Kobe Bryant on defense. During a heated game with the San Antonio Spurs, the LA Lakers superstar was caught on camera mouthing a couple of offensive F words toward the ref who had just slammed him with a technical foul.  GLAAD quickly went on offense and NBA Commissioner fined him $100,000. Bryant is appealing the fine but apologizing for the slur. “What I said last night should not be taken literally,” he said in a statement.  “My actions were out of frustration during the heat of the game, period,” he maintained, adding “The words expressed do NOT reflect my feelings towards the gay and lesbian communities and were NOT meant to offend anyone.”
IMHO: I find the offending term offensive myself. But I’d like to know, did he actually scream the offending words at the ref or more or less mutter them to himself toward the ref?  The reporting I’ve seen leaves that unclear. In the former case, a fine is appropriate. In that latter, it’s creepy. (Watch the video on ABC News and see what you think.) If the P.C.P.D. has reached the point of lip reading what pro athletes mouth during a tense game, that may be taking the ball a bit over the line.

Is a guy being run down by an ice cream truck funny? Norm MacDonald is one of my favorite comedians. Nobody delivers a line quite like him and I’m looking forward to catching his new Sports Show on Comedy Central (sort of the The Daily Show with an ESPN twist).  However,  I found a clip of the show featured on The Wrap to be more than a bit objectionable. It shows a video of a man (apparently taken from YouTube) dancing happily in middle of the street when he’s suddenly slammed by a passing ice cream truck.  Norm makes some jokes. The audience dutifully laughs at his glibness. At least on the rather lengthy clip (01:39, to be precise), we’re never even reassuringly told something like “Don’t worry. The guy wasn’t hurt.” We don’t know if he was hurt or not and apparently aren’t expected to care. BTW, it looked like he probably was. And we wonder why our society seems to be getting ever coarser.

Now, if the person hit were a priest or a nun, the Catholic League would go ballistic. If it happened during a Gay Pride parade, GLAAD would be up in arms. And, though the guy appears to be black, the driver of the truck isn’t heard saying (or seen mouthing) the “N” word, so the NAACP appears fine with it.  There’s also no anti-Islamic slur involved (lucky driver) so CAIR doesn’t care. No, it’s just a guy being hit by a truck. And we’re supposed to think it’s funny. It’s not.

Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11