Guilt By National Basketball Association

Who knew the Village Voice would turn out not to be big NASCAR fans?

Not all of America loves NASCAR. It's mostly those who live in the "red" swath of middle America, an area that includes the South and the Southwest and that helped elect George Bush last November.

NASCAR is incredibly tedious and I approve of anything that works to diminish its popularity, even equally tedious knee-jerk Village Voice pieces insinuating that fans of the sport are racists. Is there some way we can allege that they're child molesters, as well? I'm hoping this tactic will be the one that finally works for golf, as an increasing number of adolescent girls start turning pro.

As opposed to the NASCAR driver presented in 3 [Dale Earnhardt], a white man who leathers his hands working with tools and relying on his daring to earn victories, the American Sportsman/black athlete squanders his God-given talent and is loud-talking and brash. He is a millionaire whiner who complains about how inadequate is his pay (Latrell Sprewell), or who brawls with paying fans (Ron Artest). He is lascivious, perhaps even a rapist (Kobe Bryant). And there's reason to think he's a cheat (Barry Bonds).

I kind of get where he's going with this, but the trouble is that Spree is a millionaire whiner, Artest is a headcase, Bonds is, if not a juicer, a hard man to root for, and the less said about Kobe the better. The list of black American athletes who exemplify the virtues the writer spends much of the piece being snippy about - Donovan McNabb, Kevin Garnett, Dwyane Wade, Byron Leftwich, Priest Holmes, etc, etc - is a much longer one, but for some mysterious reason he doesn't get around to mentioning them.

In snarling defiance of a country that seems to have an endless supply of indistinguishable rugby variants (and don't get me started on cricket) I have also been keeping up with this.

Fuck an endowment, campus, thousands of alumni. . . this is between three people: the coach, his former star, and, uh, a large state university... Even if it makes absolutely no sense, he wants Cincinnati to face him like a man.

Good stuff from the always-entertaining Kenyon Martin. Now there's a fellow who could make NASCAR highlights worth watching.