Condi Rice Enjoys the Zoeller that is Fuzzy

Posted by Blake the Megalomaniac (Follow Me)- Blake the Megalomaniac is a graduate of Virginia Tech and now lives the Adams Morgan section of Washington DC. - To see more posts by this author click here

Okay ladies and gents I got a topic that is going to get a bit racial.  Don’t be afraid though, as someone much more intelligent than me said once, the more we talk about race the less taboo it becomes.  I will issue this disclaimer: none of the following opinions is for show but is genuinely my feelings  towards this issue as a Black American.

The Masters took place this past weekend and to everyone’s surprise, Tiger Woods was not victorious.  Not being a huge golf fan, I watched about an hour of the seven hour final-round.  The only thing I noticed was that there were few faces of color in the field of participants or the audience.  That’s a topic for another day b/c frankly, we took the NFL and the NBA, they can keep hockey and golf for a little while longer.  Miguel Angel something won and the only thing I remember about him was that he had a very lax style of play.

Today April 14th at deadspin.com, after reading a snippet about former Secretary of State Condi Rice and her affinity for that old cracker, Fuzzy Zoeller was brought to my attention.  Ms. Rice went out of her way to announce via her blog at the dailybeast.com that Mr. Zoeller was, “…one of her favorites.”  If you recall at the 1997 Masters, Fuzzy slipped and said what I know everyone involved with the Masters was thinking referring to the following year’s Master’s Club Champion’s Dinner, for which the defending champion, Tiger Woods, selects the menu. Fuzzy when asked about Tiger opined:

“He’s doing quite well, pretty impressive. That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it.” Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, “or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

Now everyone slips up, sometimes things that are humorous in one setting aren’t always funny in another and I do not hold this against Mr. Zoeller.  I’ve been in the car and been so infuriated that I yelled out a racial slur, I guess the difference being there were no mics or cameras.  Either way, I don’t hold it against him because ‘that little boy’ is rich.  I do, however, question Ms. Rice’s motives and rationale for revealing that Zoeller is one of her favorites.

A lot of people are critical of Tiger Woods and to a lesser extent, other black golfers (if there are any) for not doing all they can to foster more minorities in golf.  I’m one of those who feel that if they don’t feel inclined to so do then that’s their prerogative.  I don’t necessarily think that golfers like Tiger have lost touch with their blackness, which I think sometimes is easy to do when you’re affluent and your profession requires you to spend a lot of time with old white men (Tiger, if you remember, doesn’t even classify himself as black but Cablinasian). Tiger does what he can and that’s all he can do.

I do believe that Condi has lost a bit of touch.  For all her ability, intellect, and pure wit, her time in academia, the private sector, and as an political figure has jaded her outlook as a black American or as an African American (think Clayton Bigsby).  She’s been called Bush’s little messenger girl (which is implicitly racial) and it just feels like she can’t turn off that pandering.

Or possibly she hasn’t heard what Zoeller said b/c she recently began following golf.  That would make sense if it weren’t for her knowledge of the game, which is evident in her article.

Possibly, as the first black female Sec of state, she felt obliged to forgive Zoeller from all of Black America and Tiger Woods?

Or she just likes him for his golfing but I would say when it comes to his issues with racism and his golfing that they’re like a “horse & carriage…you can’t have one without the…other.”
The point is I can relate to Fuzzy b/c sometimes it’s funny or sometimes it’s easy to regress to racism.  Also, I can relate to Rice b/c sometimes when your around ppl of a different race and culture you lose, subconsciously, what it is to be Black or Asian, or White (No lie, I find myself losing my rhythm when I spend too much time with my friend Pat.).  But she needs to get back to basics and investigate just why Fuzzy is one of her favorites and whether he should be.

I wonder what Fuzzy thinks of this…

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