Jason Whitlock vs Rutgers Vivian Stringer

Culture: Spike Lee held a Black Athlete Forum in Atlanta earlier this week and Stringer and Whitlock got into it over his column which accused her during press conference regarding Imus as grandstanding. Whitlock.

Whitlock called the press conference a "massive pity party/recruiting rally," and also said this: Stringer just wanted her 15 minutes to make the case that she's every bit as important as Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma. By the time Stringer's rambling, rapping and rhyming 30-minute speech was over, you'd forgotten that Tennessee won the national championship and just assumed a racist plot had been hatched to deny the Scarlet Knights credit for winning it all.

Stringer had a few choice words for Whitlock who didn't back down , you can read the ESPN excerpt here, Gene Wojciechowski column with more words and on Diverse.com

What got me wasn't Stringer or Whitlock but Claire Smith of the Philadelphia Inquirer who couldn't help but try to pull the Whitlock is an Uncle Tom routine.

SMITH: I might be a tad emotional about this because my first beat was Cheyney State women's basketball in 1980-81. So I've known Vivian Stringer for almost 30 years. The woman that you saw in that press conference is the woman I've seen every year for almost 30 years. She did not step out of character. She was not selling a product. She was protecting the girls just the way she protected the Cheyney State girls, the Iowa girls, the Rutgers girls she first inherited. Vivian Stringer -- I knew that Don Imus was finished the moment he said, "nappy headed hos" and Rutgers, because I know this woman. And I know that her character would radiate. And I know the kind of athlete she recruits. These were children. He attacked children. And I say to you, Jason, I'm a journalist, so I have some empathy with what you're going through here, but there's a difference between saying that you care about these women, and attacking the coach. And you attacked just the way Don Imus did. WHITLOCK: I did not call anybody any names. SMITH: You attacked the coach. You did. WHITLOCK: Claire, Claire ... you read my columns, or a few of them. I attack coaches. That's what I do. (crowd noise).

Outrageous attack by Smith who seems to have Stringer up for sainthood and she shouldn't be questioned. Whitlock questioned and slammed the approach by Stringer at the press conference, he didn't call her disparaging names. Stringer as well took the same approach to Whitlock.

Whitlock, in an April column, criticized Stringer's handling of the Don Imus situation and wrote that she conducted a public and grandstanding "pity party/recruiting rally" after the since-canned shock jock called Rutgers' players -- well, you know what he called them. Now it was payback time. "I'm amazed," she said, staring down the length of the table at Whitlock. "I just want to understand your mind-set. I just want to understand people like you." This column isn't about Whitlock, who retracted nothing, or Stringer, whose intensity, anger and emotion won over the panelists and the room. But there is no denying that the most charged moments of the evening came when Stringer leaned toward the microphone and defended herself to Whitlock. "It wasn't the Rutgers women's basketball team that brought Mr. Imus down," she said, still glaring at Whitlock. "It was America. Women spoke. Black people spoke. It was America! "I made a statement that it wasn't black or white. The truth of the matter is that we have been fooled for such a long time. We have such promise and we all are important. We need to step on each other's heads to get the little piece of the American dream. It became green. It was power. You [Whitlock] understand that. That's the reason why you chose these few minutes to get your one moment of [fame]. Because other than that, who knows Jason Whitlock?"

So black people criticizing other black people is only done to get fame? Whitlock was in hot demand before this so this is a false accusation. This is the sort of paranoid mindset that annoys me to no end. Its the same sort of accusation that Al Sharpton pulled when Juan Williams got after him and Jesse as being frauds and hucksters. Disagree with Whitlock but if the only explanation you can bring is someone is trying to ride you for fame maybe he was right to imply she is an opportunist.