New Details About Taylor's Murder

[SC Skins Fan]

Originally Posted by oldhog44

Bucha punk bitches! I hope they get ass raped every day.. and ten times a day during football season.

Are comments like this really necessary? It would be nice if incidents such as this, and NIU and VT etc., could lead to some sort of elevated discussion but it seems to often to lead to a race to the bottom. I guess if that somehow makes you feel better, but it doesn't seem to add much at all and avoids any real engagement with any of the issues in play.

At least Wilbon raised a legitimate issue (read full here Wilbon: Dying young, and black, in America - NFL - MSNBC.com), and did it a little better than most (and I was pissed at him too, even wrote him a long email and wrote something to LaConfora too Guest Blog - Ehren - Redskins Insider) but apart from some of his hyperbole ("I wasn't surprised...") at least he had a point to make and suggested a larger context was necessary to understand this tragedy. I think that if you actually take some time to contemplate what he was saying, in light of the little bit of perspective we now have, it was not totally absurd.

The reflexive response seen in the immediate aftermath of the crime from blowhards like Cowherd et al. (and even Wilbon) was off the mark in that they ignored everything we knew (or had a sense of and learned more about) about Sean Taylor (the blog from JLC on his conversation with Renaldo Wynn comes to mind Renaldo Wynn And Sean - Redskins Insider). But what you have to appreciate, and what is perhaps more tragic, is that the last part of Wilbon's column does seem to ring true.

Originally Posted by Wilbon

The issue of separating yourself from a harmful environment is a recurring theme in the life of black men. It has nothing to do with football, or Sean Taylor or even sports. To frame it as a sports issue is as insulting as it is naive. Most of us, perhaps even the great majority of us who grew up in big urban communities, have to make a decision at some point to hang out or get out.

The kid who becomes a pharmaceutical rep has the same call to make as the lawyer or delivery guy or accountant or sportswriter or football player: Cut off anybody who might do harm, even those who have been friends from the sandbox, or go along to get along.

IF what we have heard is true, then the people who meant to rob Sean Taylor and who murdered Sean Taylor, were linked to him through his sister and one had been to the house to attend a party for a boyfriend of hers. So it wasn't a 'gang hit' or someone getting retribution for some ATVs, but there was a connection. That places, perhaps, in even deeper relief what Wilbon was saying. Because how hard is it to leave not only boyhood friends but to distance yourself from your own family? Certainly it says that as a professional athlete, or anyone else of means, you have to tread extremely lightly and be guarded in those you let near you. I'm not blaming the victim here, but it is also a bit too easy to just say 'Wilbon is an idiot I hate him' and 'I hope those punk bitches get raped in jail' (seriously?) then to actually think about the complexities of lived experience.