Feeling The Impact

It's sad when someone dies young. But in the case of football player Reggie White, who passed away Sunday from an apparent heart attack, it's also sad people feel pressured to review his life in an insincere and dishonest manner.

When he was alive, White was cruelly outspoken about his homophobia and malice toward gay people. But a lot of that is being overlooked by people who want to remember him solely as a "compassionate minister" and football hero.

It's heartening, though -- because if these folks didn't think there was something wrong with what Reggie said and felt, they wouldn't try to divorce his memory from them.

Luckily, there are web sites out there where people are actively challenging the apologists among us.

Kudos to ruggerson on www.democraticunderground.com, who writes:

Face facts. He was a bigot. He actively worked to make life miserable for millions of people. He actively worked to undermine and disenfranchise their families from the moral and civic nexus of social life in the United States. His work, his rhetoric, gave comfort to the worst kind of hate mongers out there among us.

These are things he did. They are works that are far larger and more impactful than anything he ever did on the football field.

There's a lot more where this came from at --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1099590