Briefly stated. KC Confidential led the way on last week’s Chiefs/murder/suicide stories…
With bullet force. Because we can take the gloves off quickly and be more honest than the TV, radio and print guys.
As I wrote Saturday morning, it was another poor, sad example of bad behavior by an uneducated, highly paid, wannabe gansta NFL black player.
Nothing more.
Oh yeah, financial issues and the new Bentley aside, I had only minor information from LA sources at 8:20 the morning of the shooting. It was all I needed to make an educated guess which has now proven nearly 100 % correct.
Hearne followed with another accurate tale about the media BS, “The City Weeps” story.
Nobody outside of the immediate families wept – certainly not the “city.” As Hearne pointed out, few people even knew of Jovan let alone truly cared. He was seen as what he was, a blown out, high, angry overpaid ballplayer with several women in his life. And nailed down by this one poor girl with his baby.
It’s my opinion Belcher never felt too bad about her as he fired NINE bullets into her body.
He felt bad that he had blown his life away, that’s all. Thus his suicide. It wasn’t about her or their baby, it was all about him.
The media danced on the race issue, which is the one and only issue that mattered here.
“White people just had their negative feelings towards players like Belcher reinforced, that’s all.”
Yep.
“We want to watch them play but please do not get me near them in public outside of football or an autograph session.”
Again, not because they’re black, but because of the HIP-HOP, GANSTA CULTURE these young men live by.
YES, IT’S MOST OF THEM, MOST OF THEM, MOST OF THEM, MOST OF THEM.
Is that too hard to say? That’s the issue. That’s the problem. And that’s the only problem.
There are no others
EDUCATION is part of the problem.
MOST – LET’S SAY IT LOUDER – MOST NFL AND NBA BLACK PLAYERS HAVE LITTLE TO NO EDUCATION.
Nobody defends this comment, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DEFEND IT – BECAUSE IT’S TRUE.
IÂ realize all of this sounds racist, but it’s not. It’s my attitude and anger towards this stupid lifestyle. Too many good black people are damaged by the acts of these animals. Good people, great people. Black Americans who want their children to have the American Dream – an education, a good life.
This HATE CULTURE needs to die.
The guns, the gangs, the hate songs, the whole nine yards. It’s destroying our freedom, our safety and mostly young black Americans. There are no AFRICAN AMERICANS, unless you were born in Africa. You are an American. Just like Irish American, third or fourth generation people are AMERICANS.
We should stand together as one. Simple as that.
I am thrilled Westport killed off its rep as KC’s hip hop hang out.
It should die off nationally. There’s nothing good about it, nothing. A culture that preaches hate, anger, violence and NO NEED FOR EDUCATION, needs to die.
The sooner the better. This Kansas City example is one of thousands in America that happen each and every week. End the culture, end the violence. Begin the peace between blacks and whites. That’s the correct way to go.
Dead, dead, dead on the money.
I i i i love to give glaze head!
I thought this kind of stuff was supposed to be deleted.
Sex and violence sell. The white kids from suburbia fuel the gangsta rap with money. Rap/hip-hop are only an extension of a blues tradition known as the talking blues. A vast majority of people would not be able to distinguish a Will Smith rap from a NWA rap (sans a photo or such).
Glamorization of the gangster-lifestyle is nothing new. Look at the early gangster movies, glorified crime and criminals. Look at the Guns N Roses album cover with the woman sprawled on the cover, implicit of a rape and the words Guns N Roses were here.
Your own book glamorizes crime as well. Your message may be the price of the lifestyle is too great, don’t do it. But the message a young man takes away is, way kewl!
There is not a song, a movie, nothing that makes a person do anything. If so, eating Twinkies is responsible for any of my bad behavior.
Kids aren’t all that dumb. They see the “respected leaders” espousing work hard, take responsibility and such. Then they see those same leaders have been taking kickbacks, making illegal transactions and going to prison for behavior they had denounced but were involved in at the same time. They see the dirty, gritty reality of some punk’s actions. An impressionable youth may see this as honesty rather than stupidity.
The media focuses on the bad rather than the good in people. Unless it jeopardizes their bottom line.
Not raggin’ on you. Rather giving some things to contemplate to find a way to put this mentality in the garbage heap where it belongs.
I remember my father’s friend talking of fighting the Nazis during WWII. Hating the Nazis and their ideology, he kept his humanity by remembering that every enemy soldier he may have killed was a mother’s son.
Orphan for the win.
After that post nothing I can say to add to it.
What Super Dave said.
That looks pretty good on paper Orphan, but if there is a straight line correlation between the variables that make up the ‘ganster lifestyle’ (Rap music which promotes killing cops, misogyny, violence et al., prison de rigueur clothing like sagging pants etc etc…) than there would be a per capita equality of criminal behaviour with respect to ehtnicity. There isn’t.
African American crime is insanely disproportionate to the percentage of American population.
To pretend that Movies with James Cagney, George Raft and music from the 40s, 50s, 60s, etc were just as pernicious as Ice T encouraging kids to kill cops is disingenuous at best and probably outright BS.
In addition to that, the ‘Street Cred’ these disgusting Rapper pukes aquire by way of bullet wounds, dead hookers, prison time, drug addiction etc sure as hell reflects the impact they have on kids in the urban core who emulate them in every way but money in the bank.
In my opinion, it is a galactic leap to compare the ganster lifestyle and the effect it has on African American kids to music and culture previoulsy spawned by a long ago, now dead American zeitgeist.
I also notice this, “The white kids from suburbia fuel the gangsta rap with money.” Geeze Louise, lets beat that “White Guilt Dead Horse” until he sings kumbaya.
There are exceptions to everything I know. But to obfuscate and excuse a culture that is responsible for so very much death and destruction is not only irresponsible, it flat out hasn’t worked for 50 years.
It’s important to remember, that while my dad and your dad were remembering that every Nazi had a mother, they still fu*king killed ’em.
Orphan, I luv ya and respect ya, but just can’t in any way agree with what you wrote.
Yes chuck but as well as kids we knew the difference between right and wrong and what was just a show and what wasn’t. Today their appears to be no difference and parents don’t appear to care to teach their kids values like we was taught as kids. Very few shows I watched as a kid growing up didn’t have guns and shooting in them. Rawhide, Bonanza, Wild Wild West, Man From Uncle heck even Get Smart had shooting. But did it make all of us want to run out look like them, act like them and pack a gun to shoot at folks? No it didn’t. Why you might ask? Because we was educated and taught right from wrong and what respect was and how to give it. As well we was disciplined not abused, but disciplined when it was needed. These kids today well look for yourself not hard to figure out whats missing, I just listed most of it.
Yep.
+1
If you like Liberace… would you dress like him every day? If you like Green Day… Would you show up at work looking like Billie Joe Armstrong? Bono? Tina Turner? Michael Jackson? No… But the hip hoppers think they can walk and talk like rappers 24/7/365 and still be taken seriously. It is called not living in reality.
While we are shunning people who glorify violent culture and worse, those who profit from it, let’s not forget to shun glazer, who glorifies his past violence with the fact-fiction trash “king of sting”.
I completely agree with this KC Confidential contributor who suspects that if we all shun violent people and those who profit from violent culture we would make the world a better place.
What say you Sta…. Chuck?
You are correct. I have no clue why I didn’t kill myself. Good call.
The Scribe’s rather tired of all this hip hop crap,
Thinks the “Gangsta Culture” needs to take the rap
For some of the bad (mostly black) apples in the NFL –
Overpaid dudes who are big and strong but dumb as hell;
Now the Scribe maintains that education’s the key,
And on this very important point I’d have to agree
Because there’s really no future in guns and drugs,
The anger, hate and violence of hooker-lovin’ thugs.
Nice.
🙂
P.S. – RIP Jerry Brown, Dallas Cowboys linebacker.
The dashcam video is out on that DUI they let him slide on.
1) He had the keys in the car.
2) He was passed out with his foot on the brake.
3) There was no bar nearby nor did his story indicate that he walked to the car and fell asleep inside. He makes a statement implying that he drove there.
4) Instead of arresting him for DUI upon his incriminating statement they knock on the other-woman’s door and let him go to her custody.
5) 4 hours later he kills his wife and himself.
If the officers had followed Missouri DUI law they should have arrested him as he was intoxicated, in the vehicle with keys inside and had no plausible story on how he ended up in the car at that location without driving it.
Zero tolerance must only apply to drunky ex Star Gossip columnists.
I think some of you are using issues not the same as the ones we have here, right. Hearn’s DUI was not related to shooting his girlfriend 9 times, being uneducated, in the NFL or NBA etc…right. Not the same.
My next story latter in the week will outline what the league can do to help slow this down or stop it….yes I am aware another couple NFL players were in a wreck killing one, both drunk, high, let me guess headed home from DE CLUB…shocker…guns anyone?
You missed my point.
What I was saying is that if he was just a rich guy, or just a guy he would have been arrested under the Zero Tolerance DUI policies.
Instead he was cut loose to much joking (even joking about his two hoes-on-the-side).
The Armour Blvd whore goes to UMKC Law.
I doubt she really goes to UMKC Law. She also says she went to Rockhurst High School (all guys) and is a member of the Glass baseball family.
I’m not just trying to get your goat glaze, I am really confused; “nobody defends this comment, because you can’t defend it, because it’s true” ? Do you mean the opposite; ” Nobody “CONTRADICTS” …… .?
It’s admirable that you’re trying to educate yourself well enough to become an articulate pundant at your relative old age. As you state, education IS critical when attempting to crawl from the gutter. But perhaps you should become more practiced and adept before trying to attach the moniker “Scribe” to yourself. Calling yourself a scribe doesn’t go far in helping you obtain the skills to be one, no more than calling yourself a movie producer suffices for obtaining the skills to be successful as one.
Try to learn from Hearne, who is an experienced opinion writer. Also, GET OTHERS TO CHECK YOUR WORK before you publish it. Mistakes such as the one I just pointed-out are not minor in your venue here…. they make you read like an amateur, and they are not infrequent in your writings.
I suggest you buy The Modern Language Association monograph “Line by Line; How to Improve Your Own Writing”, which is as straightforward as any resource I’ve encountered on this subject.
BTW What is the source for the assertion that the murderer fired nine bullets? Just curious….
He empited his weapon into her, KC Star…and as far as anyting else you need to know, read my book, where’s yours? I got nothing to prove, you do.
I don’t know about the gutter, isn’t that where you moved too?
God you get trolled easy.
Many of you guys recently commented on education as being the key to the future.
I have nothing but bad news and the expected death of the messenger in no way a salve for the wound. Dimitte mihi.
Read this article. It really struck me as on the money, because I too was a substitiute teacher for a year.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/educations_great_divide_my_time_in_the_trenches.html
My outcome was different then this writer’s, but the extent of the decay is ever more evident by way of the obvious results we see every day, everywhere.
UMKC Education Program to Focus on Urban Ed
Mara Rose Williams, Kansas City Star, May 22, 2008
This fall, the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Education will become a school of urban education, university officials said Wednesday.
The school will train teachers specifically to work in urban schools, with a newly developed curriculum. The goal is to attract a more diverse group of students who will grow into teachers prepared to prosper in urban schools.
Students will not have the option of student-teaching in suburban schools. Instead, they will be limited to opportunities in nine urban districts: Kansas City, Kansas City, Kan., Turner, Grandview, Hickman Mills, Center, Raytown, Independence and North Kansas City.
Shifting all the course work toward urban education is a giant leap that sprang out of what professors learned from working with students enrolled in the institute, said Linda Edwards, dean of the School of Education.
About three years ago, UMKC Chancellor Guy Bailey announced that he wanted the campus to become “an urban-serving” institution. Edwards said that announcement factored into the decision to focus on urban education.
The School of Education has about 300 undergraduates each year. In 2007, about 50 percent of those who were student-teaching taught in suburban schools. This year, 100 percent of the student teachers were in urban schools.
Students still will be exposed to suburban education, Edwards said. During the two years they are in the school, they will spend time observing suburban and perhaps even rural classrooms.
The new curriculum will include more classes in cultural diversity and learning how to use students’ culture and background to connect them with learning, Waddell said.
She said all School of Education students will “take course work that involves them being immersed in the urban school district and the urban community and learning how resource-rich the urban community is.”
Until now, Waddell said, UMKC students, like students from education schools at most universities across the country, have been “trained to work in schools with a middle-class white culture.”
Experts in urban education, including Howard, say a main cause of poor school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. High teacher turnover makes it hard to keep high-quality teachers in urban schools.
Students will not have the option of student-teaching in suburban schools. Instead, they will be limited to opportunities in nine urban districts: Kansas City, Kansas City, Kan., Turner, Grandview, Hickman Mills, Center, Raytown, Independence and North Kansas City.
Shifting all the course work toward urban education is a giant leap that sprang out of what professors learned from working with students enrolled in the institute, said Linda Edwards, dean of the School of Education.
About three years ago, UMKC Chancellor Guy Bailey announced that he wanted the campus to become “an urban-serving” institution. Edwards said that announcement factored into the decision to focus on urban education.
The School of Education has about 300 undergraduates each year. In 2007, about 50 percent of those who were student-teaching taught in suburban schools. This year, 100 percent of the student teachers were in urban schools.
The new curriculum will include more classes in cultural diversity and learning how to use students’ culture and background to connect them with learning, Waddell said.
She said all School of Education students will “take course work that involves them being immersed in the urban school district and the urban community and learning how resource-rich the urban community is.”
Experts in urban education, including Howard, say a main cause of poor school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. High teacher turnover makes it hard to keep high-quality teachers in urban schools.
Here is how that emphasis on diversity works out.
This is a teacher who writes anonamously from the LA Public school system.
—————————-
Snake oil to “close the achievement gap.”
Each year, we teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are excitedly told about “breakthroughs” in “new” teaching methods that are “brain-based,” “research-based,” “data-based,” and/or “standards-based” and that will, once and for all, close the achievement gaps between blacks and Hispanics, and Asians and whites.
These “breakthroughs” are imparted to us every other Tuesday, throughout the school year, in mind-numbing “professional development” sessions. All teachers are required to attend. I’m lucky: I don’t teach in one of the schools with the lowest scores, where teachers have to meet every week for professional development, or “PD.” These sessions are led by education theorists and professional trainers who usually work in district headquarters, far away from children and classrooms.
I don’t know a single teacher who does not dread and despise these so-called “PD-days.” At the first meeting in September we are invariably told that the teaching methods we learned the previous year aren’t working. Test scores have not improved, so we are to “toss out any and all manuals” we may have lying around, and to get ready for everything to change.
The instructors frequently warn us what will happen if our students’ scores don’t improve, and if the achievement gap isn’t narrowed: There could be a “state takeover,” or “charter organizations” could come in and run our schools. In either case, the entire school staff, top to bottom, could be fired or transferred. The latest threat comes from the LAUSD board of trustees, which wants to eliminate teacher seniority and implement “merit-based pay” that would tie our salaries directly to test scores.
PD cuts into class time, so on PD days students get two hours less instruction. Such days are known, with no apparent sense of irony, as “minimum instructional days.” Students are dismissed at noon—that is, if they bother to show up at all, since attendance is usually low. On “minimum instructional days,” class time is cut from 50 minutes to 30 minutes or less, so the bell schedule is different. Confused students and teachers mill around, trying to remember where they are supposed to be, and in the chaos little or no teaching takes place. Many students wander the campus, hang out in the football stadium, or walk out the front gate after they’ve eaten their free breakfast.
There is even more intensive “professional development” that takes place off-campus, while a substitute teacher covers my classes for four, five, or on one occasion, seven days. There is a bewildering variety of these programs, each with an acronym and pompous title. Here are just a few:
ACE (Accelerated Cooperative Education), CAP (Comprehensive Assessment Program), training in how to use DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), IMPACT Training (Individuals Making Positive Assertive Choices Together), PHBAO Training (Predominately Hispanic, Black, Asian and Others), CTEL (California Teachers of English Learners), CLAD (Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development).
There are plenty more, and most are known only by the acronym. That means I am told I am going to get ACE training, for example, without a clue as to what ACE stands for until I get there. These sessions are held at hotels, closed schools, community centers, or church meeting rooms. Sometimes I must drive to obscure locations in dicey parts of Los Angeles to get to them.
They always start with an hour or two of silly “getting-to-know-you” games. One began with a tug-of-war, and then proceeded to a “blind walk,” where one teacher led a blindfolded teacher around, supposedly to build trust. Next, we were matched with someone according to our favorite day of the week and according to the results of a personality test we had taken. We were supposed to cozy up to a “camp fire”—blankets thrown over half a dozen flashlights—and confide our innermost thoughts and feelings to each another. Often a school administrator lurks nearby, noting if anyone lacks enthusiasm for this silliness.
continued…
In these sessions we invariably learn that in order to teach students effectively we must foster “trust.” To do so we must have “compassion, sensitivity and understanding,” and acknowledge our students’ “cultural authenticity.” This is because they will not learn from teachers they see as “hostile to their reality.” Most of the people who run these sessions have never taught a class in their lives but believe me, the LAUSD is deadly serious about this stuff.
In these PC-heavy sessions, any mention of IQ or racial differences would be heresy. Educational dogma requires that we must never question the following:
1. IQ is meaningless. (I would note that IQ testing has been banned in California schools since the 1970s because blacks score badly on them. Therefore, there are no objective measures for who should be in gifted or special-education classes.)
2. All students have equal potential to succeed—and this even more cuckoo than it sounds. This does not mean simply that students of all races should get the same average score. It means that, ideally, every student should do equally well. If the black or Hispanic average is low, that is because of racism, oppression, cultural differences, and textbooks in which children “don’t see anyone like themselves.” If there are white or Asian students who do not learn, it is because of poor teaching methods, run-down school buildings, or lazy and uncaring teachers—although all that holds back black and Hispanic students, too. School failure is never the student’s fault.
3. There are no racial differences in behavior, focus, or drive. Students are never to blame if they misbehave, fail to study, or can’t understand the curriculum.
4. Unequal outcomes and low test scores are strictly the fault of teachers and schools. This is why more money must be “invested” in teacher training and “professional development.”
Because of this entrenched belief that teachers are the problem, we are the ones who have to change. For three decades we have had to suffer the indignity of being berated about program after program, featuring the latest fads in pedagogy. These come straight from theorists with PhDs who work in universities or think tanks and have little or no teaching experience.
Some of these tried-and-failed schemes have been recycled, given new names, and reintroduced as the latest innovation. Teachers whisper to each other, “We’ve already tried that and it didn’t work.” Professional developments I have been subjected to include: Left-brain/Right-Brain Strategies, Self-Esteem, Relevance, Alternative or Authentic Assessments, Values Clarification, Critical Thinking Skills, Inventive Spelling and Writing, SLCS (small schools within schools), Rubrics, Metacognition, Tapping into Prior Knowledge, Differentiated Instruction, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, Learning Centers, and Multi-Sensory Education. And there are many more.
Needless to say there is a huge PD bureaucracy that gets handsome salaries selling snake oil. Some of these idiot trainers are retired administrators, hired back as “experts” or “consultants,” and who receive fat pension checks plus large stipends for teaching this rubbish. We have heard rumors that they make around $100 an hour for their worthless “services,” although I’ve never been able to verify this information, as it is a closely guarded secret. Nepotism and racial loyalty run deep in the LAUSD, so PD is a bonanza for people with the right connections
All of this is based on deliberate blindness to the facts, but as long as educational dogma dictates that “IQ is meaningless,” the LAUSD will continue to spend millions of dollars on one program after another only to have them fail. Teachers are held accountable, never the educational theorists who believe “IQ is meaningless,” or the school board trustees—most of whom have never taught school—who approve and fund these programs despite shrinking budgets. The students are never held accountable either, but they are victims of these educational frauds just as much as we are.
A true excercise in futility. Until these communities decide to clean up their acts and raise their children properly we will be left to clean up their detrius.
Indeed. Help for the hip-hop community must come from within the hip-hop community.
There is a solution.
It is very, very basic.
I believe we are living in a time during which educational standards have been lowered to accommodate a large influx of a certain type of immigrant who does not value education as much as our post-world war II through 1980ish generations did. This does not have to be a long-term trend; it may or may not be. These sorts of trends are likely cyclical in nature, so let’s hope this is a short cycle.
I taught math at a major state university from 1999 until 2010, and the abilities of the students depreciated in a highly noticeable way from beginning until the end. Yes, I did notice that the races which are stereotyped as either strong or weak performed as the stereotypes predicted ……
Many bright students were not admitted to the university so there would be room for students who were academically less qualified. This was accomplished when the state invoked a so-called “top ten” rule, that, leaving out the details, was really affirmative action in disguise. I completely disagreed with this policy, feeling that admission should be based solely on academic prowess, until one day, another faculty member changed my mind by arguing that the state had just as much of an interest in elevating less-bright people as it did the best and brightest. And since there wasn’t room for everyone…..
The whole subject is basically moot, anyway. The entire argument about who is admitted under the top ten policy makes little difference. Most of the less able students went the way of the glaze at ASU…. they dropped out, which made room for the more qualified and motivated, who had been forced into inferior institutions, to transfer into the relatively more elite universities such as the one where I taught. In short, it’s not getting IN that really matters, it’s getting OUT, with a degree or with degrees, as well as with some productive level of knowledge to boot.
Fear not, there are still enough superstar academic-oriented people in the good ole USA to keep us out-performing the rest of the world; I don’t expect people will be flocking to Sweden or China or any other potential Silicon Valley academic Mecca in our lifetimes 🙂
I hope you’re right.
🙂
In 1977, I was assigned by the Kansas City School District to a 4th grade class for a teacher who was out 6 months for a pregnancy. There were 32 kids in the class, they were new to me, and I was new to teaching. Total rookie.
Prior to this, I had subbed for one or two days at most, showed movies, killed time and kept the kids in secondary from killing each other and me.
This was different, a long term commitment.
After a couple of days of trying to decipher the cunniform instructions the previous teacher had left and fashioning the “Three R’s” into a an unworkable set of instructions from both that same teacher and the education I had received, I realized that my college education was a farce and if these kids were going to learn anything, it would take actual work and effort.
On the third day, I arose from the dead and make the kids go to the board one row at a time. I made them read one at a time.
They could not read. They could not write. They could not spell. They could not add, subtract, divide of even approach long division.
From that moment on, our entire class was relentless, incessant and absolute in our desire to learn.
Day after day they went to the board, stood to read, again, again, again, again….
They NEVER missed recess. I made them run laps after the recess bell rang to make sure I worked off any remaining nervous energy.
Then again and again.
We won.
By May, with one exception, EVERY kid in my class could read and read WELL. They could all add, subtract, divide, multiply (Flash cards came back in vogue.).
They excelled and even coonceptualized with regard to the outside world and current events.
Every single one of my kids was black.
Every single one of my kids reached and surpassed his/her potential.
End Affirmative Action, special exemptions, quotas, multicultural/diversity horsehockey that cripples kids and inhibits achievement while fostering the culture of complaint.
I knew those kids could learn and boy did they ever.
I knew I could bend them to my will, so they could bend the world to theirs.
P.S.
The little boy, 3 back in row 6 never did learn much. He was a sweet little kid and I covered totally for him. I hope he is ok.
nice chuck…for once you got out of that attitude that always takes up
your comments.
you’re probably right…there needs to be changes..
go make them…you have experience…
you’re either part of the solution…or part of the problem…
this was interesting to read….shows a different side of you thats
completely different from what you put up on kcc.
great ideas and work…now go change those people and get those
kids in line….hopefully someone will listen to you
but even with all the problems in our system….we still have
the best educational system in the world…bar none!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!