Roger Clemens: Dick

Everyone knows Clemens is a dick. It's just a fact. I have my own reasons starting with he played for the BoSox and I lived part of my childhood in Flushing Queens, the home of the Mets. One of my earliest childhood memories was the 1986 World Series. I guess I was destined to be a Beantown hater. I do dislike Beantown. I've taken three or four extended trips there. Never liked it. But it's been five or six years and I've mellowed out a bit and really don't give two shits about baseball like I used to as a teenager so I'm willing to give the town another shot, but not Clemens, he's still a dick.

And when Clemes says things like this:

Roger Clemens, in Houston to get his National League championship ring, made a racially insensitive remark when asked about playing in the World Baseball Classic and observing the devotion of Japanese and South Korean fans, ESPN.com reported.

"None of the dry cleaners were open, they were all at the game, Japan and Korea," Clemens said. "So we couldn't get any dry cleaning done out there, but I guess the neatest thing is that 50,000 of them were at Anaheim Stadium."

Now it would be one thing if this was said as a stupid joke that wasn't meant to be heard, but still, stupid. I'm more offended that my Korean peoples have been lumped in with the Japanese as the dry cleaners. Everyone knows that it's Koreans who are the dry cleaners and corner store owners for the most part and in my experience 99.999999% of the time I've gone to a corner market or dry cleaner and the owner is Asian, but it's still not so great to just assume so. To me, this is no different than me saying, those stupid Americans and Germans were killing all the Jews during World War II. They're both white, right? So I guess they must have been both killing 6M+ Jews in a mass genocide.

Fuck you Roger Clemens.

I'm in a particularly pissy mood today.

Comments

[danie]

What a prick...but he always has been (and I'm a former Red Sox fan!)

There are some people that just don't get how insensitive they are.

[Frank]

Man, your comments are right on the money. And a well done analogy...very well done. An eye opener what made me go "Wow."

And I second it: Clemens - Dick.

[acm]

To me, this is no different than me saying, those stupid Americans and Germans were killing all the Jews during World War II. They're both white, right? So I guess they must have been both killing 6M+ Jews in a mass genocide.

uh, I may just not have had enough coffee, but I can't even parse this. ?!

anyway, clearly Clemens is a dick. I think that just assuming that all Asians work in dry-cleaning (or even at the corner store) qualifies you without reservation as a racist jerk. with or without the mystifying analogy...

[Peter]

Wow, talk about taking things out of context. Why do you guys only read the dry cleaning part and not the part about 50,000 people at the ballpark. He's just trying to compliment Korean/Japanese national pride for baseball and the dry cleaners just happened to be the setting where he was.
And what's wrong with running a dry cleaners? I can think of much worse things to be.

[acm]

gee, Peter, I dunno -- do you think that if he had said, "there was nobody left to shine my shoes at the trainstation, because all the black guys were at the football game" it would be offensive? "all the bars had to close because all the Irish went to cheer on the Redsox"? he thinks Asian person and all he can think is the cheapest stereotype. imagine the shock he might feel to go to the hospital and get treated by an Asian doctor -- what? they can do professional stuff too?

you don't get credit for invoking a tired racially based cliche, no matter what other happy things you might have been saying.

[Marc Stier]

You are right about Clemens. But let's not take it out on Boston. I lived just outside Boston for six or seven years. It is a wonderful city. It is as much fun to walk in Boston as it is in Philly.

The T is one of the great public transit systems in the country. I had a car so that I could get to my parents in upstate New York. But I would regularly park it somewhere and then, when I needed it two months later, would have to search for it because I couldn't remember where it was.