Defensive boxing wizard Floyd Mayweather is getting lit up like a pinball machine.
The master of the shoulder roll is getting clocked by one critical comment after another from American sports pundits and you know the ones that hurt "Money" the most are those from such African American scribes/commentators as Michael Wilbon (ESPN) and Tiny Tim Smith (New York Daily News).
These folks have taken half-Twit Mayweather to their moral woodsheds for the fighter's irritating remarks about New York Knicks hotshot Jeremy Lin drawing media and fan attention because he is of Asian descent.
SEE DIFFERENT VIEW ON MAYWEATHER'S RACIAL RESENTMENT.
This from a guy, who as I tweet, tweet, tweeted does not know the difference between Tyrone and Taiwan, a guy who doesn't know the difference between Lin's lofty alma mater, Ivy League Boston bastion Harvard and the Yale Locksmithing School.
To twist an old Alcoholics Anonymous catchphrase a bit, Mayweather knows more about jail than he ever will about Yale, boola boola.
But Gordo Marley, as I'm known in Hawaian Gardens, defends Mayweather's comments and his right to make them, however idiotic and juvenile they seem.
It's the American Way, First Amendment and all that. There was nothing defamatory in Mayweather's comments on the NBA sensation and Lin brushed them like so much cat hair on his shoulder.
Mayweather at least didn't charge or even imply that Lin's hardcourt exploits have been fueled by illegal drug use. Mayweather did not go into "Poochi--ow" defamatory territory.
Mayweather just said something a fourth grader can understand, that part of the furor over Lin is because he is Asian ancestry and, Yao Ming aside, that is unusual in the NBA.
It's unusual in the way that the black dominated league saw Jerry West and Pete Maravich as unusual.
It's unusual in the way Dave Cowens, later of Celtics fame and acclaim, was the lone Caucasian starter on his Florida State "Busted Flush" team.
Let's put it this way, how many other NBA stars or even flashes in the pan can you name whose parents came from Taiwan?
Class is out.
Speaking of class, you knew Mayweather had none for a long time.
But vigorously defend his right to be stupid.
That way we preserve that right for all Americans, especially guys named Santorum and Romney and a one in a million bufoon named Palin.
Do I think what Mayweather tweeted was moronic?
Yes, but do I defend his right to state and even belabor the obvious?
As Palin would say it, you betcha!
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
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