There’s so much in this post that is wrong, bordering on ridiculous, that I almost don’t know what to say in response to it.
Does a girl start with the struggle to find a way to blame the victim? Or perhaps we should be considering how a grown man reaches the point where he comes to believe there’s some vast Mafia-like thuggery of African Americans in this culture, all sending each other messages full of omerta and death to snitches? Or maybe it’s the obvious outrage and jealousy the man feels that another man can get away with having a child young and not being forced to marry or even date the mother of his baby? Or perhaps we should start with the question of just where Martin Brady thinks the moral place for a little girl to be sleeping is?
No, instead, I think I’ll use this post to serve notice to my black readers and let them know that I, like Martin Brady, am on to y’all. Clearly, using Brady as a guide, it’s safe to extrapolate from what one sees on BET and other television channels how it is that African Americans differ from the rest of us normal folks. Well, I watch a lot of “That’s so Raven,” and I plan to get together with Brady and inform him that I have seen with my own eyes proof that black people are psychic.
Yes. Psychic. Which makes your lack of snitching even more reprehensible, because, of course, you know with certainty who it is who’s done what and when.
You just wait for Brady’s stern lecture about that!
Tiny Cat Pants 
What a racist asshole.
I knew you were going to say that.
Oh, oh! I knew you were going to say that!
You know what that implies…
Perhaps I can clear things up a little, so that Mr. Brady is not so frightened. There are many gang related “messages” sent and i struggle to remember them all from my childhood, and can’t keep up with all the new ones, but the dreaded” kitchen knife on the bed” is one so horrible that one cannot shake that memory loose. Most naive people would assume that the burglar had used the utensil to pry something open, a drawer, a jewelry box, and simply tossed it aside. But every person of color, (as we are all current or former gang members) knows that it means “marry your daughters mother immediately, or we will attack you while you sleep.”
There are other more commonly known signs. When the Italians one-upped us with the horse-head message, we struggled to find one as ominous. (Not many horses grazing around in East Los Angeles), but we eventually developed our own ways of scaring our victims:
tamale skins left on doorstep: We’re coming after your W.I.C. coupons.
Coconut shell on coffee table: I’m knocking up your daughter
Folded piece of paper with name on it left on torn screen door: We killed a cousin of yours. (This is necessary because since we all have thousands of cousins, it helps to be specific)
Of course, I cannot divulge most of them, lest I find myself targeted for “the never ending silence.”
I too, find it next to impossible that Mr. Taylor turned his life around after the birth of his daughter, regardless of what his coach, his teammates, and his family and friends say. After all, how would they know? It appears that only me and Mr. Brady were able to see the subtext of that article.
Y’alls naiveté astounds me.
Oh, Mack, I hope you haven’t divuldged too much just bravely sharing what you’ve shared here.
The real question is whether this is the same Martin Brady who writes for our local alternative paper and, if so, what exactly is he providing an alternative to?
I’m not going to want to read that, am I?
See? You’re psychic, too!
I wonder if it is the same. At the risk of stepping into stereotypes myself it seems rare that a theater critic would be concerned with sports media or vice versa. However it just might explain why I find myself disagreeing with the Scene’s Mr. Brady so often on said theater criticism.
Magni asked what I was going to ask, so I guess I have my answer, too.
I’m going to regret doing this… *reads the article*
GODDAMMIT!
*ahem* Wow, I guess I am psychic. I regretted reading that.
I’m going to go do work now, so’s I avoid putting my fist through this monitor.
Jon, keeping in mind that I stay in my house in almost hermit-like proportions and my gossip grapevine is so thin as to be more like a grape-thread, I have heard that Martin Brady, theater critic, has always wanted to be a sportswriter. That’s what made me wonder.
Mag, sorry.
This is the stuff that sports talk radio is made of. This dude is just one of a million. The other 999,999 are just too dumb to figure out blogging.
Oof. Nah, it’s my fault Aunt B. After all, my awesome psychic powers warned me that it was going to be bad, and I did it anyway.
Guess it must just be my “make dumb decisions with my life” black person genes acting up.
It’s not your fault, Mag. Your dad probably put you in your bedroom to sleep when you were a very small child which, as we all now know, is wrong and immoral and probably warped you for life.