Steve McNair-Sahel Kazemi, Their Lives and Deaths – and What They Mean to Us
July 9, 2009 by dwil
On vacation...
Steve McNair was murdered by Sahel Kazemi while sleeping. Kazemi shot McNair in the head, twice in the chest, and again in the head; while he slept. Then Kazemi, 20, sat down next to the corpse of her just dead lover, and killed put a bullet through her own head.
Apparently Kazemi was contemplating ending her life and mentioned this to friends just a few days before the murder-suicide:
Kazemi was showing signs of falling apart, police learned from her friends and co-workers.
On Thursday, several hours after her DUI arrest, she was in the parking lot in the middle of her shift at Dave & Buster’s buying a gun. She got it for $100 from a man she tried to sell her Kia to unsuccessfully. She still had payments on the Kia but didn’t need the car because McNair had helped her buy a Cadillac Escalade, registered in both their names.
Kazemi told friends it was a birthday gift, but police said they believe she was making the payments.
It was in the Escalade that police stopped Kazemi in the early hours of July 2. McNair and another person police have not identified were in the car too. Kazemi told police she had smoked from a hookah (water pipe) earlier in the night and had a buzz, but that she wasn’t drunk.
Still, the officer noted a strong odor of alcohol on her breath. She was taken to jail, while McNair and his friend were allowed to take a cab home. McNair later bailed Kazemi out of jail.
Police said they don’t know what Kazemi’s state of mind was when she purchased the gun. She spent so long in the parking lot, the restaurant’s managers told her to clock out for the night.
An ad was posted July 2 on Craigslist, where Kazemi was trying to sell her living room and kitchen furniture. She told family she was preparing to move in with McNair, but the ad was posted about the same time police believe she was purchasing the gun.
Kazemi, who was known as Jenny to friends, left work early again on Friday night. She told someone that night that her life was a ball of (expletive), and “I should just end it.”
And ironically, McNair was working with the Maryland state government on a commercial warning of the dangers of ——– suicide.
———————————
Steve McNair met Sahel Kazemi at the place of her employment, a Dave & Buster’s restaurant and entertainment center. Dave & Buster’s was a place of business frequented by McNair, his wife Mechelle, and their four boys, Junior, Steven, Tyler and Trenton. Though the happenstance of their meeting remains unknown, presumably, McNair first saw Kazemi one of the many nights he was eating at the restaurant with his family.
It is said that Mechelle McNair had no idea he husband was involved in an affair with another woman, let alone Kazemi.
This, despite the fact that McNair owned a condominium separate from the home in which she lived with McNair and their sons:
“She’s blindsided by this,” one source said of Mechelle McNair, who was holed up in her family’s home just 6 miles from the condo her husband used to bed his mistress. “She’s crushed. Her whole world is shattered.”
This, despite the fact that photos of McNair and Kazemi parasailing during a tropical vacation can be found on the Internet simply through a Google Image search.
This, despite the knowledge that a source who has family close to McNair’s place of birth in Mt. Olive told me the following:
“Steve has a long history of having so called women on the side. Even one of my wife’s high school classmates was with Steve for over 8 years (she was with Steve even when he was dating and married to his wife), only breaking up with him the day before she got married.
Supposedly Steve’s wife knew about her as well as the other women that he was with. His relationships with other these women was pretty much out in the open.. I have seen him a few times in Hattiesburg out at restaurants with a few women….
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt also. At the same time I try not to judge folks personal life. As far as I know Mcnair and his wife had an open relationship.
I know that many rich folks have unique relationships. Who am I to judge?
Perfect example, my cousin was engaged to a former NFL player. They had been together ever since college. I remember her telling me that she didn’t care what he did, as long as he financially took care of her and didn’t have his groupies around her.
Her view was she was going to get a star athlete no matter what, so long as she was taken care of. The athlete’s view was that my cousin was pretty and going to be something (she was going to school to be a doctor) so he new he had a so called “diamond in the ruff”…
On the real I agree, Mechelle knew about Mcnair’s woman. And as I said D, Mcnair had a lot of women. Even my ex-college roommate worked with one of his side women. He would shoot her a G [$1000] a month and send her tickets for Titan home games.
But I have one thing to add…. From what I know Mcnair has always had long term relationships with women who were able to support themselves. The three women who I know were Mcnair’s side women were eduacted and had good paying jobs. So I guess this may be the first, with some one unable to support themselves.”
In this light, it makes sense for Mechelle McNair to disavow knowledge of her husband’s affairs on many levels.
If she admitted she knew she would, in some circles, be viewed as a “gold digger,” a woman staying with her famous, wealthy husband for the money and the easy lifestyle (the two were married in 1997). Certainly some members of Both her family and McNair’s would view her in a negative light and likely give the press negative statements about her. Depending on the type of insurance the pair have, an admission of knowledge of his affairs might have a negative effect on monies Mechelle McNair stands to garner from her husband’s murder. Finally, it is not, at present, known if the couple entered into a pre-nuptial agreement prior to their marriage. If so, admitting knowledge of her husband’s affairs could even affect the ownership of her portion of her murdered husband’s estate.
Mechelle McNair is best known in football circles as the woman who understood her NFL quarterback husband’s health issues better than any other living human being because by 2003 she had become a registered nurse:
Steve and Mechelle also have different sleeping habits. Most nights, Mechelle says, she sleeps alone upstairs in the couple’s bed, while Steve sits on the couch downstairs, drifting in and out of slumber while watching Gunsmoke, Matlock, In the Heat of the Night or Walker, Texas Ranger….
Mechelle’s opinions aren’t born solely of spousal concern; she recently became a registered nurse, a vocation that, for her husband, is exceedingly convenient. (Among other things she has wrapped his fingers in splints and applied ice to his feet.) “Sometimes Steve will be downstairs at 3 a.m. and will call me—his cellphone to the phone next to the bed—to ask me to bring him something,” Mechelle said after Sunday’s game. “At times he’ll even ask our son [Tyler, 5] to get him a glass of water. I swear, I have two children.”
As Steve and Tyler, roaming the locker room in matching olive suits, began to walk her way, Mechelle turned serious. She recounted the severe infection her husband contracted in his throwing shoulder early in 2001, one that required emergency surgery, a 15-gallon saline flush and twice-daily IV antibiotic treatments that lasted for two weeks. “One night I remember him crying and asking me for help, begging for more pain pills when I’d already given him the maximum amount,” Mechelle said. “I was panicking, fearing the worst; his football career wasn’t even a consideration.”
There is a sad irony here. Due to the number of injuries he incurred, Mechelle McNair was used to seeing her husband, Steve McNair, asleep on the couch because sleeping in their bed often caused him too much discomfort.
And when Sahel Kazemi entered the condominium owned by Steve McNair, killing him was made easier when she found him sitting on his couch, asleep.
——————————————–
Police investigators into the McNair-Kazemi murder-suicide have related to the public that Kazemi’s roomate was about to move out of the apartment they shared, that she was making payments on her Kia and the Cadillac Escalade McNair made a down payment on for her, that when Kazemi, McNair, and an unidentified friend of McNair’s were pulled over on last Thursday night, McNair was said to be less than pleased with Kazemi and left the scene angry.
The investigators say that Kazemi suspected that McNair was having an affair with yet another woman. Kazemi saw the unidentified woman enter McNair’s condominium, waited for the woman to leave, and then followed her to her home. They also say that Kazemi purchased the 9 mm semi-automatic weapon she used to commit the murder-suicide in the parking lot of the Dave & Buster’s where she worked. It is said that she sat in the Escalade for so long that the manager working on July 2 had to tell her to leave her place of work and go home.
Photo accompanying Sahel Kazemi's Craigslist ad.
There is a Craigslist listing for the sale of all her apartment furniture, complete with photos (shown, left). The ad read:
“NICE FURNITURE. TV, COUCH, COFFE TABLE AND MORE – $1 (hermitage).
All-in-all, the picture painted of Sahel Kazemi in the the days before the crime is one of a 20-year old woman whose life was coming undone faster than she could have ever imagined. Though family members say she was selling the items in the apartment in which she lived solely because she was moving, it is easy to also surmise that she had already made up her mind that she was going to shoot and kill Steve McNair and then turn the semiautomatic weapon on herself and end her own life.
Usually the money made from selling items like a flat-screen television, couch, dining room set and coffee table would go toward a new living space.Especially for a 20-year old waitres working at Dave & Buster’s.
No, selling these items for $1 says Kazemi felt she no longer had a need for money.
And how did Steve McNair fail to perceive the young woman’s quickly-growing volatility? Both parties knew time was up on the relationship and with more to lose, McNair should have seen the change in behavior in his soon-to-be -apparently – ex-mistress. However, McNair was too busy with a new woman – or at least another woman who would have slid into the slot once filled by Kazemi.
Perceived power and hubris will blind a person right at the wrong time. Just ask John F. Kennedy. Despite warnings of threats of there being elements in place in Dallas, Texas ready to physically harm him, Kennedy – also a well-known philanderer – journeyed into a hornet’s nest anyway…. and was so full of himself he even took his wife into the nest with him. Just ask all the legislators who have recently put themselves in compromising positions. Just ask William Jefferson Clinton.
In some corners it is being said that Steve McNair is doing what a man will do. Looking at the array of tabloid and national news outlet affairs spilled across our collective consciousness, on the surface this view seems to have some merit. Yet when lines are read between the problem is much deeper. That a writer, a columnist with a national audience, can extoll the virtues of what he terms “June-December romances” is a sign that there is something deeper afoot than just Steve McNair’s extramarital relationships.
Then, that columnist’s editors allowed the following passage to be let loose on the public:
As for the life-experience, station-in-life disparity between a retired millionaire quarterback and a Dave & Buster’s waitress, well, let he who has never Captained cast the first hoe.
As in all matters dealing with the sexual foibles of Black men, a certain want to niggerfy Black men arises from the psyches of bell hooks’ White, male-dominated, Western society. Simultaneously, there is a want to portray modern Black men as unevolved. Black men are forever to be perceived as wild-eyed Mandingos – animals who will succumb to the basal, reptilian mind eros of the swinging dick in the beat of a heart – especially when presented with hordes of nubile non-Black females. In the eyes of the self-described “majority,” the Black man cannot help but to revert back to his feral, African veldt or native jungle self when confronted with a non-Black female, the shadows of night, and a werewof’s full moon.
McNair’s former teammate, Eddie George, known as a “stud” also perpetuates this negative portrayal:
I’m pretty sure if he were here today he’d say, ‘You know what I’m sorry. Things happen. I’m a man.’ (bold mine)
“Things happen. I’m a man.” George is telling a captive, White audience – sadly, for George – that Mandingo is ruled by his sex organ and Mandingo cannot help himself when it comes to matters of sex.
And today these Western-cultured White people ensure that they have a house slave in tow who will niggerfy him or herself as well as his “Black Man” subject matter in the stead of the Whites who fill similar positions as the house slave and in the stead of the Whites (and negroes who would love to be fair-skinned) who would employ them.
The result is the continued perpetuation of time-honored racial stereotypes on one side of the aisle and much consternation on the other side of the aisle. Well-meaning Black people invariably enter into conversations with each other where the primary topics are, why do we do this to ourselves and how can we change so this never happens again.
The proverbial, We, have so succumbed to the ever-shifting rules of assimiliation, or that which we can never be, that we take the White man’s hands and wring in worry them for him. We treat ourselves as the monolithic societal segment we have been told we are. And invariably we will look to the leaders of our monolith as they are prescribed for us by the self-described majority.
And though house negro house slave columnists like this one was careful to write inclusively of all men, the fact that he personalized Steve McNair’s choice of Sahel Kazemi as an extramarital partner and wrote wistfully of his own preferences, he acted to speak for all of ———– us.
When, in fact, he spoke for no one, not even himself.
And what of the White members of sports news outlets and sports sections of newspapers (those that still have circulation runs)? They are freed to obscure their anger for falling for yet another Black athlete who gave all the appearances of an evolved creature, but was just another crazed Mandingo cloaked in fine cotton or silk clothing. Rather than say what was said for them by the house negro they move their anger to an institution they control – the NFL Hall of Fame.
And to a person they all say Steve McNair is nowhere near Hall of Fame “material.” Then, to substantiate their racist speak, they uniformly point to McNair’s passing yard total – 31,304 – as if it is the golden rod of truth that McNair’s accomplishments as a quarterback fall woefully short of Hall of Fame worthiness. Never mind that only Steve Young and Fran Tarkenton are the only other NFL quarterbacks to amass at least 30,000 passing yards while rushing for over 3,500 yards.
Context, or in this case, a lack thereof, is everything.
The White men who lord over the NFL Hall will now never give Steve McNair is earned due.
My goodness, what will we do?
Steve McNair, one of our precious shining lights, has failed us. We must be ever-vigilant with each other just as White men ask us to be ever-vigilant in the face of that ephemeral and ever-evolving thing called terrorism, so that we can sound the alarm for White culture – just like we did after we – mostly – defended Michael Vick and, “burned” by Vick, we – Black columnists -sounded the “thug alarm” far ahead of all things White when Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was tragically murdered. It was WE who painted Taylor as a corner-standing, convict in waiting. It was WE who assailed Taylor as he lied dying from possessing a machete. And it was WE who told White people not to be surprised if his murder was some sort of retaliatory act for some nefarious act performed by Taylor himself or one or more of Taylor’s thug friends.
And by god WE never even apologized to each other when it turned out all OUR assumptions about Taylor were wrong.
But still, forget Taylor, he was an aberration. So what if somehow he was an alleged “good guy.”
The question remains: how can we conduct ourselves in a manner that will be appreciated by White culture so that when our time comes, we can be safely embraced by its, burdened by us, arms?
—————————————————
In the end, the Steve McNair-Sahel Kazemi murder-suicide is a cautionary tale for our society.
Though Sahel Kazemi is originally from the Middle East, Western culture’s tentaclesreach to all corners of today’s Earth. Sahel Kazemi is as much the victim of a culture that for women’s relationships with men, is often more formed as girls by animated Disney movies like Cinderella than it is in the home.
When Cinderella famously leaves the party at the castle fearing her gilded coach is about to turn into a pumpkin, what is not so well known about that scene is that she is ridden down a path that is foggy and littered on the sides with gravestone crosses. Interwoven in a little girls’ tale are stark and hideous images of mortality and a much more heinous message that for a woman the path “home” from being with the man of her dreams is filled with the figurative graves of women past.
Young girls are, through a vast roiling sea of female commercial images, hyper-sexualized almost from birth. Female language today, a descendant of the once-seen as hideous “Valley Girl” speak is today part and parcel of girls’ and women’s beings. The stripper pole that was once only seen in dank spaces that smelled of alcohol and sweat is now happily used as an exercise tool. It is vogue today to give birth and receive a “tummy tuck” all in the same procedure. And plastic surgery – “body augmentation” – is so normal that a television show detailing the lives of plastic surgeons and their patients is grossly popular with college-aged women.
Those are the images that can dominate and fill the minds of young girls today. And Sahel Kazemi, originally from a world that more dreamed of Western culture than lived it, came here to America and was subsumed by the West’s society’s cultural depravity.
With an at least 50% divorce rate and many more single parent homes of unmarried couples, there are not enough parents left in America to adequately supervise a child’s upbringing at home. Children are left to fight for personal understanding in a failed public school system that is just the next step from a failed pre-school system with teachers and educators who, if they chose to care about the children they teach, cannot, because the cash-strapped system leaves them with babysitter duties more than it does educator and mentor.
Steve McNair’s sons are left without a father, without their mentor and personal hero.
The NFL left McNair’s 36-year old body broken to the point where it would no longer heal and left him facing the average lifespan for an NFL player of 56. In no more than 10 years McNair would physically no longer be able to play with his sons. He would show absolutely no sign of having ever been a professional football player, save for the show of the severity of his injuries.
McNair’s personal legacy to his sons will be formed away from home as much as it will be in the home. His sons will forever be forced to face whispers of his father’s infidelities. And as we see often with children who have a parent or parents who act in a dysfunctional manner, the children repeat the mistakes of the parents. McNair’s sons must face the truth of their father as soon as possible. It is the only way to make him human in their minds rather than the negative archetypal hero-villain in one body. By beginning the process of humanizing their father now, by internalizing his outstanding qualities alongside his personal shortcomings, the boys can grow to become more human themselves. And through measured views of their father’s ability to reach great heights and his equal ability to fall prey to his dark side, the boys might emerge as young men who are perhaps better integrated, psychologically, than most Americans.
Make no mistake, the Steve McNair-Sahel Kazemi murder-suicide has all the elements of the most-watched “60 Minutes” segments, or “Primetime Live” specials, or cable television retrospectives ——————— or ESPN made-for-TV movies.
This tragic public event can also act as a wake-up call that reaches deep into every segment of our society and becomes a reminder for what we have become: a self-centered, neglectful, psychologically often intellectually primitive land of people who are quickly losing the will to individually or collectively strive for the greatest human heights – and are instead all-too willing feed the basest parts of our beings and use every propaganda device at our disposal to tell ourselves, each other, and the rest of the world that we are sane after all.
But if, rather than trivialize this event or attempt to brush it away in any way and we actively remember this event, we might just be able to find our way out of the forest that presently consumes us and is quickly making us a lost society of people.
Well said. Thank you.
You’re welcome fla….
Damn, D. Back at the top of your form after the hiatus. Keep it up!
Great piece D well said on all levels.
Thanks fellas!…..
Very eloquent. Wish writers like you were in the mainstream. Yet I can’t help feeling that the fact we know the intimate details of the lives and deaths of people like Steve Mcnair and Michael Jackson yet know nothing about the lives of the folks our tax dollars kill on a regular basis is a damning indictment of us. To be honest, I don’t care about the life and death of ANY entertainer, I just care about what we pay them to do whether it be to throw a football or to sing songs to us or whatever we use to take our minds off our day-to-day troubles. What I care about more are the lives of the victims of a Predator drone attack in the Swat valley in Pakistan, or the lives of Gazans under siege by an Israeli government completely enabled to visit these depradations on those people because of U.S. aid, or the lives of Columbian union organizers who have been disappeared and murdered with the help of our tax dollars (“Plan Columbia’). Yes I know this site is “SPORTS on My Mind” but I can’t help it. Compared to the lives and deaths of our victims Steve Mcnairs life and death is utterly insignificant.
I liked the piece, but I disagree with your reading of Eddie George’s comment.
When I read that story, I felt that George was saying that all men are fallible and make mistakes. I think he was saying that McNair should have owned up to his infidelity, and taken his lumps, like a man.
newbie-
I agree with you wholeheartedly that we should know about the lives and deaths of the people our soldiers are charged to kill. It would humanize war and perhaps help people to see how incredibly evil taking a life is.
And yet, how people conduct their lives behind their images is very important and instructive, as well. I’m not going to rehash how because that’s the article’s purpose
But I am just as curious to know what the board of directors, COO, and CEO of corporations like Dow and Monsanto eat and how they navigate their way through their lives. While killing the rest of us with their products, do they also ingest the foods they genetically manipulate or, in the case of Dow, spray with poisons?
I’m just as curious about McNair’s and Kazemi’s lives as I am the soldier who fires the shot or releases the missile; as I am the general or secretary of defense who advocates for war; as I am the victims of the weapons and the wars.
In the end, I see a different kind of purpose for and importance in reporting person in each circumstance.
dwil –
I understand the point of what you write (at least I think I do) and because this website is about sports your article is relevant. The problem for me, using your example, is we DON’T know what the executives of these agri-industrial corporations eat, in fact most of us don’t even know that the products that they provide for us to ingest are ultimately poisonous. But we know the intimate details of the extra-marital affairs of countless celebrities. We all know about a come stain on the blue dress of Clinton’s mistress, but most of us don’t know about the red blood stains left in the desert sands of Iraq while we were bombing that country every other day when Clinton was president. How many people outside the state of New York heard of Eliot Spitzer before his affair? How many people know he was trying to reign in the banks before they triggered the worst economic crisis in 75 or so years? We’ve become so consumed, and are so bombarded, with information regarding the private lives of celebrities that we know next to nothing about what’s being done to us by those who hold power in this country. And being a life long sports fan I’m as guilty as the next guy, so maybe I’m throwing stones from a glass house.
This is a legacy piece.
By invoking the imagery of Cinderella, you’ve taken it to another level. Cultural iconography exists for an explicit purpose — to instruct, to model and to preserve. As time passes, our understanding of these symbols fades away — and cautionary tales have less and less impact.
I will note that the person who asserted that Mechelle McNair had no knowledge of such dalliances was none other than Vince Young’s “suicide watch friend” Michael Mu. (It’s amazing that he turns up whenever there is ‘trouble in paradise.’)
Earlier in the week, as I was decidedly avoiding conjecture on this case, I noted that the Puritanical approach to monogamy — when conflated with patriarchy and misogyny — creates absolute chaos in these scenarios. And you’re right to point to JFK and William Jefferson Clinton as typical of this behavior.
Establishing sexual relations with multiple partners is considered “traditional” in most parts of the world where different religious, social and economic relationships prevail. It is even considered traditional here in many, many quarters. The moral outrage at what are essentially economic and biological relationships is the equivalent of plowing the sea. There was a time when women were not so excluded from the means of economic production — and were free from the psychological imagery of patriarchy. In the West — it was long, long ago and in a place far, far away. Perhaps it as exactly as you said.
The profound cultural divorce of WE from our traditions lies, in part, at the bottom of all this. You cleaned it all up beautifully. Well done.
Big Man beat me to it. That’s exactly how I read George’s comments. He’s a man and as such is imperfect.
In response to Newbie, I would say that people feel bad when Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcet, Steve McNair or Ed McMahon pass on because they were part of their lives as a happy reminder of youth or in some cases the only thing good they remember about being young. When they die another part of their youth is chipped away and people are reminded of their own mortality.
So, while I certainly emphathize with soldiers getting sacrificed in the name of commerce but I also remember the time I saw Michael Jackson moonwalk or seeing Smooth Criminal or Remember the Time and remember how I felt at the time as a kid and it’s a good memory. We talked about it at school the next day, bonded over it. I am reminded of Air McNair holding it down in the 2000 playoffs especially against Jacksonville and the Rams. I was always with friends and we would yell “That’s my quarterback” because at that time white folks in the ‘ville were trying to talk that ish about him being a better safety. All kinds of memories and feelings mixed up with that, pride, righteosness and vindication when it comes to McNair.
So, I guess I McNair’s life is no less significant to me than that of a fallen soldier. Honestly, I already know what a soldiers life is to some degree. I can mourne and care about both.
dwil,
“niggerfy”. Perfect term.
Exhibit A: Martellius Bennett of the Cowboys, along with his brother, Michael.
http://youbeenblinded.com/video-martellus-bennett-black-olympics-leave-bad-taste/3833
awb-
My concern is not with the soldier. The soldier is nothing but a mercenary. My concern is with the men, women, and children whose broken bodies litter the places these soldiers have invaded. My concern is with a public so wrapped up in celebrity culture, thanks to the mainstream media, they don’t even give a second thought to the literally millions of people who have been murdered by their tax dollars. When somebody whose work I’ve enjoyed and admired dies, sure, I take the time to remember how that work has enriched my life. But this obsession that we have with our celebrities and the tawdry details of their scandals has blinded us to the reality of what the power centers of this country have done to us and worse to billions of others around the world. While the media focuses our attention on ONE murder, millions are murdered and we are all accomplices.
Understood. But I still maintain that I can be concerned with the results of this country’s misadventures while still mourn a pop culture figure. Not to sound glib but on this particular thread we are talking about Steve McNair and not the victims of U.S wars. There are plenty of spaces to talk about that and I have, many times. However, in those forums I wouldn’t bring up the fact that MJ or Steve McNair died because that wasn’t the subject of the post.
But I get what you are saying. America is caught up in pop culture. In this particular forum though I believe that we are giving respect and credit where it’s due. Doesn’t mean we have forgotten about all the brown people getting killed because of this country’s policies.
awb-
Understood. It’s just that dwil’s column was thought provoking in that he asks us to look at the bigger picture and I fail to see the significance of one death against the backdrop of millions. Also, the personal lives of athletes doesn’t really matter to me. I watch sports because I’m entertained by athletic competition. Honestly, the less I know about these guys the better.
Newbie
So you don’t care.
Are you trying to convince us that we shouldn’t care?
Why should we think like you? Because you find the personal lives of athletes uninteresting, that means the rest of us should as well. This is curious.
I get the argument about American’s celebrity culture, it’s a good argument. I understand the argument about foreign wars, another good argument.
What I don’t get is coming to sports site and writing mulitple comments telling readers not to care about a something related to sports. That’s just weird.
I honestly do think that sports can provide insight into how the world works, so I see some value in debating the larger issues involved in sports. If you don’t, you could just ignore those debates.
Big Man, awb-
Knowing Eddie George has acted viscously to women and in a predator type of way, I can’t help he perceives this situation in any way other than reflexively defensive. And with both a subconscious and a conscious that are guilty as hell, he ain’t comin’ out with the type of statement you guys are suggesting.
T3-
Lovely commentary, fucking lovely – on the real. And I’m talking about what you added, not the co-signing (I always appreciate it when we’re on the same page). Michael Mu, eh?! Isn’t that some shit! It’s like he’s some sort of paid informant or something working below the Mason-Dixon line. Hmmmmmm.
awb-
Thank you for adding something essential to this whole afair: the value of entertainers to our feel-good receptors…..
Big Man, des-
Thanks.
Dwil,
Huh? I honestly dont’ know what you are talking about in regards to Eddie George. When did this happen? Was it in the news?
I was wondering the same thing.
‘Cause when I read the CNN article that contained his quote, the sense I got was the one I described. He talked about McNair looking to fill the void of football and how that might be related to him running women.
awb, Big Man-
I alluded to it in the article and, unfortunately, because of his McNair statements, it’s damn near impossible to view him in any other light in a search, so all I could do is allude….
I remember this because my wife/partner and I read about his behavior a few years ago and when she read his recent McNair-related comments, she almost choked and reminded me of the information about his “reputation” with women that bubbled to the surface and was quickly squelched, for some reason.
I’ll keep digging fellas because I know it has to be out there somewhere.
Pieces like these are why sites like these are vital and irreplaceable in our world of communications. Perspective is in too short supply in the places we usually look. And the conversation it generates, thoughtful, serious and passionate, is welcome. I definitely get the idea newbie presents, that the crimes perpetrated under the radar yet in plain sight are taken for granted too much – but at the same time, the contributions of entertainers, such as athletes, is belittled and demeaned too often and too quickly. Worse, their lives, and the worth of those lives, are minimized, ridiculed and caricatured too easily, treated like gladiators but not like the human beings who were, we all forget too easily, once “just like us.” Steve McNair, Michael Jackson, etc., were not born into royalty, nobility, entitlement or privilege (the way certain immediate past presidents were), so having attained what they did should be celebrated more often, instead of lumped together and labeled by people who can only elevate themselves by stomping on others.
dcinbalt,
Exactly!
@dcinbalt –
Preach!
Generally, a good article though I have one small complaint.
Where did you come up with the stuff about the wife losing access to the insurance, marital estate, etc if she knew about McNair’s affair? It sounds like you are creating some sort of concept of divorce by estoppel out of wholecloth. Did you come up with that on your own or did someone give that to you?
I just don’t know of any life insurance policies with an “open marriage exception” codicil.
And I think you go a little of the deep end with the black sexuality riff. Following Spitzer, Ensign, and Sanford, I think it is pretty obvious that male sexuality and power are linked. Maybe there is a stronger sense of this with athletic black men, but I don’t see anyone trying to turn McNair into some kind of over-sexed savage. If anything, he was too calculating and withdrawn in this relationship, it would appear.
Also put me in the camp that doesn’t know what you are saying in regards to Eddie George. I sort of skimmed over that, but I honestly have never heard or read anything about him in regards to abusing women.
myron-
Estoppel? ESTOPPEL? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too? You can’t claim both/and when your actions compel another person to act in a certain way? Estoppel on who’s part? His or hers?
You cannot create a “concept of divorce by estoppel.” However, the legal premise of estoppel can be used in a divorce claim.
Anyway:
I just don’t know of any life insurance policies with an “open marriage exception” codicil.
Hmmmm. A “codocil” is an attachment to a will. And, a will is a statement of one’s wishes for the executing of their estate.
And a life insurance policy is not a will.
So your summation sentence actually reads: I just don’t know of any life insurance policies with an “open marriage exception” attachment to a will.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense to me. Maybe you can reword that for me so I can catch what you’re trying to say.
BUT.
Say a woman says, “Yeah, I knew he was screwing around but like many NBA, NFL, MLB wives or wives on men who bring home a huge salary I chose to stick around because I was used to the lifestyle (ergo, the money and the trappings that go along with the money).”
Can someone listed as a claimant to part of McNair’s estate attempt to cut Mechelle McNair out of the will – the “gold digger” claim – because of that statement?
You goddamn right they can. Think Anna Nicole Smith. Though, in her case, she won, the “gold digger” claim was made. Had Smith actually made statements like the one above after her husband’s death (or, in her case, “Yeah, he was 172 years old but I stayed because of the lifestyle…”) it would most likely have greatly impacted her claim to his estate.
Next…..
And you’re sure that a stated link between male sexuality and power isn’t just some fucked up construct created by men to assuage our innate feelings of inferiority and our fears relative to the rest of the world – and especially WOMEN.
Really????
Those three men show me nothing except weakness. There is no true expression of power in their acts.
You want real sexuality and power?
It is possessing, as part of your sexual organs, an external manifestation of your base animal want to simply feel pleasure. rather than possessing a dual-purpose instrument that is functional but physiologically tied only to the expelling of internal poisons and psychologically tied to only to procreation.
Psychically, “power and a dick” is tied to ego, at best. And ego is, at best, just your conscious relationship with the reality you perceive.
and that is part and parcel as to why there is such importance placed on manipulating the collective conscious while telling us we haven’t enough time for reflection (lest that reflection become the catalyst for us to dip into the well of the collective unconscious and see this shit for what it truly is).
Finally, calculating and withdrawn????
An affair w/ someone who worked at Dave & Buster’s where he took his wife and sons is calculating?
Pictures of them “on vacation” parasailing on TMZ is withdrawn?
“You CANNOT be serious!” – JP McEnroe.
As a former nightclub promoter in NYC, everyone is missing the point. Money will skew morality. If you took 100 millionaires who were in the 20′s and 30′s, I GUARANTEE you 99 out of 100 cheat on their girlfriend/wife. The other doesn’t because he is gay. Add a millionaire professional athlete to the mix, and it’s100 out of 100 that cheat. It has nothing to do with Western civilization. It’s humanity. Women are like birds. They seek their mates by which one has the nicer plumage and who has the better nest. It’s instinctual.
Human females look for the male with the best anatomy, who dresses nicely and has a lovely home/car. Sure, they want a guy who can communicate, but there is no communication if the initial visual isn’t enough to gather her attention.
McNair was a normal man, albeit a rich one. His weaknesses are inherited. It has little to do with influnces this country promotes. If you are around a certain element, you will develop characteristics, traits, attitudes that are familiar with the existing environment. A rich man courted many beautiful women while his wife was home with the children. If you think that’s out of the ordinary for millionaires in their 20′s and 30′s you’re living in a fantasy land filled with wishful thoughts.
great article and insights DWil…
“Young girls are, through a vast roiling sea of female commercial images, hyper-sexualized almost from birth. Female language today, a descendant of the once-seen as hideous “Valley Girl” speak is today part and parcel of girls’ and women’s beings.”
I specifically remember when that awful movie “Valley Girl” came out in the early 80s and it it became a cult classic for white teenage girls. In junior high, I remember the language change right then and there from girls who previously never spoke that way. At the time, I was sure it was a silly teenage girl fad. Twenty-five years later that it would become the dominant language/dialect/whatever for even so many white women, regardless of education or profession, is truly a frightening occurrence. I mean, like “OMG!” has totally infected “twitter”
… And the fact that Becky can fly up the corporate ladder without making any linguistic modifications while Laquisha has to hire three speech coaches just to get her foot in the door makes it that much worse…
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newbie, I agree with your point general point about “celebrity culture” but have waved the white flag on that one long ago. I think that there has to be a distinction of WHY we are discussing a celebrity’s life. Many use celebrities as an escape from the mundane day-to-day grind of their own lives. That’s just escapism. Many tear down celebrities to make them feel better about their own failings. That’s just haterism. Others (led by ESPN) disproportianately tear down black celebrities and and athletes. That’s just racism.
But there are many good reasons to discuss celebrities, including their use as an illustrative tool for broader topics. Unfortunately, the death of Pat Tillman could do more to discuss whats going on with soldiers in Iraq than anything coming from CNN. This principle could be applied to virtually any important topic. Often sport is actually the best vehicle to explain stuff. This piece here by DWil probably touches on 5 to 10 socio-political discussion areas with “infidelity” gaining the most attention.
OT: RIP to boxer Arturo Gatti.
And so far, zero mention of the numerous arrests and drinking problems that plagued him.
Dubya Pass, indeed.
Holy crap! Gatti is dead? Damn.
awb,
Yeah, he’s gone. And now there are stories that the wife’s story keeps changing.
Let’s see if the media feels compelled to drag Gatti’s ‘history with women’ up as they sort through this. Should be an interesting contrast to McNair.
Wow. Instant compare and contrast. This oughtta be interesting.
Showtime just gave the 10 count for Arguello, Gatti and Michael Jackson. Whew.
awb-
Hmmmmm. It will be really interesting…. I’m watching… no mention on OTL. They had a show on ——————– World Cup soccer and how S. Africa is dealing with it.
Wait! Because Gatti was Canadian I went to the Canadian newspapers….. this from the Toronto Star:
Although he experienced a few minor tangles with the law, Gatti was not known for out-of-the-ring incidents — unlike his former brother-in-law Dave Hilton Jr., who had his WBC supermiddleweight title stripped after he was convicted of sexual assault against his two daughters. Hilton and Anna-Maria Gatti have since divorced.
You CANNOT be serious!
No mention of his constant struggle w/ drug abuse – nada.
The wife of Arturo Gatti has been detained and is the #1 suspect. Interesting this coming on the heels of Joey Gamache’s lawsuit against the NYSAC
The wife of Arturo Gatti has been detained and is the #1 suspect. Interesting this coming on the heels of Joey Gamache’s lawsuit against the NYSAC for allowing Gatti to enter the fight at middleweight condition when the fight was supposed to be held at super-lightweight. Very sad incident that left Gamache out of boxing and with brain damage. I’m sure the NYSAC is breathing a sigh of relief that Gatti won’t testify, since the scales were ignored the night before the fight. No way humanly possible you can gain over 20lbs in one day like Gatti did. Not that these two are connected at all, but boxing was about to be dealt a black eye with Gatti’s impending testimony.
Getting murdered by your girlfriend/wife in Brazil? He was choked out with her purse? You can’t subdue a professional boxer. Something tells me this was a job done by the female with help. Either she drugged him or he was jumped in his sleep. Gatti was an exciting fighter, albeit an extremely overrated one. I definitely respected his willingness to take a beating when one was there to take. Unfortunately, his defensive skills were poor. If he had some talent to defend himself, he would have truly been a legend.
He was Italian, fought mainly in New Jersey, and was not afraid to give a punch or take a punch. That pretty much explains his popularity. And frankly, that’s a pretty good boxing legacy.
I always watched Gatti fight because his fights were always going to be entertaining and have energetic crowds. I don’t think anyone would ever confuse him with a top talent, but boxing needs a lot more fighters of the Gatti ilk – mid-level guys with enough skill and strength to be dangerous and with enough heart to always entertain the crowd.
Anyway, even though I liked Gatti, I can’t say that this story took my breath away. I assume that every boxer’s life outside the ring is a mess.
Jimmy-
You’re definitely onto something….
Back to work and bang our man delivers a detailed piece asking many questions and throwing up solutions and complex understanding on a very sad situation – glad you care enough and we as readers learn a little more – love from Scotland…