So this is where we are now?
November 27th, 2007, 4:12 pm · Post a Comment · posted by sschramm
Do you ever have those moments when you realize that something has fundamentally changed in the world you live in and you’ve been too distracted to notice? You know, when you experience something and you’re left stunned, chewing on this new reality.
I get that each time I see a new 10-gallons-to-the-mile SUV or teenage girls running around the mall in outfits so revealing they’d make strippers blush.
I had one of those moments today when I heard Redskins safety Sean Taylor died from a gunshot wound suffered in a home invaision early Monday.
Taylor, who was 24, was shot by an intruder while his fiancé and baby daughter lay in bed in the family’s Florida home.
Don’t try to make to make too much sense out of this loss because there just isn’t any sense to be found. Someone gunned the man down to either get a piece of his wealth, settle some score or for just no reason at all.
He is the second NFL player do be killed by gun violence in the last year as Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was murdered last December.
He is one of several high-profile athletes to be the victim of a home invasion recently as NBA players Antione Walker and Eddy Curry were robbed at gunpoint in their homes earlier this year.
These men excelled in athletics, something that is universally valued in our culture. Yet things got so desperate in their communities that they became marked men.
This reminds me of what goes on overseas. Several of the top international soccer stars hail from impoverished countries in South America and Africa. The star athletes have all the money and fame of their American counterparts, but have a greater number of worries.
Kidnappings of relatives in exchange for ransoms are common. Returns home, if they ever do return, involve complex security issues.
Their countrymen, crippled by poverty, have turned their sports heroes into targets.
I guess that’s us now.
