I honestly had no plan to write about the tragic shooting death of former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe McKnight in Terrytown, Louisiana by 54-year-old Ronald Gasser. In fact, once my fellow writer and friend at Evenin' Tea did this excellent piece, I assumed my thoughts were all covered. According to several eyewitness accounts, McKnight got out of his vehicle and tried apologizing to Gasser before Gasser pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and shooting the former NFL player multiple times--including one witness who said Gasser stood over McKnight after he shot him, said "I told you not to f--k with me" and shot him again. He waited for the police to arrive, was arrested and then released. That's right, boys and girls...not held with or without a bond...set free after murdering someone. Perhaps an even bigger umbrella to the obvious race factor and what drove me to write about this incident is the controversial "Stand Your Ground Law" and how this could potentially be a defense for Gasser as his case moves forward. However, I will discuss how this law seems to apply to anyone who isn't Black and how it could be a smack in the face to McKnight's family and his memory as they seek some semblance of justice...
When doing this week's edition of "Views from the Nosebleeds", the natural choice of a lead story was last week's senseless murder of former Jets running back Joe McKnight in an alleged road rage incident with 54-year-old Ronald Gasser at an intersection in Terrytown, Louisiana right outside of New Orleans. However, because of the racial, social and political layers involved, I decided to make that a post unto itself. Furthermore, as a Black man in America whose spirit has grown weary from constantly being reminded the lives and memories of people who look like me don't matter--see the mistrial in the Walter Scott case as further evidence--I have too much frustration in my heart to take away from what is intended to be a half-serious, half-light-hearted series about my favorite sport. Since these posts are already long enough on their own, there is plenty of good and not-so-good football to discuss, so let's kick things off with two not-so-good, but-not-as-heavy stories...
So here are three things to note about this month's edition of the "'Get Out of My Brain!' Countdown of the Month". First and foremost, given the lack of girl power on the November edition of "In Heavy Rotation", I apologize to the ladies and don't want y'all to think I'm slighting y'all one bit; however, the songs which rule my brain space unfortunately control me and not the other way around. Trust me, y'all will be better represented later this month. Second, I have developed a more-exact-but-still-inexact science for tracking all of this: I simply note the amount of times a song comes to mind and about how long I'm thinking about it. It ain't perfect, but it's a much better system to make sure folks don't get cheated out of the opportunity to make this countdown like no other. (I doubt most of these folks care that much, but still.) Third, this edition will feature songs either belonging to "The Blame Game" in which I blame specific people and/or things for my mental repetitiveness, "NPT HitstoryMakers" for artists and songs who and which boldly go where no others have gone before or stand on their own two category-less feet. Since you have been prepared and briefed probably more than you wanted to be, let's get to the madness...
