Re: For Hank
 

Arbitration, yes. Free agency is in the future. At which point it might make sense to get rid of him, because yes, that is when the bucks really start increasing.

Re: For Hank
 

But they get a cut of the national TV contract.

Re: Tiger
 

Too true. I divide the whole thusly: Me. Not in your group, except when I think playing along with your ethos and traditions will get me $$$. But I'm not against you, either. Sometimes, I'll support you, sometimes not. But don't ask for my allegiance, and for the better of both of us, don't claim me and I won't claim you.

Re: Tiger
 

I think we have let "tolerance" and "diversity" substitute for the former and somewhat higher aspiration of integration. For example, the SF Bay Area is very "diverse," but no one would dare call it integrated.

Re: Tiger
 

That is a risk. But I don't think diversity and integration are necessarily related concepts.

Re: For Hank
 

He made $2.2mm last year; he might realistically win at arb at $7mm--he was one of the top dozen or so AL starters and Boras is his agent.

Re: Tiger
 

Nice to define yourself as whatever you want, you lone wolf you, but you're dumped in buckets every day, which I think is a bit more the point here.

BTW, welcome to the white guy lawyer on the internet pail, my friend. Cozy, isn't it?

Re: Tiger
 

What the fuck are you talking about? There is a huge chasm between limiting oneself to black women and exclusively dating/fucking white women. Most people would wonder why Tiger wouldn't have a bit of a mix in his pool--some black women? Some Asian? Hispanic? Anything? But not you. Apparently, you can only think in extremes.

The point is, Tiger is not interested in sticking his dick in anyone who isn't white.

Um...you are really going to have to explain how you not looking like George Clooney is similar to black women being deemed undesirable because they don't have caucasian features (and having that much smaller of a dating pool). Ugly people are a constant, no matter what the race. What is your point? Unless you're saying, "African features are deemed ugly, so deal with it," I don't get it.

TM

Re: Tiger
 

The OddMan is mixed but never identifies that way -- unless he's at a Chinese restaurant and feels like bonding with the waiter -- because when he steps out of his door, he's black. Had he finished growing up in California, he might have felt differently, but his teens and twenties were spent in the South where he has been questioned by police for alleged kidnapping while a passenger in the car with his white girlfriend.

I have a multiethnic background and people are always trying to define me as one thing or another, though my heritage is a little harder to place than the OddMan's or than my current SO, who hails from a deliberately homogenous people. I do not do it; they do. People fixate on ethnicity as they fixate on clothing/jewelry as ways to find similarities and differences and then to prejudge based upon them.

It is as much a reality today as it was 50 years ago and we ignore those prejudgments at our peril.

Re: Tiger
 

The propaganda that was fed to me as a young Canadian was that in Canada, diversity and multiculturalism are the loftiest aims (embodied in Canada), and that is why we are better than the "assimilationist" Americans. I was taught this in Social Studies class and it pretty much stayed with me until about 1999.

Re: Music!
 

"Myspace Player?" The fuck, Weed? You trying to branch out beyond Friendster again?

Re: Tiger
 

2. Call me an angry crank, but I'd much rather find common ground than celebrate what I am or you are. Who the fuck cares? Is there any difference between having five scotches with an Indian versus five with an Englishman or a Japanese person? I have yet to meet an interesting person who used the word "diversity" regularly. It's like talking about drywall. First rule of tolerance club - shut up about tolerance club. Because last I heard, that's the central notion of tolerance.

(Which, of course, I've already broken today by criticizing others. But I was criticizing people for lack of tolerance. So I guess that's tolerant by double negative, no? [Or do I mean, 'Yes?']).

Re: Tiger
 

Alleged or suspected? And if the former, why was she pissed at him?

Re: Music!
 

I'll give you the details via email: ironweed@aol.com

Re: Music!
 

My only criticism is of your failure to realize the full power of the edit function.

Re: Music!
 

I tried to get Hank to help, but he doesn't respond to my PMs any more. :-(

Re: Tiger
 

Is this a joke?

TM

Re: Tiger
 

It's only due to the enormous lack of lustriousness in our shared heritage that I come to this feeling of abandonment, you know. I looked through all the Social Studies books and it all came back to the same horrible reality I'd viewed at every family reunion nearly ending in fisticuffs following a keg and two bottles of Bushmills: Irish Need Not Apply.

Re: Tiger
 

Yeah, I am fucking sick of cultural pride.

Re: Tiger
 

Yes

Re: Tiger
 

This may be the only funny line I've heard about this whole "scandal".

Re: Tiger
 

He's never dated a Black or Latino chick? Not one?

My point on the last thing was, you play the cards your dealt. Rather than fixate on Tiger's pre-occuaption with pasty women, they might focus on trying to figure out how to better attract men. As you noted about ugliness, attractiveness is similarly constant. Hot's hot in every color.

Re: Tiger
 

Meh. It is somewhat integrated. At least SF is. Neighborhoods that used to be all latino, or all gay, or all white, are now pretty mixed.

The separation by ethnic and racial groups seems to happen at a lower income level. In other words, the middle-to-wealthy areas ("middle" in SF being pretty wealthy in most, not all, other places) are pretty mixed -- with the obvious caveat that since (for example) fewer black people are wealthy, fewer black people will live in the wealthy areas. The poorer areas tend to get segregated, not only from the wealthier areas but also from each other.

There are obviously many reasons for this, but one is simply the effect of immigration -- if you were Chinese, poor, non-English-speaking, and coming to this country, you'd move into an area where poeple spoke your language, ate the food you were used to, and maybe you had friends and family you could look to for support. And once you or your descendants got wealthier, you'd get the hell out of Chinatown.

Are we completely integrated? Of course not -- and given that "homogeneity" is dull as shit, I'm not sure that's desirable. But we are also not the opposite of completely integrated.

Re: Tiger
 

She was driving. They pulled her over for speeding. They shined a light in the car, saw him, asked her to step out of the car, took his wallet, and questioned her in detail about his identity because they were convinced that the only way she would be in the car with a black man was if he had kidnapped her.

I cannot remember if this was one of the incidents when he was then taken down to the station or when he was released after a couple of hours of questioning by the side of the road, as his non-menacing ass is frequently being stopped and detained.

Now that he is a first responder, his stops are shorter and end with quick apologies.

Re: Tiger
 

I just think things get very complicated when you start policing who people should be attracted to. I totally get what Thurgreed's saying about living in reality, and I know enough African-American girls to get the point, but it just seems like a step backwards to say that it's best if you date within your race.

Re: Tiger
 

Thanks for that. You helped me stop laughing.

Re: Tiger
 

Joke aside, I am. Why the fuck should I care what my forebears or those who share an odd quirk of genetics with me did?

Should I be proud of U2? Hang a portrait of a Czar on the wall? My grandmother was part Austrian. Lord knows, I can't honor their most famous son.

Re: Tiger
 

What've you got against the Guvernator?

Re: Tiger
 

As far as anyone can tell, no. But that's really just from the dozen or so girls we "know" about.

False, false, fucking false. What you're trying to say is, "White is hot in every color." Please picture all the black women you think are really smokin' hot and then ask yourself whether they have African features. They probably have thin noses and lips that aren't too big.* They're probably very light-skinned. And they sure as hell have straight hair. (And if this doesn't apply to you--which I would find hard to believe--then I'm talking about all the other people in the country).

And black women struggle every day to try to make themselves more attractive. The problem is (and I apologize to everyone else here but you for repeating myself), they are struggling to meet a standard that they cannot achieve. When "focus on trying to figure out how to better attract men" means "figure out how to make yourself look as white as you can," then you're in trouble.

Attractive white features are a constant.

TM

*For noses, read: wide.

Re: Tiger
 

I was thinking the exact same thing. From my admittedly small sample, it seems the average black woman spends far more time and money on making themselves attractive than even the most self obsessed white woman.

One more post about ABBA...
 

I know I spent yesterday doing Internet research on acid reflux medication instead of commenting on ABBA's situation, but I did catch up on the board. As the only regular poster who regularly prosecutes DV cases, here are my thoughts on the subject, taken with the appropriate caveats and exclusions, as I've never had the pleasure of meeting her.

First, ABBA's situation is the best rebuttal to the poster who argue that mandatory arrest statutes should be repealed. ABBA's a professional, educated woman who had the misfortune of falling for a controlling, addicted, charismatic dirtbag. He knocked her up. He brings absolutely nothing to the table, yet ABBA can't really imagine being without him. He's checking up on her, and his "punishment" is hate sex with a hot woman. I don't claim to have an answer for domestic violence. It's an endemic problem that often has substance abuse, mental illness, financial, and childcare components to it. But the common denominator in these cases is control. The victim feels powerless; the aggressor dominates the victim in any way possible. The State has to step in to break that cycle. That's almost always a messy propostion.

Given that it sounds like ABBA has a child with at least an emotionally abusive man, she needs to formulate a plan, seek out resources, and stick to the plan. She needs to get into counseling to deal with all the issues that are on the surface and the ones lurking underneath. I'd want to know if the babydaddy had any history of violence or access to guns. Before giving any ultimatums (and cutting a guy off counts as an ultimatum in this context), I'd discuss exactly what, when, and where I was going to do with someone trusted who has expertise on this subject: a victim advocate, someone who works with battered women (even if ABBA doesn't think she has anything in common with a battered woman), or someone who went through this themselves. The most dangerous time for a woman in ABBA's situation is when she finally decides to leave.

Good luck, and for Heaven's (and your daughter's) sake, don't sleep with the babydaddy again.

Re: Tiger
 

I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I absolutely disagree with that sentiment. I think that people should date whoever they think is attractive. I just think it's fucked up when that class of people is defined as "anyone who is not of _______ race."

The problem, as I see it, is that we've been bombarded with one type of beauty ideal. And saying that people are attracted to who they're attracted to ignores this. The result is, black women, for example, are left on the outside.

I sure as hell didn't date within my race (shorthand for "black" since we've already discussed mixed race realities). But I find all kinds of women attractive. My first wife was white and blond. My wife now is black with African features. I'm not saying everyone should be like me (as I sure as hell ain't perfect and it's fairly clear how shallow I am). But I can certainly understand why black women get so upset when they are constantly being told and shown that they are completely undesirable.

TM

Re: Tiger
 

That is odd.

Most of those I am picturing are as you describe. But that accrues considerably from the fact that the pool is limited by the media, which gets to select what's hot. I have known many black women who were hot and did not fit into all those "white" categories.

On the last thing, I don't think it's a "white" or "black" thing the media holds out as ideal. It's a "perfect" thing that a lot of white women can't attain any more than black women. The razor thin nose thing isn't exactly common among all whites. See: Rhinoplasty. And JLo's perfect skin shade is no more reachable for an Irish girl than it is for a dark Black woman. I could go on, citing all sorts of arguments psychologists and anthropologusts make about how the media puts unrealistic expectations on women, but I think you see the point. Black women aren't alone in being outside what's considered the perfect archetype of beauty in this country.

Re: Tiger
 

I bet. at a diverse Minnesota party there must all kinds of tension as the various peoples fight over whose homeland has the superior way of pickling herring.

Re: Tiger
 

To Sebby:
See also T. Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

Re: Tiger
 

Okay. Other than to say that black women are furthest from the ideal, I'm not going to get into this any further. You see what you want to see. I have my opinions. That's that.

TM

Re: Tiger
 

The last time I went out out in Minneapolis, I was surrounded by the most beautiful Somali (I think) women. Of course, that was at one of two bars downtown (back then) where they didn't have ACDC on a constant loop, but they were there.

TM

Re: Tiger
 

Umm, do you actually know any black women?

Attractiveness is not the issue -- unless you define attractiveness as looking white.

Re: Tiger
 

They could have been Somali -- Somali women seem to have a higher than average number of beautiful women.

Re: Tiger
 

Yes. Am I going to raise this with them? No.