Merelan
Lady's Love
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2000
- Posts
- 10,812
This was in this mornings news. I am showing the whole article, and hoping you read it, so you see what I mean when I say:
We are a take out society. We want our food, our love, our mail and our friendships and we want them now. Everything we do seems to be geared to how fast we can get it. Including our perceptions of people, no matter if they may be wrong, or right. I am not sure what I am saying here, or what I am trying to say. I am not eloquent like lavender, or bold and word wise like Andra Jenny.
What I see as I read this article is what the writer points out. When the incident took place, instead of outrage at the attackers, and relief he was uninjured and his family safe. We focused on the jewelry and how much it was worth.
Well, here is the article. Maybe I am just a fool, but it helps to know there is at least one journalist out there willing to step up and say we focus on the wrong values.
The music goes thump, thump, thump out of the weight room speakers in Syracuse
University's old Manley Field House, and Will Allen, long the shy, introspective football star, raises his voice, talking louder and louder over the noise. Suddenly, there's a seriousness scrubbed on his face, his jaw is clenched, his eyes alive. Yes, the No. 1 draft pick of the New York Giants is angry America has met him as a
shameful stereotype, some sort of Deion Sanders with a booster seat.
One hundred and fifty thousand dollars of jewelry, the wire reports screamed,
blood in the water on a slow news cycle for talk show hosts and columnists. Three masked gunmen robbed him at gunpoint last week, doused him with gasoline and threatened to light a match unless he passed over the 51-carrot diamond, platinum-plated bracelet, the diamond earrings, the Rolex.
When the police report was released, it wasn't so disturbing that a kid gets robbed in his hometown, with the key in the door to his apartment, and his wife and baby son sleeping inside. No, no, no.
Did you hear what he was wearing?
Did you hear what it cost?
Will Allen, the victim, the All-American, the honors student and Economics major, has turned into the center of the moral debate. This had him talking loudly over the music, over the noise of a nation. This wasn't the right introduction to Will Allen, not right at all.
"That's what is pissing me off," Allen says. "First of all, that stuff was worth nowhere near that much. Nowhere near. Not half. People just think I'm some guy burning money, and that's not it. You see a suit you like and it's $1,200, you don't say, 'Well, I'd better not buy that suit. Someone is gonna rob me.' People get what they
can afford, but nobody goes in and says that. If you work hard for it, you should able to wear what you like. For the first time, I'm in a situation where I can get some of the things that I like. I know that it's not going to hurt me financially, if I can do some of these things."
"I mean, when do you wear your best stuff? When you go out. If you went in the (nightclub) I went that night (of the robbery), everybody had necklaces on. Or bracelets. It might not have been as expensive as my stuff, but if they could afford it, they would wear it too. You see these old women with big rocks on their fingers around town. Who tells them to buy smaller diamonds and not wear them?"
He isn't an old woman with a rock, but a fleet, 22-year-old All-America out of Syracuse with surreal speed, and maybe, this fits him snuggly into a shameful stereotype. The Giants wanted him in the worst way. They needed a cornerback to
start opposite Jason Sehorn, and general manager Ernie Accorsi did something that hadn't been done in the history of the franchise: They traded up to get him, a move Accorsi hasn't regretted for a moment. Allen has a chance to take a terrific defense, and maybe, make it great.
"We did our homework on this kid," Accorsi says. "It's so unfair to take sketch information and turn it into a profile on a guy."
Everyone studies a wire report for 10 seconds, and they dismiss Allen as a product of the Look At Me Generation. And yet, beyond the staggering figures for the jewelry, it didn't tell you that he graduated Syracuse in three years, but decided to
stay as a graduate student and work his way into the first round of the draft. It doesn't tell you his mother taught him the value of money, of a hard-day's work, by bringing him with her to work, hanging dry wall.
He's proud of the glistening jewelry, proud of what it represents. Where Allen was raised in Syracuse, most everyone driving his model of Mercedes, wearing his jewelry, happens to be a drug dealer. When Allen visited his old high school, Corcoran, this summer, the young kids marveled to the coach, Leo Cosgrove, over the beauty of the bracelet.
"If I'm a young kid and I see person I know that grew up the same way I did, in the same neighborhood, if he could do it from here, I can do it more here," Allen says.
"They can think, 'I don't have to look up to these drug dealers in town.' If you walk around this town, you see all the stuff kids look up to -- mostly the cars -- the drug dealers have. Now you see a person who got it the hard way, and you can respect that. I can do it. He's from the same neighborhood I'm from."
"I would want to pat them on the back, personally. And say, 'I really respect the way you're doing it.' But this other junk they're doing? This is ridiculous."
So, three armed thugs robbed him in the shadows of his front door, shooting a frightful scare into him just weeks before leaving Syracuse for the start of the Giants training camp in July 26. When it was over, he sat inside his hometown apartment
and felt lucky to be alive. As it turns out, this was just the sad, start to the fleecing of a good kid named Will Allen. Remember, the outrage belongs on the men with the masks.
We are a take out society. We want our food, our love, our mail and our friendships and we want them now. Everything we do seems to be geared to how fast we can get it. Including our perceptions of people, no matter if they may be wrong, or right. I am not sure what I am saying here, or what I am trying to say. I am not eloquent like lavender, or bold and word wise like Andra Jenny.
What I see as I read this article is what the writer points out. When the incident took place, instead of outrage at the attackers, and relief he was uninjured and his family safe. We focused on the jewelry and how much it was worth.
Well, here is the article. Maybe I am just a fool, but it helps to know there is at least one journalist out there willing to step up and say we focus on the wrong values.
The music goes thump, thump, thump out of the weight room speakers in Syracuse
University's old Manley Field House, and Will Allen, long the shy, introspective football star, raises his voice, talking louder and louder over the noise. Suddenly, there's a seriousness scrubbed on his face, his jaw is clenched, his eyes alive. Yes, the No. 1 draft pick of the New York Giants is angry America has met him as a
shameful stereotype, some sort of Deion Sanders with a booster seat.
One hundred and fifty thousand dollars of jewelry, the wire reports screamed,
blood in the water on a slow news cycle for talk show hosts and columnists. Three masked gunmen robbed him at gunpoint last week, doused him with gasoline and threatened to light a match unless he passed over the 51-carrot diamond, platinum-plated bracelet, the diamond earrings, the Rolex.
When the police report was released, it wasn't so disturbing that a kid gets robbed in his hometown, with the key in the door to his apartment, and his wife and baby son sleeping inside. No, no, no.
Did you hear what he was wearing?
Did you hear what it cost?
Will Allen, the victim, the All-American, the honors student and Economics major, has turned into the center of the moral debate. This had him talking loudly over the music, over the noise of a nation. This wasn't the right introduction to Will Allen, not right at all.
"That's what is pissing me off," Allen says. "First of all, that stuff was worth nowhere near that much. Nowhere near. Not half. People just think I'm some guy burning money, and that's not it. You see a suit you like and it's $1,200, you don't say, 'Well, I'd better not buy that suit. Someone is gonna rob me.' People get what they
can afford, but nobody goes in and says that. If you work hard for it, you should able to wear what you like. For the first time, I'm in a situation where I can get some of the things that I like. I know that it's not going to hurt me financially, if I can do some of these things."
"I mean, when do you wear your best stuff? When you go out. If you went in the (nightclub) I went that night (of the robbery), everybody had necklaces on. Or bracelets. It might not have been as expensive as my stuff, but if they could afford it, they would wear it too. You see these old women with big rocks on their fingers around town. Who tells them to buy smaller diamonds and not wear them?"
He isn't an old woman with a rock, but a fleet, 22-year-old All-America out of Syracuse with surreal speed, and maybe, this fits him snuggly into a shameful stereotype. The Giants wanted him in the worst way. They needed a cornerback to
start opposite Jason Sehorn, and general manager Ernie Accorsi did something that hadn't been done in the history of the franchise: They traded up to get him, a move Accorsi hasn't regretted for a moment. Allen has a chance to take a terrific defense, and maybe, make it great.
"We did our homework on this kid," Accorsi says. "It's so unfair to take sketch information and turn it into a profile on a guy."
Everyone studies a wire report for 10 seconds, and they dismiss Allen as a product of the Look At Me Generation. And yet, beyond the staggering figures for the jewelry, it didn't tell you that he graduated Syracuse in three years, but decided to
stay as a graduate student and work his way into the first round of the draft. It doesn't tell you his mother taught him the value of money, of a hard-day's work, by bringing him with her to work, hanging dry wall.
He's proud of the glistening jewelry, proud of what it represents. Where Allen was raised in Syracuse, most everyone driving his model of Mercedes, wearing his jewelry, happens to be a drug dealer. When Allen visited his old high school, Corcoran, this summer, the young kids marveled to the coach, Leo Cosgrove, over the beauty of the bracelet.
"If I'm a young kid and I see person I know that grew up the same way I did, in the same neighborhood, if he could do it from here, I can do it more here," Allen says.
"They can think, 'I don't have to look up to these drug dealers in town.' If you walk around this town, you see all the stuff kids look up to -- mostly the cars -- the drug dealers have. Now you see a person who got it the hard way, and you can respect that. I can do it. He's from the same neighborhood I'm from."
"I would want to pat them on the back, personally. And say, 'I really respect the way you're doing it.' But this other junk they're doing? This is ridiculous."
So, three armed thugs robbed him in the shadows of his front door, shooting a frightful scare into him just weeks before leaving Syracuse for the start of the Giants training camp in July 26. When it was over, he sat inside his hometown apartment
and felt lucky to be alive. As it turns out, this was just the sad, start to the fleecing of a good kid named Will Allen. Remember, the outrage belongs on the men with the masks.
