Now that im older toysrus is just another store to me, but when I was a kid going to toysrus was the best thing ever.
True, but IMO what's really great about it is allowing the kids to pick what they want. It's almost guaranteed they'll be happy. A lot of guys could have just bought random gifts for 2 or 3K and called it a night. The kids probably think it's heaven. Perhaps a higher end store won't allow kids to run wild in their store.
It's a valid point, and not in any way a dig at AJ. The bar for athletes is very low. So someone of even reasonable moral character will stand out like a saint. Not that guys like AJ don't deserve to get pub for this stuff, they totally do, because someone has to set the example and hopefully challenge the rest to raise the bar. It reminds me of this article from the Onion.
So your friend is one of those guys huh? Andre has a long history of charitable activities. This one case is hardly his only donation and he certainly wasn't going out of his way to get recognition for it.
Yep, my friend is one of those guys. You know, a good person and also very smart. Read my post above, it's not a knock on AJ.
He maybe a good and smart person, but he also seems to feel the need to downplay/discredit of a persons decent act, no matter how "little" it may be. You don't have to be smart to understand that 20K to AJ is a drop in the bucket but it's annoying when people imply the question, "why didn't he give more?" You also don't have to be smart to realize that AJ is one of those rare breeds that seems to be a decent person who enjoys giving back to the community. If you want to draw larger lines about how people expect little from athletes, then create a new thread since this one is about AJ specifically.
It's called perspective. He and I both readily admit we haven't given a few hundred bucks to needy kids lately. But we also acknowledge that if we did, we wouldn't make headlines for it. What is being implied is that we should hold these guys to a higher standard, not that AJ isn't generous or kind. Maybe if more people thought like my friend, Andre Johnson would be the rule, and not the exception. You are reading into something that is not there, even after I have explained it to you, and I'm not sure why.
Its still $20K being spent regardless, a sizable amount by most measures. Its not like when he goes out for fast food he spends $700 in Burger King to meet the same "spending scale" relative to his earnings.
I dont know where, i assumed there was one based on the comment made. I guess a higher end store would likely be a smaller one, more like a shop, and therefore wouldn't make sense in this case.
I have no idea what that guy's problem with Toys'R'Us is, but for $20K, even a "high end" toy store would let the kids pee in the aisles if so desired.
One thing to consider is that we don't always hear of their total contributions. A lot of people are just hearing about AJ's shopping spree this year and won't ever know he does it every year. In their mind it was a one time thing or the first one. the media only picked this up because someone decided to ask AJ to take a pic with the receipts. Without the picture, it wouldnt have made yahoo's homepage. I think we'd be pretty surprised to know what the real numbers are. It wouldn't surprise me, if many big name players gave well over 100k in a year. Edit- this point is actually made on his wiki page....i bet no one heard about the HPD program. If he had taken a pic with those 800 kids, they may have.
just a pet peeve when someone sees a decent act and then dumps all over it somehow. If i see someone drop a quarter in the goodwill bucket, I don't think to myself, "well that's not very much to him", I think "that was nice".
If you saw someone drop a quarter in the goodwill bucket and end up in the newspaper, you might go "hmm". That's the only point being made here.
FFS, nothing that was said criticizes what AJ did. No-thing. It's a media/culture commentary. Period. There is zero "that wasn't enough" or "why didn't he give more" involved here. Apparently that is how you want to see this, so you know what, great, enjoy being pissed off and offended.
