NovU wrote:I live in a city where gays are openly accepted and gay marriages are allowed. There is even a gay street in downtown. Every year on regular basis, there's some sort of gay festival that goes on. In general, people here see gays as no different people but the same, just with different sexual preference. So for me, I don't get what the big fuss is about beacuse Jason Collins never really was an issue maker, especially at this stage of his career. Now if this was somebody like Charles, or Kenny... LoL
It's a big fuss because what else are you going to fill 24/7 sports networks with than to debate issues these wannabe pundits wish they could talk about normally instead of sports. The Skip Bayless/Cuban thing was somewhat enlightening because Bayless openly admitted the hope of sports writers that they somehow matter, if you read enough of their columns or articles they all drop hints of their hope to matter to the world in general, not just the world of sports. This gives them that crossover chance.
There's also been a long interest in an active major sports figure being gay, Magic was an epic cocktease for certain segments of the gay universe. Ameachi fucked it up by being British, and I think almost every other one has one come out after their fame was over and then were never anything of relevance. The uninformed media types assume Collins will be in the league again next year and thus the first active OPEN player (there's been plenty of people who say they know gay players from the past but everyone keeps it private as to those peoples wishes) and when he might not be because he's 35 and stinks they have a ready made story to bash the league for being anti-gay.
This feeds into their lingering underlying casual racism against the leagues dominant source of players you see from time to time and which bowdown actually illustrated properly up above. They can attack common black cultural issues (which, like it or not are probably more anti-gay than the general public) while focusing on some other "issue" (something like mainstream acceptance of the NBA being threatened by gays/bigots/whatever) much as the Prop 8 backlash focused entirely on the Mormon Church rather than Obama-related turnout bringing blacks to the polls and pushing it over. Then the league can make some rule about fining players who won't have their locker next to gays or whatever and the wannabe pundits can declare victory and take their laps among their circlejerking allies.
They get to all out-outrage each other until somebody "wins" and something new comes up. Chris Broussard probably doesn't realize it since life has proven he's likely mentally challenged but he took a couple day story and turned it into a firestorm. (And ratings gold for ESPN.) He'll give a semi-apology or five and everyone remembers when ESPN lashed out at a NBA player announcing he was gay. The zeitgeist has been decided.
