Sex, Drugs, and on the dole
I was out in lovely Fort Worth yesterday. I needed to do a bit of digging for a TCU game story from 1921. It seems my boy Michael is at it again. The college football encyclopedia is nearing completion, and needed a missing piece of data.
Scrolling through the papers from 1921 is jarring to say the least. One headline that caught my attention;
'Negros seek anti Lynching legislation'
It went on to list the lynchings from the previous year. Yikes! I know 1921 was a long time ago, but shit not long enough. It's hard to imagine such a thing, seeing it in black and white is tough.
Oh by the way TCU got spanked pretty hard on that day.
I am for the moment (comically) an employee in the service of ESPN. This amuses me quite a bit. Thanks to Michael for getting me off the dole. ESPN may have paid money to a bigger spare in it's history but you'd be hard pressed to name him. Apologies to Mel Kiper.
I loved the Susan Casey excerpt in the new Sports Illustrated. A shark story is just the sort of thing I would likely feel shouldn't be in SI, until I read it. It was fascinating, the great white is a mysterious and terrifying creature.
Did you know, or could you have imagined that a 20 ft great white could be 8 ft wide??? Holy S! and nearly six feet deep.
Today and tomorrow all the bloody good sales reps from our company pay us a visit, this event happens only once or twice a year. Luckily for me I can lay low, I am not in charge of entertaining or baby sitting any senior sales reps. I just have to act charming if any of them wander into my office, and laugh at their lame jokes.
Scrolling through the papers from 1921 is jarring to say the least. One headline that caught my attention;
'Negros seek anti Lynching legislation'
It went on to list the lynchings from the previous year. Yikes! I know 1921 was a long time ago, but shit not long enough. It's hard to imagine such a thing, seeing it in black and white is tough.
Oh by the way TCU got spanked pretty hard on that day.
I am for the moment (comically) an employee in the service of ESPN. This amuses me quite a bit. Thanks to Michael for getting me off the dole. ESPN may have paid money to a bigger spare in it's history but you'd be hard pressed to name him. Apologies to Mel Kiper.
I loved the Susan Casey excerpt in the new Sports Illustrated. A shark story is just the sort of thing I would likely feel shouldn't be in SI, until I read it. It was fascinating, the great white is a mysterious and terrifying creature.
Did you know, or could you have imagined that a 20 ft great white could be 8 ft wide??? Holy S! and nearly six feet deep.
Today and tomorrow all the bloody good sales reps from our company pay us a visit, this event happens only once or twice a year. Luckily for me I can lay low, I am not in charge of entertaining or baby sitting any senior sales reps. I just have to act charming if any of them wander into my office, and laugh at their lame jokes.
posted by Robert_M at 8:59 AM
2 Comments:
Since I'm a history lunatic, I've become addicted to reading old newspapers on databases. And I too was shocked by the racism in the press as short as 80 years ago. Back then, black people were always identified as "negros", no matter the context of the article, in ways meant to lessen their value as human beings. It is truly foul.
For example in 1925, the front page news in Dallas was a crime story about a Dallas lawyer who shot another Dallas lawyer. The victim had used the deposition of a "negro" who had apparantly said something negative about the other Dallas lawyer's mother. The lawyer was eventually sentenced to prison for the murder. But the Governor of Texas pardoned the lawyer a few months after the conviction saying he had the right to defend his mother's honor --- and because the murderous lawyer was the dignified son of a former Confederate officer, he was expected to do as much to defend the family name. It was the most racist and ludicrous thing I'd ever read.
Cries of racism today often ring hollow to me because I really don't understand racism. I like to think I judge people for the content of their character first instead of their skin color. But reading stuff like that reminds me of how fresh the wounds resulting from the sort of nonsense that went only 80 years ago still stings some people. It certainly puts things in perspective for me.
history is funny and sad at the same time.
but it always make you think.
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