Saturday, February 13, 2010

"If He Moves In, I Tell Ya, It'll Ruin the Neighborhood..."

Why is is that even in this day and age, there are certain white people who will still vehemently point an accusatory finger at an aspiring black or Latino family (from behind the privacy of their curtained living room window, of course) that is trying to move from the inner city into a better, typically suburban neighborhood (typically theirs), and yet these same people will not, cannot or choose not to recognize that the advent of Lance Armstrong's arrival on the triathlon scene in Kona in 2011 or 2012 is a real blight? Even and indeed ironically with a black president in the White House that many of these triathletic people elected, they still nurture their own private paroxysms of negativity regarding how a "minority" family's presence will lower property values, bring ghetto behaviors 'round here, inter alia, while in a stunning reversal of true and valuable discernment (some prefer to call it discrimination) they welcome Armstrong to Kona: the bringer of poor sportsmanship, rancor, divisiveness, corporate businessmen (who've never swum more than twenty-five yards or rode a bike more than a mile) calling the shots, Media Carta, and some would even say, doping. Further, isn't it wild, yet germaine that all of these, er, "benefits" that Lance brings are exactly what purportedly takes a neighborhood, er, in this case, a sport, down? Wake up, triathletic community. This is precisely the ish that drove the Tarahumara back to the canyons, per Christopher McDougall's book "Born to Run." There is a reason that the Ironman takes place on the big island of Hawaii, in the water and over the lava beds sacred to Pele, the Goddess of Fire. The relative obscurity of this location, I believe, perhaps naively, but I believe, is to foster the spiritual aspect of the sport, and to bring out the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual best in and of the human beings who aspire to complete this challenge. Now the introduction, nay, the forceful entry of Mister "You Aren't My Father!" seems to threaten the very spirituality, purity, and balanced foundation of the sport. The very best, Rhadamanthine outcome would be for Lance to lose to some young upstart who recites poetry, loves his ONE woman, and laughs. Oh: and who is, of course, a "minority."

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