dan le retard......on the media coverage of the ST situation.....a gem....a must read

[hogfat]

http://http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/story/324931.html

[Enter Apotheosis]

I don't know why you would ****ize the guy's name when he wrote a fair and honest piece... your timing could be a lot better on that one.

[Larry Brown #43]

http://http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/story/324931.html

Your link is busted...here's the proper one. Great piece by the way. Pretty much sums up what a lot of us are feeling.

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/story/324931.html

[hogfat]

I don't know why you would ****ize the guy's name when he wrote a fair and honest piece... your timing could be a lot better on that one.

i always ****ize his name......its just something ive done for a long time

i liked the article........he wrote another gem the other day.......i like alot of his work and listen to his show everyday........but hes still jackass

this is a great article too

No logic to a tombstone with 1983-2007 on it

Posted on Tue, Nov. 27, 2007

BY DAN LE BATARD

dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com

You remember him wrapped in so much armor. Muscles. Helmet. Padding. Distrust. The late Sean Taylor was known as one of the most menacing hitters in a very violent league. But when the news organizations started putting his fresh face on TV screens in recent days -- no helmet, no scowl, no aura -- you couldn't help but notice this: My God, he looked like such a baby-faced child.

You can't apply logic to the illogical or reason with the unreasonable. Entangle a gunshot and death and mystery and fame, and it starts people gossiping and filing it under journalism. So now CNN and FOX and the rest rush toward the noise, and add to it, trying to make sense of something that makes none. You see the awful mathematics of ''1983-2007'' on a fresh tombstone, and there isn't a lot that gets seen clearly through the subsequent sobs.

We, the media and the public, didn't know Taylor well. He didn't speak to or trust reporters, and you couldn't really blame him. But now too much of his eulogy is about his public misdeeds because he didn't give us much else. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. But it is, unfortunately.

And the echoing questions after his death become bigger because the insatiable machine must be fed and the news organizations insist on trying to apply depth and meaning and sense to the senseless. What's going on at the cursed University of Miami? What's with the crime in South Florida? What does Taylor's heartbreaking death say about guns, about Hurricanes, about athletes, about us?

The questions don't have any good or right answers today. They aren't even particularly fair, especially not with an absence of facts and not when the speculation smears a city and school while a broken family weeps. But they are pretty impossible to avoid when a famous man dies too young and too publicly and too mysteriously, and he's from a place that has too much of this senselessness in its past.

Taylor had a machete under the bed in his $700,000 home? Why? Intruders trying to break in twice in a few days in a nice neighborhood? Does that suggest they were looking for him? A shot to the groin? Does this have to do with vengeance? They are the kind of questions that make you queasy, and don't make this feel very much like a robbery gone awry.

And then there's this: Did Taylor's renegade past finally catch up to him? If this wasn't an accident, if Taylor wasn't just an innocent victim who surprised a burglar, what in his life was so dark that someone would run the risk of the spotlight that comes from murdering the famous?

Clinton Portis always said that Taylor was the craziest Hurricane ever -- not an easy list to top, that one. One of Taylor's many agents remembers that Taylor was reckless beyond reason. But public figures aren't as one-dimensional as we make them, so these morsels of information might not be any more telling or complete than if he once gave out turkeys during a holiday season.

The past is a constant tension with today's athlete, though. The inability to cut ties with it is part of what gets Michael Vick and Pac-Man Jones wrecked and may have harmed Taylor, too. It is easy to say the rich and famous should just forget about childhood troublemakers who might threaten their richness and fame. But listen to Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, who came from a place not unlike Taylor, on the subject:

''People always want to talk about the fruit of the situation and not the root,'' he says. ``It is probably best that you cut off all the guys you grew up with and not say another word to them. It is probably the right thing to do. But what do you do when you pick up that toothbrush, and you are alone in the mirror, and you remember that guy's mom fed you when you had nothing? You are wearing a $150,000 watch and you can't give him $5,000?''

Irvin marvels at how quickly people who didn't come from his place are to dismiss people who did.

''I'm not saying you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth, but you had a spoon,'' he says. ``A lot of guys didn't. Where were you when we were starving? I didn't have a Christmas. I'd have cornflakes but no sugar. So I borrowed sugar from someone in the hood. And I ate my cornflakes with water. You ever felt that situation?''

Lose your friends. Get rid of your friends. Taylor likely heard that a lot after one of his bad public moments.

''That's easy to do when you are only living in the head,'' Irvin says. ``But when I remember someone feeding me when I didn't have anything, now we're living in my heart.''

And what can you do but cry when that heart stops living?

[CallMeGreen]

I too suggest reworking your thread title. I expected to see another controversial, half-baked media spillage, but found completely the opposite.

He properly credits Pedro Taylor for being strong and calm in the public scrutiny following his son's death/murder. There's more behind this man than him just being a seasoned Police Chief. And I don't think it's just that he's been desensitized by his job.

I think Mr. Taylor's poise has given us some closer insight into what his son's true personality was. And I suspect his son was closer to him in nature than the one-time thug that much of the media is trying to portray him to be.

[hogfat]

all kidding aside le retard is a quality journalist and his radio show is among the funniest shows in all of media

[bedlamVR]

I was mislead by the title too . that was a very passionate article....

[MF Doom]

Great article, but why the "le be turd" in the title?

[hogfat]

Great article, but why the "le be turd" in the title?

because i while im a fan of dans.......i think hes a jackass

[Larry Brown #43]

I really think it would be a good idea to change the thread title. It's easy to do. I think the thread title is distracting people from the important message in LeBatard's column, which is a shame because it's one of the best pieces I've read since this horrible event took place.

[hogfat]

is that better?

[Larry Brown #43]

is that better?

For someone with only 10 posts you sure act pretty comfortable around here. Congratulations on your poor taste.

[hogfat]

why shouldnt i be comfortable?

i am a big UM fan......i came hear on monday and decided to register just so i could also add anything i had seen/heard that wasnt already here because i know how most redskins fans feel about sean......which is about the same that most of us UM fans feel about him also

[StillUnknown]

i've been in the minority as i've always like Le Betard as a journalist, every member of the media should read this piece.

[DCranon21]

I changed the title topic on my reply, because he was dead on with this article. Instead of trying to bang his chest and become a "I knew this would happen" or whatever some of these idiots been trying to do, he's showing respect. I don't care who or how high you are in the media, they need to start to show some respect, instead of driving his name through the ground.

[Jimbo]

Getting away from the title of the thread for a minute, it's nice to see a journalist apologize for those idiots within the fraternity who can't resist wafting the stink of their poop into everyone else's eyes, causing them to well up in anger.

Thanks Dan. :applause:

[Larry Brown #43]

why shouldnt i be comfortable?

i am a big UM fan......i came hear on monday and decided to register just so i could also add anything i had seen/heard that wasnt already here because i know how most redskins fans feel about sean......which is about the same that most of us UM fans feel about him also

Welcome to the board. I'm just suggesting that now is probably not the best time to poke fun at the name of a columnist who beautifully captured what most of us on this board have been feeling during this painful time.

Also, the newer posters around here tend to take their cue from the more veteran posters. That's all. I'm not trying to steer you wrong.

[Mania]

Dan is doing ST justice and doesn't deserve to have his name ****ized.

MODs, if he doesn't fix this, I would suggest changing the title.

[Special K]

I too liked the article. I thought it was very accurate...I'm pissed at the media for its emphasis on the negatives of Sean's life (like none of us has EVER made a poor decision in our early 20's!). There was so much more to Taylor than those couple negative incidents. S.T. was a complicated and passionate person, too bad the media didn't spend a frickin' second looking into the plethora of positive aspects of Sean's life. Jerks.

And the poster about Brett Favre is EXACTLY right, I highly doubt that if he died in a manner like S.T., half the news stories would consist of his pain-killer addiciton.

[Aston]

I thought it was pretty decent article, though ironic in a fundamental way. He writes the article on the idea that he's ashamed at how reporting is slanted, opinionated, biased and unobjective. And he does this with his own slanted, opinionated, biased and subjective view of the situation. No big deal, just an observation.

And although I admired how he comes to Taylor's defense in the matter of how his death is being tied to his worst two public moments, the following tidbit I found to be VERY questionable:

Brett Favre, rest assured, won't be eulogized with excessive emphasis on his pain-killer addiction, especially not if he were to die this horrifically.

If Brett Favre overdoses on pain killers after the game, or dies because of some weird complication with all the medicine he's taking, or because of lingering effects that could be traced to a chemical source, you don't think the fact that he's had a history with addiction in the past won't be conveniently brought up the way Sean's violent incidents have been brought up?

If Favre's house gets broken into and he's shot to death, then no, his pain addiction is completely irrelevant. Likewise, if Taylor randomly overdoses on pain killers that doctors didn't know he was fatally allergic to, I'm sure his troubled past wouldn't be mentioned at all unless it were to illustrate how much he's matured.

But to dismiss Taylor's past, the crowd he used to be associated with, and statements such as Rolle's indicating that bad blood still existed as completely irrelevant is either naive or just plain stupid.

I'm saying it had anything to do with it. I'm also not saying that if Favre keels over and dies from a codene overdose after the game tonight, it's because of his battle with drug addiction. I'm just saying it's logical to consider it as being possibly relevant, for obvious reasons.

Regardless, as a Redskin fan, you should be immune to piss poor media coverage by now. The only proper coverage about Taylor you're going to get is right here on this board, curtousy of all the mods and on-site reporters that have worked countless hours through this tragic week.

Thanks to all of you by the way. Can't be overstated how much we appreciate you guys.

[ramirez415]

Wow not what I expected, change the title man.

Great acrticle, Lebetard hit teh nail on teh head. Even he knows the media are douches.