Ex-NBA player Paul Shirley ... the voice of reason

[i_like_lectric_motors]

Finally someone gets it right:

http://www.flipcollective.com/2010/01/2 ... l-shirley/

[coop41]

I'm not sure Paul could afford to donate even if he wanted to.
He was always a riot with his blog during his stay with the Suns.

[SallyLightfoot]

Paul Shirley lacks compassion and moral foundation. Like a sociopath, he shoehorns this issue into a retarded version of the "Ant and the Grasshopper" fable.

Paul Shirley on seeing people fleeing the burning WTC buildings on 9/11:<blockquote>"Working in a building that is a marked terrorist target is pretty dumb, isn't it? So why should anyone lift a finger to help them out? If you work in a skyscraper, in the event of a disaster it is your responsibility to plan for rescue and medical aid. If we continue to put cram people in enormous buildings, we're simply inviting tragedy of one form or another. Helping a dweller of these massive hive-coffins would be like giving a begging wino a five-dollar bill."</blockquote>
Paul Shirley on visiting California: <blockquote>"Living along a fault line is about as stupid as it gets. Why bother helping anyone who chooses to live in a natural disaster zone? They should be left to their fates. These people are quadruple-stupid, because they could be wiped out by any combination of earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires and mudslides. If you tempt fate like that, don't expect anyone to come rushing while you're being crushed, drowned or burned like a puny ant."</blockquote>
Paul Shirley on visiting the Southeast:<blockquote>"Living anywhere with a whole [i]season[/i] for hurricanes is about as stupid as it gets. If you are swept away by high winds or trapped in a storm surge, realize that you've practically begged for that outcome. If you live somewhere like that, it's on you to manage that risk. Florida alone has one million lightning strikes per year, which is more than sufficient reason to ignore pleas from a burning house in that state."</blockquote>
Paul Shirley visits the Mississippi:<blockquote>"How reckless can people be? The people of St. Louis MO, Baton Rouge LA, Memphis TN and Minneapolis MN must have a death wish! Ultimately they bear the responsibility of living along a known flood basin. Any idiot knows of the devastation from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927" target="_new">Great Mississippi Flood of 1927</a>, or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1993" target="_new2">Great Flood of 1993</a>. If you're not resourceful enough to build your own levees or own a helicopter or submarine, then don't come looking for handouts from the rest of us."</blockquote>
Paul Shirley on the news that an asteroid will destroy the Earth in 2099:<blockquote>What kind of cretin would live on a planet of a solar system that is literally packed with a freaking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt" target="_new4">asteroid belt</a>? Anyone dumb enough to live on such a planet in such wholesale ignorance and incompetence deserves whatever fate they get. If the Martians and Venutians have any sense, they will leave us to our great planetary stoning, which is our just deserts. A more successful and survival-worthy species woulda moved out of here long ago.<blockquote>

[i_like_lectric_motors]

[quote][i]Originally posted by SallyLightfoot[/i]
<br>Paul Shirley lacks compassion and moral foundation.
[/quote]


Maybe so, but that in no way makes anything that he said untrue.

Oh ... and your California and Mississippi paragraphs are 100% true but you probably already know that. [8D]

[SallyLightfoot]

[quote][i]Originally posted by i_like_lectric_motors[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by SallyLightfoot[/i]
<br>Paul Shirley lacks compassion and moral foundation.
[/quote]Maybe so, but that in no way makes anything that he said untrue.

Oh ... and your California and Mississippi paragraphs are 100% true but you probably already know that. [8D]
[/quote]? It's not a true-or-false question. I didn't discredit the validity of his opinion, just his judgment and value system. Shirley sounds like a miscreant from an Ayn Rand novel-- the type of character who would spit in the face of a hero who rescued a person from a burning wreck, with the reasoning that the rescuer was a p**** for letting a faceless parasite escape his deserved fate.

It's a sad statement about a significant % of humanity-- those who care less about a thousand dead Haitians than one dead neighbor; those who are content to live in inequality, poverty or bondage as long as they can say they are better off than others; those who give the benefit of the doubt to the familiar and personable but never to the ugly or dispossessed; or those who believe that their good fortune is always the result of their hard work and ingenuity, while bad fortune is the result of malice from an enemy or oppressor.

[MikeP]

Apparently he now resides in Kansas City, so...

"Living in tornado alley is about as stupid as it gets. Why bother helping anyone who chooses to live in a natural disaster zone? Oh, wait a minute..."

Retarded indeed.[|)]

[Bitter Almonds]

<p align="justify">I don't know how to word it, except that I have an expectation that the artificial social structures that the human ego creates would still be around, should some kind of disaster happen in a region, wherein help would arrive from the neighbours because... it happens often, esp. now that methods of transportation and communication are better. Mr. Shirley is more than welcome to his opinion, but I disagree with it. I'd go insofar as to say I probably would not like to live next door to this guy: he wouldn't warn me of a burglar, wouldn't help me in case of a fire, wouldn't return my wallet if I dropped it on the driveway... hell, he probably would not return my mail should it mistakenly make its way into his mailbox[}:)]


________________________
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/Nuwavghost/dij.gif">

[SallyLightfoot]

<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mjkef5Jo9nw/SdE6cB7KLXI/AAAAAAAAAAk/UdpAtvoj3NU/s400/deep+thoughts.png" height="343" width="400">

Deep Thoughts, by Paul Shirley: <blockquote>"Very few have said, written, or even intimated the slightest admonishment of Haiti, the country, for putting itself into a position where so many would be killed by an earthquake."</blockquote>This should pretty handily win dumbf**k statement of the year, and it's early yet. Some more jaw-droppers: <blockquote>"Shouldn’t much of the responsibility for the disaster lie with the victims of that disaster?"

"However, it is not outside the realm of imagination to think that the citizens of a country might be able to: A) avoid putting themselves into a situation that might result in such catastrophic loss of life. And B) provide for their own aid, in the event of such a catastrophe."

"While the earthquake was, obviously, unavoidable, the way in which many of the people of Haiti lived was not. Regrettably, some Haitians would have died regardless of the conditions in that country. But the fact that so many people lived in such abject poverty exacerbated the extent of the crisis."

"After the tsunami of 2004, the citizens of the world wailed and donated and volunteered for cleanup, rarely asking the important – and, I think, obvious – question: What were all those people doing there in the first place?"

"Shouldn’t there be some discourse on how the millions of dollars that are being poured into Haiti will be spent? And at least a slight reprimand for the conditions prior to the earthquake? Some kind of inquisition?"

"If it were apparent that Haiti would likely rebuild in an earthquake-resistant way, and if a cure could be found for hurricane abuse of island nations, then maybe one could imagine putting a sustained effort into rebuilding the place."

"ultimately, the people in a country have control over their government. One could argue that in totalitarian regimes, they do not have much control, but in the end, it is their government."

"I recoil at the notion that I’m SUPPOSED to do something. I would like to help, but only if I feel that my assistance is deserved and justified. If I perceive that I am being told to feel a certain way, and if I can point to a pattern of mistakes made in similar situations, I lose interest."

"I don’t think the people of Haiti have the option of moving. But I do think that our assistance should be restricted, like it should be in cases of starvation. It simply does not work to give, unconditionally. What might work is to teach... In the case of earthquake-stricken Haiti, teaching might mean limited help, but help that is accompanied by criticism of the circumstances that made that help necessary."

"In the case of the Haitian earthquake, it’s heartening to see people caring about the fates of their fellow men. What is alarming, I think, is the sometimes illogical frenzy toward casting those affected by the earthquake as helpless, innocent souls who were placed on the island of Hispaniola by an invisible force. In the case of some, this analogy might well be accurate; children cannot very well control their destinies. And as far as sympathy goes, much of it should go to those children... But children are brought into the world by their parents. Those parents have a responsibility – to themselves and to their kids – to provide. They have a responsibility to look around – before an earthquake happens – and say, “I need to improve this situation, because if a catastrophe were to happen, we’d be in bad shape.”</blockquote>What an absolute pageant of dumbfuckery. Please no more moralizing from ex-pro athletes.

[i_like_lectric_motors]

How you can be so absolutely wrong so consistently about such a wide variety of topics is a constant source of amazement and amusement to me. You're the bestest troll ever, Sally! [:X]

[SallyLightfoot]

[quote][i]Originally posted by i_like_lectric_motors[/i]
<br>How you can be so absolutely wrong so consistently about such a wide variety of topics is a constant source of amazement and amusement to me. You're the bestest troll ever, Sally! [:X][/quote]Look, you endorsed Shirley's cynical and nasty viewpoint, which deserves every ounce of rebuke it gets. And with regard to being "wrong", you should at least put forth an argument that supports your claim.

[i_like_lectric_motors]

[quote][i]Originally posted by SallyLightfoot[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by i_like_lectric_motors[/i]
<br>How you can be so absolutely wrong so consistently about such a wide variety of topics is a constant source of amazement and amusement to me. You're the bestest troll ever, Sally! [:X][/quote]Look, you endorsed Shirley's cynical and nasty viewpoint, which deserves every ounce of rebuke it gets. And with regard to being "wrong", you should at least put forth an argument that supports your claim.
[/quote]


Like you have? All you've done is call him names. You haven't posted a single argument against anything he said. And you can't ... because there isn't anything in his article which can be argued with facts. Emotions and claiming some bullshit moral high ground is not an argument. All you or anyone else who disagrees with him can do is act like you're better than he is. What a joke.

[SallyLightfoot]

I never said anything about the truth or falsehood of Shirley's piece-- I've already stated so by mocking his morals and judgment (hell motors, you could make a case that Charles Manson had a [i]valid[/i] moral code too). You're the one making accusations of wrong or right here. When you called me "consistently wrong" I assumed you were talking about previous topics, and I suggested that you cite some examples instead of lashing out indiscriminately.

[SallyLightfoot]

<a href="http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2010/01/27/paul-shirleys-modest-proposal-for-haiti-gets-him-fired-from-espn/" target="new">[b]Paul Shirley’s 'Modest Proposal' for Haiti Gets Him Fired From ESPN[/b]</a>

<a href="http://www.salon.com/life/this_week_in_crazy/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/01/29/this_week_in_shirley" target="new2">[b]This Week in Crazy: This week's winner, Paul Shirley[/b]</a> -- "An ex-NBA player becomes an ex-ESPN writer by drubbing ... the people of Haiti?"

Poor Shirley got canned as an ESPN contributor. He might consider the unassailable "Motors defense" to defend his odious views: "Everything I wrote was valid opinion, and therefore completely truthful!"

[i_like_lectric_motors]

[quote][i]Originally posted by SallyLightfoot[/i]
He might consider the unassailable "Motors defense" to defend his odious views: "Everything I wrote was valid opinion, and therefore completely truthful!"
[/quote]

See? You even got that wrong. I suppose it's too much to ask that you refute anything he said with actual facts.

Instead, all you can do is paint him as a bad guy simply for being 100% correct about the situation.

Hopefully an earthquake will take your moronic ass out next.

[coop41]

Seriously, the dude was an ESPN [i]music[/i] critic??