If I were the kind of person who blogs every possibly-antisemitic turn of phrase I ran into, I'd consider this letter to the New York Times (link may expire and/or require registration), on the Ron Artest fight, an interesting find:
Has an air of "The Jews are shoving the blacks down our throats", if you ask me. In addition to the "marketing maven" bit, note the repetition of "hip-hop culture" as code for "bad black men".To the Sports Editor:
Harvey Araton was dead-on in his assessment that the N.B.A. has become a cultural divide between the hip-hop culture of the players and the boardroom culture of the fans ("Brawl Evokes Real Story of N.B.A. and Its Fans," Nov. 23). The product that the marketing maven David Stern has been shoving down the throats of Middle America is grossly out of touch with the behaviors and attitudes typically valued in adults and desired in children.
More and more Americans abhor any product that gives the appearance of attempting to stress or teach values that are the antithesis of the attitudes typically taught in classrooms and homes all over the nation. For a generation, the N.B.A. has surrounded itself with cultural elements of the hip-hop lifestyle.
Just because MTV, the N.B.A. and Fox want the road that Middle America has driven on for generations to veer off into a cultural abyss does not mean that people have to follow.
Stern, the network executives, the marketing directors and the commissioners of the other major sports - Paul Tagliabue, are you paying attention? - must realize this fact before this seemingly golden eight-lane highway they built turns out to be a deserted dirt road.
Geoffrey Boltz
Johnstown, Pa.