Marc Ecko - where for art thou?
and I, Marc Ecko, shall now decide on other baseball matters including the all star game deciding who gets home field
The story that Mark Ecko bought the Barry Bonds ball is a truly ridiculous news piece. I thought it was a joke when I first saw the Allhiphop alert. There are several things that bother me. Wrote a post about it, wanna read it, here it go.
1. To be fair there are three options. Not two as widely reported. Option 1 - send it to the hall of fame. Option 2 - send it to the HOF with an asterisk branded on it. Option 3 - launch it into outerspace. At first I thought there were only options 1 and 2.
2. Ecko paid over $750k for the ball. Is he some crazy baseball fan that we never knew about? Where the hell did this come from? I didn't know he was a baseball enthusiast but I know he has portrayed himself as a fan of the Rhino and a supporter of the art of graffiti.
Isn't there a Rhino somewhere that could use that cheese. Those Rhinos were important at one point. So important you were charging $50 tickets last summer.
And I know there are several graf artists coughing up spray paint that could use it.
3. As a white man who has built an empire on Hip-Hop culture I would think you would have been more sensitive to the racial divide over Barry Bonds. Whether Bonds is right or wrong many Black folks think he is being unfairly persecuted. These are the same folks that drive the culture that earned you that extra 700 g's. This flagrant display makes me think this racial divide is irrelevant to you. And that concerns me.
4. How arrogant is it that you have decided to frame this argument. The issue is much more complex than the 3 choices. And the idea that Mark Ecko will decide how Barry Bonds is remembered is a shame. And concerns me again (see above).
5. After you vote on what to do with the ball you are re-directed to a slice of ecko.com. Hmmmm
Now Ecko has supported us over the years and I'm not hating. The whole story just bugs me out.
Labels: barry bonds, marc ecko
posted by Wes at 11:08 AM
1 Comments:
hahahahaha! i just heard about this last night - com'on wes! you gotta have a sense of humor about this. it's hilarious. sure ecko is a clown and kind of a creep, but the truth is we don't KNOW the guy. he could be a mega baseball fan - his pops may have taken him to the diamond every home game when he was a little rhino, recounting the glorious golden age of baseball, and planting the seeds of truth justice and the great american pass time in young marcky's head. perhaps this is a gift to a dying father, who's vision of baseball's "glory days" is quickly fading... or perhaps, he's just a billionaire pop culture enthusiast (as he claimed to be on the today show) interested simply in "democratizing" a piece of popular (sports) culture history. either way, what he's actually doing with the ball is certainly no crime (albeit a semi-veiled publicity stunt/barry bonds diss) putting to a vote the ultimate fate of the ball is a pretty interesting turn of events. race, sports history, and current pop culture are obviously intertwined, but that only makes the story even juicier. barry bonds (along with what's probably safe to say was the majority of the league in the 80's and 90's) used drugs, and beat a record that was held by a guy who didn't use (performance enhancing) drugs... and had held the record for 33 years or some shit like that. that is what that asteriks is about, no? hank aaron owned that record. bonds took it (in half the time right?) and now must deal with the fall-out.
you had compared the scrutiny as to how hard folks were on barry bonds (black) compared to mark mcgwire (white), but the fact is, mark mcgwire didn't do shit past breaking a few single season records. he fizzled out. when the steroid scandal broke, people shunned him too, but he retired. when he was up for cooperstown though, he received less than a quarter of the vote. barry bonds on the other hand, broke the all-time HOMERUN RECORD!! that's a big deal! if mcgwire had had that in him, he'd be getting shitted on too! for sure! Now, please don't take that as whitey blindly defending whitey... yes america is racist as all hell and barry surely is on the receiving end of plenty of it (one would be foolish to say it's not a related issue) but barry bonds is a controversial figure beyond race. he's dared to tangle with sports legacy.
that being said - believe it or not, i personally don't really give a shit about sports legacy. as you know, i'm not much of a sports dude. i love my broncos and was happy iverson moved to denver, but i would never claim to be a sports historian on any recreational level. i am though, like our friend mr. save the rhino, very interested in the intricate workings of popular culture. so i am naturally interested in such a stirring pop-culture story. yes, since marc ecko is a white dude (paid off of black culture) publicly questioning bonds' legitimacy, it could be received as racially insensitive. but f--- marc ecko the man. what he's doing could be at the very least a mildly interesting look at the public climate surrounding this controversy. although after typing that last sentence, i'm realizing that's not what it's gonna be. it's O.J. 2007 - they're gonna divide the results racially and see how white folks subconsciously hate barry, and black folks defend him by default.
man, send me to the moon with that ball.
September 20, 2007 11:31 AM
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