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San Diego, California Once in a great while someone says something very bad and great good comes of it. When Mark McGwire told the senate subcommittee hearings on substance abuse in Major League Baseball that he wasn't there to talk about the past, suddenly the past became a new explorative arena to unearth performance enhancing drug use in MLB. When Avery Brundage, the first American president of the IOC (and a millionaire to boot) called professional athletes, "a group of trained seals," while amateurs lived up to "the highest moral laws," people suddenly began to question the definition of professional and how it might apply to one area of the political economy but not another. When former NBA superstar, Tim Hardaway, tactfully prompted by sport radio host, Dan Le Batard, told us that he hated gay people, he may have done more to shed light on homophobia and the mutability of hyper-masculinity in men's professional sport than anyone since the Olympic diver, Greg Louganis. Hardaway, a potential NBA hall of famer, does not appear particularly intelligent. On the court he was a smart player. And the inner-city kid from Oakland may be a nice guy with, as his former coach, Pat Riley back-pedaled into, "a good spirit." But you only have to look at the obvious to see that Mr. Hardaway had failed to consider the even more obvious implications.  From the mouths of fools wisdom sometimes blares. Did he think that as a professional athlete addressing a controversial topic such as sexual orientation and identity politics, a media-savvy talk-jock such as Le Batard was going to let a last-minute-question response slip away when the words, "I don't want him on my team" were uttered? Did Hardaway fail to realize that John Amaechi's recent coming out was only the sixth ever by a former player from the big four sports? Did Hardaway consider the utter ignorance of his comment, "I don't think he should be in the locker room when we're in the locker room?" Did Timmy fail to consider that women are often in the locker rooms and –correct me if I'm wrong – not a lot of open sexual relations happen on the wood benches when dozens of people and even more cameras are there to record it. And did the five-time NBA all-star fail to realize that, whether or not he likes it or is willing to admit it, he is a hero to thousands? If he hates gay people, by virtue of the hero paradigm, others will take license to do the same. Hate, like love, is well transferred on the backs of iconic public figures. You can't expect Tim Hardaway to know the disturbing statistics of suicide rates and gay men. You can't expect him to have read the latest studies on genetic predisposition and sexual orientation. You can expect him to know that gender is a social construct and often misused to describe biological sex differences. And we'd all be naïve to expect our professional athletes to have a discursive knowledge from empirical research. They are entertainers not academics or social scientists. But here's the problem. Joe-bag-of donuts down the block may not have a clear understanding of how he feels about gays in sport and society. But he can and will be affected by the rhetoric, however misanthropic, of athletes like Hardaway who opine on subjects for which they have feelings but for which lack experience or education. We make the mistake of confusing critical thinking with physical talent, the heart shown in playing a game with the heart shown for living life. Emphasis on victory vs. empathy for the vanquished. But before we allow Hardaway's crucifixion, let's note a word on his gospel. The five-time NBA all-star simply said what he was thinking. And in this case, as well as many others, we should appreciate Hardaway's honest, albeit lamentable commentary. We should also consider the fact that Le Batard and other radio jocks are suddenly waxing virtuous in the wake of mass opposition to Hardaway's comments. While it's hard to make a case that Hardaway was set up, his sudden decline to scapegoat takes its own form of pathos. The radio talkies were unable to do anything with LeBron James' ambiguous "trusting each other" comments from a few weeks ago. If Hardaway had not been singled out, would another former NBA player been targeted? Continued on next page...
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