Sean Taylor RIP

[Sgt PSN]

What's interesting to me is that Dio turned into a liberal and my pops turned into a raving republican lunatic. I wonder where the paths diverge.

Simple really.  Jesus helped your dad but not Dio. 

On the contrary, jesus and my dad don't really like each other too much. I think the son of god is biased against bald people.

A republican who doesn't like jesus?  I didn't know they made them yet. 

[Seabiscuit36]

I was supposed to go hunting to start the deer season, but with a farged up shoulder, i'm not exactly able to handle a 12 gauge.  All i wanted was Venison burgers/chili/ and Jerkey. 

it only takes 1 arm to operate a 12 gauge.  get your ass out there nancy!

I'm right handed, right shot, right dislocation.  It sucks, but hopefully the guys i was going with will spare me some for my freezer

[MDS]

poor people are awful. die.

[Sgt PSN]

I was supposed to go hunting to start the deer season, but with a farged up shoulder, i'm not exactly able to handle a 12 gauge.  All i wanted was Venison burgers/chili/ and Jerkey. 

it only takes 1 arm to operate a 12 gauge.  get your ass out there nancy!

I'm right handed, right shot, right dislocation.  It sucks, but hopefully the guys i was going with will spare me some for my freezer

sounds like the perfect opportunity for you to work on shooting with your offhand. 

[SD_Eagle5]

I write this in tears. Not simply for Sean Taylor, or for his loved ones, or for myself, or for this team. I grieve for all of us. Most of all, I grieve for our future.

I grieve for Sean's daughter Jackie, who will never know her father. I grieve for Gregg Williams, who lost his son and foundation for all hope. I grieve for Joe Gibbs. I grieve for all of us with the misfortune to be taterskins.

Sean Taylor was the last of the taterskins. In time you will know what I mean.

All of us will grieve in our own ways. But if you ever suffered loss of this magnitude, you know in your heart of hearts where this is headed.

This cannot be undone, prettied up, glorified or denied. It is senseless tragedy, taking the best of us from us, in the prime of life, ripping hope from us. What good are the memories of heroes when God smites our heroes down in front of our eyes?

This place we call our home is cursed, and we are the enemies of God.

It is survival to go on. To find something else, some other challenge in life, in another place. A place not stained for all time with the memory of losing Sean Taylor.

All true taterskins are dead already. Those who take up the flag, I salute you. This land will be tumbleweed someday. But you, you and I, we still want to believe.

So go ahead, good man. Take up that flag. Take the flag from where Sean has fallen, take the flag from his hands. Take the flag and fight on. Is there any other choice?

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with taterskins dead.

Farewell, Sean Taylor. You were the last great hero, the last of taterskins.

Wherever you are, that's where we're headed.

[Diomedes]

Can't we have retroactive abortions for people like this?

[Sgt PSN]

Wow.  Just wow. 

[QB Eagles]

That one's gotta be a goof. Even twelve year-old redneck Skins fans can't be that stupid, right?

[MDS]

I wonder what Sean is thinking.

[Eagaholic]

Probably some Capitol Hill  law maker.
But he does make a good point, that thing about  the place they call home is cursed. As for the rest of the nervous breakdown, I think there are still some rare but valid indications for electroshock therapy.   

[SD_Eagle5]

Thank you Extreme Skins
Sean Taylor's Spiritual Condition

Sean Taylor memorial sweatshirt


I love how it says 'Friend'

[Diomedes]

The warrior part is my fave.  Can't stand that moniker as used in reference to a goddamned sport.

Incidentally, this story should be a good lesson to anyone with a house they don't want people getting into.  Dogs.  Two big dogs.  Get two big dogs.  Rotts, dobermans, german shepherds, whatever.  Best anti invasion device you can have.  And also, of course, a shotgun.  I gather that the deceased had some trouble with guns, so maybe he wasn't allowed to have one.  But most of us don't have thug life convictions preventing such a thing.

Dogs and shotguns.

[ice grillin you]

great piece in todays wash post op ed....enlighten yourselves

A Person, Not A Plot Device
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 30, 2007; A23

Why do you suppose so many people were so quick to blame Sean Taylor for his own murder?

Relax, that's a rhetorical question. There's no need for self-exculpatory huffing and puffing, no need to point out that the verdict of suicide-by-bad-attitude -- pronounced so often this week, and so coldly -- was usually couched in broad hints or softened by the nebulous fog of the conditional mood. Everyone knew what was really being said, and everyone knew why.

Taylor instantly became not a person but a character, one whose purpose was to advance a narrative about young black men and their manifold failings.

Taylor, a gifted defensive back for the Washington taterskins, had been in trouble with the law. Despite the millions he earned playing football, he never managed to escape the quicksand lure of the mean streets -- parasitic friends, envious haters, a culture of casual violence. It was his decision to swim in this cesspool of dysfunction, the narrative said. And, like so many other young black men who have made the same wrong choice, he paid for it with his life.

At least that was the story before Wednesday, when Robert Parker, director of the Miami-Dade police, announced that investigators had "no reason" to believe Taylor was targeted by his killer or even knew the man who shot him. Police were operating on the theory that the crime was a botched burglary, Parker said, essentially a random act.

I realize that Parker may eventually be proved wrong. But what fascinates me is how eager people were to believe the worst about Taylor -- how ready to stuff a young man's death into a box labeled "pathology" and call it a day -- in the absence of supporting evidence. Apparently, "innocent until proved guilty" doesn't apply to young black men even when they're the victims of violent crime.

The few facts we have tell a story that's very different from the chosen narrative. Sean Taylor is hardly a typical product of those fabled "mean streets" -- he grew up with his father, a suburban police chief, in a middle-class neighborhood. He did spend weekends with his mother in a tougher area and acquired some sketchy friends. But at the same time he was attending an exclusive private high school, where he met his girlfriend, Jackie Garcia, a niece of the actor Andy Garcia.

Taylor's home, with its expansive yard and big swimming pool, is in an upper-middle-class suburb. There's nothing remotely "mean" about the street.

Jackie Garcia hid under the covers with the couple's 18-month-old daughter early Monday while Taylor faced the intruder who mortally wounded him. Andy Garcia released a statement Wednesday praising Taylor for his "heroic" sacrifice that saved Jackie's life.

Much has been made of the fact that Taylor grabbed a machete from under his bed before confronting the intruder. In New York or St. Louis or Seattle, if you saw a machete, you'd think: deadly weapon. But I spent years covering Latin America for The Post, so when I see a machete in a place like Miami I'm more likely to think: garden implement. Tropical vegetation is a lot easier to trim with a machete than with hedge clippers, and Taylor's father said Sean used the blade in his yard. No, machetes are not usually kept under the bed. But if my house had been broken into recently -- as Taylor's was, barely a week before his slaying -- I might have wanted the thing a little closer to hand.

My purpose here isn't to make a hero out of Sean Taylor, though he may well have died a hero's death. He made some serious mistakes in his life, and he didn't always have the proper regard for authority and discipline. Nor am I trying to sell the "he was finally turning his life around" narrative, as if taking a few GPS readings were enough to show someone the way to responsible manhood.

Life isn't so linear -- and people aren't so one-dimensional.

The next time you encounter a young black man like Sean Taylor -- a man who can be headstrong and rebellious, who listens to rap music and sometimes wears his hair in a wild-man 'fro that's meant to intimidate, who scowls when we want him to smile and makes a bad mistake or two and doesn't choose the friends we would want him to choose -- know that there is possibility within him, and contradiction, and the capacity for love. Know that he's more than a plot device.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

That is absolutely anything but enlightening.

He brings nothing new to the table in his rhetoric.  He's simply better at writing it than the people at ES.

[ice grillin you]

well youre beyond any help...but perhaps it will cause some people to rethink their thought processes in certain times...