InvaderRam wrote:

seriously. i’ve been following the rams since 95. could this be the best secondary the rams have fielded in 25 years??? it might be.

That’s my feeling. And as an older guy, I go back to 77, and this secondary may be the deepest and most talented in that entire span from then till now (though they have had a few good ones).

My heart hurts watching this. I don't know what their motive is or who organized these white people to come out, but they don't care about us. That one woman is about to burst into tears and they won't even look at her… pic.twitter.com/35Hz5ldAaC

— 🇯🇲Black🇭🇹Aziz🇳🇬aNANsi🇹🇹 (@Freeyourmindkid) May 30, 2020

Keeanga-Yamahtta T.@KeeangaYamahtta
If you don’t care about MLK’s democratic socialist politics, his anti-imperialist politics or his condemnation of US hypocrisy then no one gives a damn about your thoughts concerning his philosophy on nonviolence.

from A partygoer who attended the now-infamous Lake of the Ozarks pool party has tested positive for COVID-19, meaning hundreds could have been exposed.

https://news.yahoo.com/partygoer-attended-now-infamous-lake-061037083.html

Revelers celebrate Memorial Day weekend at Osage Beach of the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, U.S., May 23, 2020 in this screen grab taken from social media video and obtained by Reuters on May 24, 2020. Twitter/Lawler50/via REUTERS

A Missouri resident who attended a crowded pool party at the Lake of the Ozarks has tested positive for the coronavirus, local outlet KMBC reported.

Footage of the crowded party garnered condemnation online.

The owner of the bar that hosted the event defended his decision.

from https://theramswire.usatoday.com/2020/05/30/nfl-rams-sean-mcvay-rebuilding-roster/

McVay … won’t say the Rams are in rebuilding mode after three straight years of finishing above .500 with one Super Bowl appearance.

“I would never refer to it as that. I think that’s making excuses and running away from the expectations, which we’ll never do,” he said this week. “We expect to win, we expect to prepare to win. We’ve got great people in this building – coaches, players alike. Our goal and expectation is to prepare to win every single game we play in. I believe we go into it that way. We didn’t do what we needed to do last year. I own that. I take full responsibility for it.”

Many of us know about Matt Waldman. Football guy, draft analyst.

Here in a series of tweets, he feels compelled to address the big issues we’re seeing right now. It’s worth a read IMO. He talks about being the husband of a black woman and father of a black child in today’s USA.

Matt Waldman@MattWaldman
Seeing some of my colleagues talk about what it’s like being black in America–
@DianteLee_ comes to mind prominently this afternoon, I’d like to offer a different perspective.

Being white, growing up in the north and south, and becoming part of a black family. What you learn.

The first thing you learn is that no matter how open-minded, loving, and book-educated you are, you are not ready for what you’ll experience once you become emotionally invested in the lives of people who are black.

Seeing, experiencing, and feeling it on a visceral level.

You will at first do what black people do as they’re growing up and first experiencing it: Wondering if what you experienced happened as you perceived it and trying to rationalize the motivations as not racist. Revisiting multiple times to make sure you’re not crazy.

Black people revisit, replay, and analyze things that happen–even after experiencing events like it for decades.

You learn there’s a constant state of questioning, analyzing, explaining (while angry). It’s stressful and wears you out.

You learn why a lifetime of having to be on guard for the potential of significant danger to well-being physically, financially, and emotionally is a drain on mental, physical, and financial health–and considering how doctors have been mistrained (even recently)…

about the pain tolerance, dosages, and overall untrue differences with black patients, it’s not surprising there’s a distrust of U.S. healthcare.

BTW-I learned with one of my roommates in 1990 in Miami that if I didn’t barge past the ER front desk in an empty waiting room,

my roommate, who waited 30 minutes with a medical emergency (I rushed him there) and was hyperventilating and sweating bullets was about two minutes from a stroke if I didn’t grab an annoyed doctor (once he saw my roommate–five folks were working on him immediately)

Even w/that story, at 20 yrs old, having influential teachers talk to me about their life in America, reading Malcolm X, learning history beyond my high school curriculum, I still wanted to rationalize what my roommate went through.

The truth: Being dangerously ill while black

I learned how to have “the talks” with my kids about retail stores, police, school, and the parents of their white friends. Things I never had to consider growing up. Sometimes those talks happened after the fact with incidents that came earlier than I hoped to God would.

Teacher putting my talkative kid in a desk and putting a tape perimeter around her to tell other kids not to interact with her and wanted her tested for a learning disability–when all she did was finish her assignments early (and correctly and consistently) and was bored.

Cashier being rude to my girlfriend because the clerk shorted $20 at the grocery. The manager being ruder when summoned. Neither manager nor cashier offering the slightest apology after counting drawer and it being exactly $20 over.

Countless times followed by retail clerks or front store security behaving brusquely until they realized I was with them and then behaving 180 degrees different. Cops thinking the way to behave with my executive wife whose family all earned college degrees was to speak ebonics

Wife pulled over for alleged “rolling stops”, going through yellow lights, or going 5mph over the speed limit & questioned about the veracity of her ownership of the car because of the cognitive dissonance of her dark skin & German last name that’s on her license and insurance.

Cops questioning that she owns the car even after they see the name match with the IDs. Cops following her home after everything checks out but they want to make sure that nice car is hers–the “don’t-fuck-with-me,” car that I would never have to drive for people at work to see

that she’s not some charity case they hired but a star employee. Not to mention that her dad, sister, and brother were Baltimore PD. And they know police training has been cut well short of optimal in the past 15-20 years.

My wife having to deal with “Cooper-like” women (not new) using tears as a weapon when they become threatened about my wife’s positive work relationships w/males at the job. And those males taking the bait because they don’t expect white women to be mature one but need rescuing.

Ex-girlfriend and I once applied for same job. She had more desirable industry experience, called her first, talked salary, & scheduled interview. She arrived in a stunning Chanel suit–very interview appropriate. Hiring manager took one look at her, said job was filled, offered

entry-level gig. Then manager called me, I went through three interviews–one was clearly a “does the owner give the stamp of approval that I’m a white male,” interview and was offered the job (I graphically told them what they could do with the offer).

The dread I felt when my wife decided to take a drive in her new car and forgot to tell me she was doing so after she ran an errand at night and I thought she’d be home in 20 minutes. Me driving around the county looking for her because I hoped she wasn’t pulled over.

My wife panicking and wanting to leave a concert when my daughter, a Marine, got pulled over for a traffic stop at night in a county that 15 years ago had signs that essentially told black people to leave at night.

I notice how some people who are uncomfortable around blacks get tense and shaky and I have to be 1-2 steps ahead and wonder if this is the day I’m going to jail for my wife. I have learned how to take the temperature of a room in a way I never had to before.

I notice black people taking the temperature of my behavior. Am I at ease and self-aware or am I going to be that guy trying to act black? Am I that guy who will treat my wife as some fetishized trophy? Am I the well-meaning but ignorant liberal social justice warrior 24/7?

All of this is done out of protection and understandably so. Some have seen and experienced too much to even want to try with me. And I get that. Hate it’s that way, but I get it and know I can’t change that in one interaction–and in some cases, ever.

What did I learn?

Being outwardly and vocally hateful was wrong and made your family look bad but being exclusionary for ignorant reasons, telling jokes, reinforcing racism behind the scenes was intentionally and unintentionally encouraged.

It’s the source of gaslighting.

That racism was often tolerated by younger adults not to upset their older parents or authority figures in society with the purse strings.

That it was ok to be friendly but not close to black people.

That black entertainers were exceptional and not the norm. Ring a bell?

That the norm was more like what I saw on the news. What did I see on the news? Murders, robbers, rioters in Miami reacting to police murder/brutality.

I knew this wasn’t true. Didn’t change the emotional reactions I had from these being internalized. Sound familiar?

Like many, these lessons created an ingrained fear. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of being labeled a racist more than tacitly supporting racism. Fear of where to even begin with gaining real knowledge. It’s why so many never even begin.

Fact is, 5 yrs ago the reactions to this behavior was met with a lot more resistance. Progress is sadly slow but it’s there. Feeling that helplessness is a part of honest recognition.

Mostly, I’ve learned that I had to unlearn subtle and unintentional behaviors that I was taught that perpetuated systemic racism. Things family and authority taught. That it took time, effort, humility, and painful self-reflection. I’m still learning. We’re all still learning.

And, it’s exhausting to explain as often as it needs to be explained to give someone uninitiated a clear picture. A clear picture you may not see immediately or in its totality. I’m not telling you how to be, just sharing how I’ve been. Hope it helps.

waterfield wrote:

I’m not addressing the injustice to blacks. My concern is the impact on the 2020 election.

Right now, my concern is the injustice. But I got what you were saying, W, I just think that part of the injustice to blacks is to focus only on the riots.

As it happens there’s a field of history called the history of popular violence. For a long time in european history, people who are lower in the social order by rank and wealth (and are treated as lower even when they have wealth) would riot under very specific conditions–when it was clear that the system was asking too much in terms of accepting injustice. This goes way back.

I know and understand that approach to things, which emphasizes violence against property of that kind as responding to a specific injustice that pushes the point that the system does not work equitably.

I don’t though accept it as a defense of the present in the USA. I am against popular violence of all kinds. I get where it comes from–but I can never condone it. I also understand the argument that as a person of some basic privilege, I don’t know what it’s like to put up with constant injustice and that I am in no position to tell others who are under constant injustice how to respond to it. Okay…but, I still can’t condone and defend it.

(My point in the post, though, is if tv is fixated on the riots and not on widespread injustices regularly inflicted on people of color, then, tv is just buying into mainstream white fright. Which wouldn’t be the first time. Though I personally don’t believe it will influence the election, because things that happen in late May I don’t think have the power to do that.)

Anyway on Atlanta. In a lot of ways I share that view W.

waterfield wrote:

If anyone wants to hear a powerful address to the lawlessness in Atlanta please listen to the black female mayor of the city. Keisha Lance Bottoms.

The is Atlanta right now. Worth a million words.#GeorgeFloydprotest pic.twitter.com/O8S5X0nvAD

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) May 29, 2020

==

One of the best, smartest, impromptu speeches I have ever heard. Amazing leadership. pic.twitter.com/SHiPBdVDvC

— Ahmed Fareed (@FareedNBCS) May 30, 2020

Rams looking to write their own story in 2020

J.B. Long

https://www.therams.com/news/rams-looking-to-write-own-story-in-2020

I forget at what point I started pocketing predictions about the 2020 Rams, but I’ve been collecting for over a month, now.

Less than a year removed from reigning atop the NFC and being pegged as a favorite to return to the Super Bowl, it’s been jarring to find the perception of the 2020 Rams closer to where Sean McVay found them when he arrived in early 2017: cast as an underdog in their own division.

We’ll get to whether the Rams agree with that assessment in a moment. (Spoiler alert: They don’t.)

But first, I want to underscore that with very few exceptions, the Rams are still widely respected. Various power rankings have them slotted in the top half of the league.

This is largely a reflection of how strong the West has become, and more simplistically, how the division stacked up a year ago.

To my knowledge, no credible pundit has gone so far as to pick the Rams last in 2020. Still, I suspect someone might be bold enough eventually. After all, Patrick Peterson believes his Cardinals are the “best football team (he’s) been a part of on paper.”

But according to the consensus, Los Angeles has been safely ensconced in third for much of the spring, impervious to the tides of the Draft and free agency.

Overlooked is the nuance of the Rams finishing a missed 44-yard field goal away from sweeping Seattle last season, giving the eventual NFC Champions everything they wanted in Week 16 in Santa Clara, and having yet to lose to Arizona under Sean McVay.

Nonetheless, it’s understandable after another April without a first-round selection, plus the departures of recognizable talents like Todd Gurley, Brandin Cooks, Dante Fowler, and Cory Littleton.

“Los Angeles took its shot at a Super Bowl, and the bill is coming due,” goes the prevailing narrative.

The league’s official site concurred, citing “several roster holes and not enough cap space or draft picks to fix everything in one offseason.”

Mix in one of the most challenging schedules in the NFL according to multiple outlets, and there you have it. Los Angeles may still be one of the better teams in football, but they’re looking up at the 49ers and Seahawks until proven otherwise.

Unsurprisingly, the Rams aren’t ready to concede that point, here in late May.

“I don’t really care what the narrative is, I care about the belief I have in our players, our coaches, and how excited I am for us to attack this opportunity and to write our own story,” McVay said this week.

“Our goal and expectation is to prepare to win every single game,” was his reply to whether 2020 might be categorized as a rebuilding year. “We didn’t do what we needed to do last year. I own that. I take full responsibility for it.”

Ask Cooper Kupp about returning to the role of hunter rather than hunted, and he echoes McVay’s sentiments.

“Our expectations haven’t changed; our standards haven’t changed. If anything, they’re continuing to elevate,” the fourth-year receiver said on the Rams Revealed podcast.

There may come a time this fall when a doubting or disparaging word might appear on the proverbial bulletin board. But for now – unlike this writer – Kupp and the Rams don’t seem interested in collecting receipts.

“We judge ourselves within the walls we go to work in,” Kupp said. “…Any narrative that can be created outside of those walls doesn’t matter to us.”

.@AaronWilson_NFL NFL extends virtual offseason, hopes to have coaches back at facilities soon https://t.co/QQChwbZR6z

— John McClain (@McClain_on_NFL) May 29, 2020

Dolphins coach Brian Flores issues a powerful statement on the disconnect between those who have strong opinions on issues like Colin Kaepernick's protests but who have nothing to say about the murder of George Floyd https://t.co/KCykOfz9oT

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) May 29, 2020

Her car became submerged during heavy rains. This guy jumped-in, pulled her from the vehicle JUST IN TIME — then went back under to save her dog.

Not all heroes wear capes…❤️🌎 pic.twitter.com/Wgy3iaznoR

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) March 9, 2020