nutjobs do. We have been pushing back for years.
the Tea Party shites opened up a racist line of venom that had been held in check at some points.
When Boehner, McConnell and other did not repute the racist statements and threats, they let this loose completely. They didn't make any attempt to curtail this and the Office of the President has been dimished. The personal attacks on PBO and others have been beyond the pale.
Now they cannot control the monster they helped grow.
The attacks on everybody in the South delight the Tea Party. It causes more divisiveness even among those with less extremists views.
I will and have criticized everybody down here I can find. However, people would gladly see me and many others suffer varying punishments because we live here no matter that we are pushing back against all odds. That in no way makes me a hero. It does make an empathetic person who resents being tossed aside.
Sissyk
(12,665 posts)He is not kidding either about loving the south. He is one of us good southerners that have love for all humans. No matter race or whether you are GLBT or not. There are more and more like us every day, too.
With this and the story from the sorority at AL, seems the south is taking a step backwards. I'm doing my part to be sure we don't, but we need help.
Ole Miss should suspend these plays but let's see what they do. Hopefully, the SEC will step in and take action.
Also, Clay Travis has the very best sports talk show on I've heard. 3HL. 3 hour lunch. Although it's 3:00 to 6:00 lol! Long story, but if your a sports fan in the south and haven't listened, you should.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)And it's my heritage to hate anyone different from me.
Welcome to the Old South, where for some everyday is 1955.
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)and I beg to differ. Heritage can be taught in many ways. Not all of them include racist hate.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Raffi Ella
(4,465 posts)No, it's religion.
They don't call this the Bible Belt for nothing. They will never accept modern day America where all men really are equal under the law. Modern day America doesn't jive with their version of the Bible and never will. These people are indoctrinated from birth into a Southern Baptist Culture of hate. Every 'Sundee' they go hear the preacher talk about the liberals and our 'evil' agenda, I think they truly do believe that President Obama is the antichrist.
And now with the Teabagging extreme right in the forefront and Fox news on 24/7, they not only get it every 'Sundee' and also at home from their family and friends, NOW the hate and bigotry is reinforced on an even broader scale by 'respectable' people on the 'teevee' and internet, every minute of every day.
How do you overcome the hate and ignorance when it is woven into every fiber of their being in the name of religion and reinforced by people who should know better.