Mike Lupica Still Sucks Horribly

The unfortunate, sad tale of Steve McNair has given the green light to smarmy nitwits like Mike Lupica to bash gun-owners of America. Lupica’s column titled “Steve McNair’s face becomes just another victim of gun culture” is so ridiculous and full of knee jerks that I’m surprised the author was above the age of 7.And before we go any further, I’ll answer your question: yes, I’m surprised I’m even writing about Lupica, because I had forgotten he was around. How I long for the days where Lupica was sitting next to a sweaty Bill Conlin on the Sports Reporters for the slim possibility that Conlin might take a  bite out of him.

Anyway, Lupica is a shark who smells blood in the water; he’s a bitter media hack using a senseless tragedy to exploit what he perceives as a bigger issue. It smells very similar to the mainstream media reaction to the Benoit murder-suicide two summers ago. That go-around, it was “wrestling” and “steroids” that caused the deaths, this go-around, it’s the gun-loving culture of America.

Before we begin, let’s point out a factual error of the sports variety, simply because it has come up on these pages in the distant past.

McNair took his team down the field when it had a chance to upset the Rams and threw a ball to Kevin Dyson and Dyson ended up a yard short as time ran out, ended up a yard short of being a Super Bowl champion the way McNair did.

In reality, the Titans were a yard short of being a point away from being tied in the Super Bowl. But that’s not the reason for this post, so let’s move forward to the oh-so important words of Michael Lupica.

Now he dies in a Nashville condominium with a 20-year-old woman not his wife, multiple gunshot wounds, one to the head, the young woman dead there next to him … The gun was found next to the woman, Sahel Kazemi. Where did the gun come from? Where it always comes from: Somewhere.

Very, very insightful. Where did the gun come from? It came from somewhere. ###MORE###

The latest reports say Sahel Kazemi purchased the gun two days before the murder. Sahel Kazemi is 20 years old — you need to be 21 to legally purchase a handgun. If gun control meant it was illegal to carry, Kazemi could still find a gun since, you know, she did it illegally.

This weekend he was famous again, this time as a crime statistic, homicide victim, dead by gun.

“Dead by gun?” Lupica acts as if the gun grew its own legs, jogged over to the Nashville condominium, opened the door and fired four shots at Steve McNair. It has nothing to do with the fact that he was leading a double life, sleeping with 20 year old woman while his wife and children were at the family home.

This was a spectacular weekend for sports, in tennis especially. Sunday, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick played one of the great matches of all time at Wimbledon, with Federer winning 16-14 in the fifth set. The day before, Serena and Venus Williams had played against each other in another Wimbledon final, Serena winning this time.

The Williams sisters came to another moment like this from public courts in Compton, Calif. Six years ago, their oldest sister, Yetunde, was shot dead while sitting in a white SUV on Greenleaf Blvd. in Compton. The Williams sisters have always shown that even in a white, country-club sport like tennis, anything is possible. They are as famous around the world as McNair was in football and it did nothing to save their sister when bullets started flying one night in Compton.

Yetunde Price was their half-sister. She was shot by a member of a gang — Robert Maxfield — with an assault rifle. Her  boyfriend was the intended target while they were driving through a chronically violent area of south L.A.

Far be it for me to speak for rational people, but most of us don’t believe the “right to carry” includes assault rifles … especially near gang crack houses.

This time they started flying on Second Ave. in Nashville. According to the The Tennessean newspaper, McNair had a permit to carry a handgun. The weapon found next to the bodies was a semiautomatic.

True — a semiautomatic that was illegally obtained. Ironically, it was obtained shortly after McNair bailed her out jail for a DUI charge. Hypothetical: perhaps if McNair had been legally carrying his handgun, he’d still be alive today.

There were so many wonderful statistics attached to McNair’s career, the most important being the one Super Bowl, the four Pro Bowls to which he was selected, all the games he won. But the last was the only one that mattered. He is the 36th homicide victim in Nashville this year. That is down from 41 at the same time last year.

Only in a country of gun lovers is that considered progress.

Yep … all of us horrible people living in this horrible country (made horrible by our horrible-ness) view the murder of Steve McNair as progress.We’re terrible.

It’s all those people who legally and responsibly carry who are responsible. Not Steve McNair, who cheated on his wife with a shady, irresponsible 20 year old and it certainly isn’t the 20 year old’s fault, who more than likely pulled the trigger four times on McNair and then once on her own head.

By the way, statistics show that homicides of boyfriends (perpetrated by the girlfriend) occur with a knife more than a gun. I’ll take a page from Lupica’s extremeism and say that our country of knife-lovers is responsible for that.

Stop buttering your pancakes, people.

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