The shooting of Sean Taylor is a tragedy that sent the area and the nation into shock. A Mother is without a son, a fiance without a husband, a child without a father.
Forever.
I got caught up in the emotion of it all last week and made the egregious mistake of attacking another colleague, the Washington Post's Len Shapiro, calling him a "racists," a "dog" and a "skunk" while giving my two cents on the matter in an interview with Mark Gray on The Sports Groove on WOL-AM.
Len, you didn't deserve to be attacked like that. I don't know enough about you to lodge these charges against you, especially when we are in a time when real hate crimes are on the rise according to every indicator.
Did I disagree with what you wrote? I did. I had a huge problem with you claiming that Taylor, whom you admitted you never got to know, embraced the "thug" lifestyle, and I have found this to be a stereotypical analogy made by many of my colleagues covering African American Athletes.
The African-American community is tired of these unfounded conclusions - that we are hopelessly pathological and bent on our own destruction - and the generalizing that too easily goes with it.
And guess what? The rank-and-file of black athletes are sick of it, too. This explains why one Wizard who saw what I said reported on local blogs voiced his support of my position with a protracted hug and a handshake prior to the game in Philadelphia.
What we are finding out about these alleged killers is that Sean Taylor's past youthful indiscretions didn't even create a negligible connection between his murder and how he lived his life. They are charged with unpremeditated murder for a killing police say was unplanned, and with each and every detail and fact we are finding out that Taylor was almost certainly chosen by random.
But I stray.
While you now appear to be dead wrong in your rush to judgment, I was certainly wrong to assail you the way I did. I should have voiced my opinion in more civil terms and we could have agreed to disagree and left it at that.
In the end, it won't bring back the son, fiance and the father.
