Rich stupid people

“Why are rich people so stupid?”

This was a question posed to me by my friend on Saturday night. I had only one answer.

“A lot of star athletes graduate from high school because they’re good at basketball. Teachers are afraid to give them bad grades, fearing that they won’t be academically eligible to play ball. Then they go to college and blow it off, dreaming of their big payday. When they finally get it, we have yet another rich person with the equivalency of a ninth grade education.”

That isn’t to say all basketball players are dumb. In fact, there are plenty of intelligent ball players. Unfortunately, the dumb ones decided to surface last week in light of former NBA player John Amaechi’s coming out.

By now, everyone has heard about Tim Hardaway’s comments on a Miami radio show. The former all-star said that he not only hated gay people, but that he didn’t believe homosexuality belonged in the United States. The comments sparked a huge backlash, causing the NBA to cancel Hardaway’s scheduled appearances during last weekend’s NBA All-Star Weekend.

After making the comments and receiving a heavy public backlash Hardaway tried to apologize by telling the Associated Press (AP) that he didn’t expect his comments to be as heavily scrutinized as they were. And that he probably shouldn’t have used the word “hate.”

“It was like, you know, I had killed somebody…I never knew that this was going to escalate that high,” Hardaway said.

Exactly what did Hardaway think would happen by announcing to the country he was a hate mongering homophobe? Did he expect to be patted on the back or to receive endorsement deals from the Republican Party and the Catholic Church? You’d think a professional athlete would be smart enough to control the words that come out of his mouth, to understand that millions of people are listening when you make a comment on a radio station. Apparently not.

LeBron James, on the other hand, is only slightly smarter. He realized that he had to be careful with his words, and that’s the big reason his comments didn’t get near as much publicity. But while he never said he hated gay people or that thought it was morally wrong to be gay, he didn’t exactly make the most intelligent response.

James told the AP last weekend that he believed hiding your sexual orientation is a trust issue. Players need to trust one another, and by not coming clean about who you really are, you’re losing that trust.

Excuse me?

Will someone tell me why it’s any of his business who is teammate is dating, man or woman? I sure hope that James tells every one of his teammates whether or not he has a date for that night and who he is taking out. Otherwise, he might be sacrificing some of that trust.

Perhaps had James gone to college, he'd understand a little bit better that another person's personal life is none of his business.

As it is, he's just another one of those rich people who are stupid.