Great Article..

[shifty_git]

I read the headline and i was expecting an article saying steroids kill...

Deceptive headline....

Guy makes a valid point on how things are with BS media and societys views.

Don't talk just of steroid dangers, when an athlete dies like this

The news reports from Los Angeles tell us the high school running back died three doors from his own home, killed Sunday while walking down the street, talking to his girlfriend on a cellphone.
The police theory, according to local media reports, from what the girlfriend overheard, is that when the gang members jumped out of their car and stopped him to ask his affiliation, he did not have a right answer. Matter of fact, he had no answer. He was in no gang.

So they gunned him down. His father, hearing the shots, rushed there in time to find his son dying on the sidewalk.

Someone had to call his mother to tell her that her 17-year-old was dead. The irony was acute. She is serving with the Army in Iraq, trying to stay out of harm's way amidst suicide bombers and terrorists in a deadly far-off land.

Meanwhile, her son is slain within sight of his own front door in Los Angeles.

Heard enough yet to be sick? I have.

We watch Congress call hearings to express anger about steroids, and listen to voices from the House of Representatives warn and fume about what cases like this mean, and the risks to the young athletes of America. All the television cameras are there. Fair enough.

But when is somebody going to get mad about Jamiel Shaw Jr., and what deaths like his mean?

Turns out, he was a young athlete in peril, too. And we damn well are not going to let him get buried without taking notice. It is a story that ought to make us boil.

Never mind, for the moment, Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds. Or the NBA guard who can't stay off the police blotter, or the NFL receiver who can't stay out of the bars late at night.

If we want to mourn an innocent victim in sport, if we want to see what has truly gone wrong with our culture — can I suggest Jamiel Shaw?

He rushed for 11 touchdowns and averaged 14 yards a carry last season as a junior for the Los Angeles High School Romans. He was MVP of his conference. According to the Los Angeles Times, his coach said Stanford had already expressed interest. So had Rutgers.

He went to church, the reports added. He did his homework. On Sunday, he attended a football camp, to prepare for his senior season in high school and all the possibilities beyond.

Now, he's dead. And Sgt. Anita Shaw has found out you don't have to travel 8,000 miles from home to find armed, homicidal thugs.

They don't know yet if race had anything to do with it. The victim was African-American, the shooters Latino, police told the Times. Or maybe it was just random, senseless disregard for human life. A video game gang, with real guns and blood.

The answer for the threat to our children from steroids, the experts say, is education and a firmer testing program for the professionals. Make the role models accountable.

But what test is the answer for the threat from violence?

Accountability is no longer a priority in so many homes, so many schools, so many places. We now produce young people who have been taught that there is always someone else to fault. Always someone else who should have to pay.

That is the message from our talk shows and our blogs and our politicians and our gangs. It is who we have become. We assign blame, and expect revenge.

And so, if we are annoyed, we bluster and ridicule and call names, too busy being indignant to be civil.

Some of us even pick up a gun and pull the trigger, without a second thought. Many times, the bullets find the innocent.

Sometimes, those innocents are kids with dreams of touchdowns in a noisy football stadium, kids doing everything they can to get there.

Jamiel Shaw. Dead at 17.

The Mitchell Report detailed with great fanfare the dangers to our youth from performance-enhancement drugs. We seem to have become immune to the danger from guns.

But then, Roger Clemens allegedly taking HGH is big news. It has become rather routine, to hear of children in America murdered.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colum...sti-shaw_N.htm

[thegodfather]

One of the best news articles I have read in a long time. I have been preaching to the somewhat deaf choir on here for YEARS about one word.... ACCOUNTABILITY...

No one wants to talk about that, and it is, as the article stated, ALWAYS someone elses fault.