‘whole thing is fishy’

The ‘whole thing is fishy’ describes well my reaction when I talk about a certain topic: athletes or people with money and how the courts or justice handles or resolves their cases.  I must say at the beginning that I talked to two neighbors – one a senior in high school and his brother, a freshman in high school; so this post is inspired from my individual conversations with each boy.  I am going to call the older boy “Tom” and the younger son, “Justice.”   (Both young men are white; and I am African American of course.  They like me and I love speaking with them.)  My conversation with  Justice went like this when I was washing my wife’s car today.  “Hey, Mr. Bobo, I saw your post on Facebook about Michael Vick getting prison time and Ben Roethlisberger getting a slap on the wrist.”  Justice went on to say this, “Yeah, Leonard Little (a St. Louis Rams’ football player) got off for drunken driving and killing a person.  And Donte Stallworth did not get prison time either.”  “Wow”, I said.  I told Justice, “young man you have a real sense of something is terribly wrong.  You might be a lawyer some day.”  Justice pipes up, “That’s what my dad says.”  A few minutes later I see the older boy, “Tom” and he is on his way to cut grass (he has a great work ethic).   He has his iPod ear plugs (or bugs) in; so, I wave him down because he is huge Ben Roethlisberger fan.  So huge that he and his dad drove to Pittsburgh for his birthday to see Big Ben play (several years ago.)  I ask Tom, what do you think about Ben; are you still behind him?  Tom replies, “No, I still love the Steelers but I don’t agree with what Ben did.”  Then I ask, “What about Vick getting prison time and Ben getting what appears to be a slap on the wrist.”  Tom replies, “Well, Ben was not convicted or charges were not filed.”  Tom continues, “if you ask me, the whole thing is fishy.”  I agree.  Several questions come to mind: 1) why didn’t these two ladies that Ben allegedly sexually assaulted press charges or why didn’t these incidents become an actual court case? 2) why did Donte and Leonard not serve any time in prison – after all human beings died?  Did their money help? and 3) Ben, Leonard and Donte harmed or killed human beings but were not punished – or their punishment did not fit their crime but Vick participates in dog fighting and gets prison time.  What’s going on?  Confusing to say the least.  I will say this – as Christians we need to a) talk about such things with our kids; b) encourage our kids to enter fields such as sports and law to bring reform; and c) Christians need to enter the public square and address such things by writing newspapers, congressmen or women, professional team presidents/CEOs, etc.

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