Whitlock: A Figure who Inspires Harrogate's Steroids Columns

Here is a taste of Jason Whitlock's superior sportswriting. He is especially beloved by KC Chiefs fans, but has been a national fiugure for some time and writes about a gamut of salient sports issues. He's very dialed into his own Rhetorical Situation, constantly maintaining his audience awareness and remembering that writing is largely about implying a persona and then building on, branching from, that persona in ways that will impact readers.

Anyway, all these years Harrogate has writhed internally over the steroids rhetoric without knowing how to articulate how he was feeling (in itself a terrible feeling for any rhetorician, as we are sure Harrogate's fellow bloggers will readily attest). But for the last several months Harrogate has been dialed in to Whitlock and a lot has become much clearer. Especially laudatory is Whitlock's continual invocation of the Barkeley mantra, an instance of which may be found in the article entitled "Find Heroes Elsewhere." Here is an excerpt, but Harrogate strongly suggests that you read the whole article:

"Again, I’m uninterested in putting Landis or Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire on trial. I’d just like to see all athletes taken off a pedestal. It’s unhealthy. It’s improper. It’s a position they don’t want or deserve.

They’re entertainers. They’re no different from Jim Morrison or Justin Timberlake or the movie star who goes in and out of rehab.

Athletes and the bad deeds they get involved in are not what’s wrong with our kids. We’re what’s wrong with kids, those of us who keep praying that our children grow up to be professional athletes, those of us who fail to accept the responsibility of being role models to the kids within our own families."


Now, Harrogate is a new parent. He hopes, together with Mrs. Harrogate, to teach values rather than expecting them to be gleaned by turning to great atheletes like Triple H, Lebron James, Oxymoron, and the Tour de France studs for tips on how to be a decent human being. Yes, yes, yes! Whitlock is a cultural critic who gets where Harrogate is coming from quite well.

Now, don't get Harrogate wrong. Whitlock has said many things during the steroids controversy that don't fly here, and which will come under further scrutiny in the coming installments: for example, the (in Harrogate's opinion) specious suggestion that the hunting of Barry Bonds has been primarily driven by race. As Harrogate's next post on steroids (Wednesday for all you Rhetorical Situation fans out there) will demonstrate, such hunting betrays a motive less connected to racism than to the equally human penchant for scapegoating as a way to avoid acknowledging complicity.