Rajon Rondo: "I have too many father figures on this team."

From the Onion News Service:

BOSTON—At a press conference last week discussing his suspension for bumping a referee, Celtics guard Rajon Rondo blamed his conduct on having "too many role models and people to look up to" on the team to get a coherent idea of how he should act. "I had three different aging superstars, plus a coach who once played and has sons my age, giving me four different lectures about the bump," said Rondo, adding that he once tried to carry himself like Kevin Garnett, only to have all his other father figures tell him that is not how a professional should act. "I do act out from time to time, but I have no young teammates to compare my conduct to. Sometimes I wonder if these guys sort of need me to cause problems, because without me, they would have nobody to mentor." Rondo said he has talked to Celtics general manager Danny Ainge about adding a young player to the roster so he can have somebody his own age to play with, but Ainge just told him a story about asking the same thing of the Celtics GM when he was a player

So, he's complaining about not having someone who is his age, is a star like him and at the same point in his career but who is more mature than him, to show him how to be a professional?

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Unbelievable. This is why Danny tried to trade him.

bob


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Bob, sophisticate that you are, trekker to Nepal and eater of croissants and brie while drinking Anchor Steam in San Francisco, I hope you realize that ONS is strictly a comedy news service and nothing they report is serious.

At least Rajon didn't use George Michael for a Father Figure! (LOL)

MD!

I've heard quite a few excuse from folks.... but his bumping an official because he has "too many role models" ranks right up there. Might even make a podium as a top three!

Look in the mirror Rondo you will see the reason.

beat

Beat, This was a joke from a comedy website. Rondo did not make that excuse. Wish he had. They'd give him a role on SNL!

worcester wrote:Beat, This was a joke from a comedy website. Rondo did not make that excuse. Wish he had. They'd give him a role on SNL!

I'm never allowed in the loop!!! (hey it sounded reasonable to me) considering Rondo

beat

Beat:

Give him some credit. He did go to Kentucky for a hot minute and it wasn't under Calipari. In fact he can have more credit than is on my VISA card! (LOL)!

MD!

worcester wrote:Bob, sophisticate that you are, trekker to Nepal and eater of croissants and brie while drinking Anchor Steam in San Francisco, I hope you realize that ONS is strictly a comedy news service and nothing they report is serious.

worcester,

Oops. Missed that. What's sad is that there's enough reality in it to confuse me.

Nevertheless, "duh".

Sometimes I really take the cake...

bob


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Let them eat cake...

Not Marie Antoinette...Catherine De Medici

worcester wrote:Let them eat cake...

Not Marie Antoinette...Catherine De Medici

worcester,

are you sure?

I believe the original statement was "Qu'ils mangent le brioche". Brioche had eggs and dairy in it, so it was cakier, than bread. According to Wikipedia, that might have been said by Marie Therese, the wife of Louis XIV. There is no record of Marie Antoinette saying it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake


Marie Antoinette was descended from Catherine de Medici. de Medici died in 1589, a long time before the French Revolution.

bob

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Bob, Great photo of the dead hawk, BTW. I'm sure Marie Antoinette never said "Qu'ils manget le brioche." One of the benefits of being older is that I've been present first hand - like Zelig - at some of these fameux utterances, and I can assure you that it was Catherine de Medici who coined the phase, even though the attribution doesn't show up in Wikipedia. Actually she said, "Kill them all if they won't eat cake."

Catherine was very sweet to me personally, and even though I did have to bite her neck on occaision for sustenance, and would never go for walks with her in the daylight.

From Wikipedia on Marie A.: "there is no evidence that Queen Marie-Antoinette ever uttered this phrase. It was first attributed to her by Alphonse Karr in "Les Guepes" of March, 1843.[7] Other objections to the legend of Marie-Antoinette and the cake/brioche centre on arguments concerning the real queen's personality, internal evidence from members of the French royal family, and the date of the saying's origin. For example, the Queen's best-selling English-language biographer, Lady Antonia Fraser, wrote in 2002:

"[Let them eat cake] was said 100 years before her by Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV. It was a callous and ignorant statement and she, Marie Antoinette, was neither."[9]
However this attribution also has little credibility for Fraser cites as justification for the alternative attribution to the wife of Louis XIV the memoirs of Louis XVIII, who was only fourteen when Rousseau's Confessions were written and whose own memoirs were published much later. He does not mention Marie-Antoinette in his account, but states that the saying was an old legend, and that within the family it was always believed that the saying belonged to the Spanish princess who married Louis XIV in the 1660s. Thus Louis XVIII is as likely as others to have had his recollection affected by the quick spreading and distorting of Rousseau's original remark.

As Fraser points out in her biography, Marie-Antoinette was a generous patroness of charity and moved by the plight of the poor when it was brought to her attention, thus making the statement out-of-character for her.[10] This makes it unlikely that Marie-Antoinette ever said this.

A second point is that there were no actual famines during the reign of King Louis XVI and only two incidents of serious bread shortages, which occurred, first, in April–May 1775, a few weeks before the king's coronation (11 June 1775), and again in 1788, the year before the French Revolution. The 1775 shortages led to a series of riots, known as the Flour War, la guerre des farines, a name given at the time of their occurrence, that took place in the northern, eastern and western parts of France. Letters from Marie-Antoinette to her family in Austria at this time reveal an attitude totally different to the Let them eat cake mentality:-

"It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth."[11]
There is a further problem with the dates surrounding the attribution, in that Marie-Antoinette was not only too young but not even in France when it was first published. Rousseau's Confessions were finished in 1769 and, as Marie Antoinette arrived at Versailles from Austria in 1770, at the age of fourteen, the young Austrian Archduchess, unknown to him at the time of writing his work, could not be the "great princess" mentioned by Rousseau.[12]

One factor that is important to understand when studying how this phrase came to be attributed to Marie Antoinette is the increasing unpopularity of the Queen in the final years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. During her marriage to Louis XVI, her perceived frivolousness and her very real extravagance were often cited as factors that only worsened France's dire financial straits.[13] Her Austrian birth and femininity were also a major factor in a country where xenophobia and chauvinism still played major parts in national politics.[14] In fact, many anti-monarchists were so convinced (albeit incorrectly) that it was Marie Antoinette who had single-handedly ruined France's finances that they nicknamed her Madame Déficit.[15] In addition, anti-royalists libellists printed stories and articles that attacked the royal family and their courtiers with exaggerations, fictitious events and outright lies. Therefore, with such strong sentiments of dissatisfaction and anger towards the king and queen, it is quite possible that a discontented individual fabricated the scenario and "put the words in the mouth of Marie Antoinette".

Finally, another theory is that, after the revolution, in popular myth, the phrase had been attributed to various princesses of the French royal family, and that the legend "stuck" on Marie-Antoinette because she was, in effect, the last "great princess" of Versailles. The myth had, for example, been attributed to two of Louis XV's daughters, Madame Sophie and Madame Victoire.

that was really funny.