Tony Parker asked by Simon Wiesenthal Center to apologize

1) How is Dieudonne pronounced?
2) It was my understanding that the French government is much more strict with their "freedom of speech" than the US gov't...same goes for religion there. Just confirming it here...hell, might as well go to wiki...

 

France, like Germany and a lot of other nations in Europe curb freedom of speech when it involves Holocaust denial and a lot of things related to the Third Reich that would never fly in the US...which I disagree with on principle, even though I find these things abhorrent.

As for religion, it's very different in France. France is very much like the US in that its ideology is Enlightenment inspired, but they have a very different interpretation of it...

 

Posted by Anelka, once again confirms how r****ded he is.

 

I'd also add that I'm not the biggest fan of Hollande, Obama (or Bush), but if I was asked on television what my opinion of any of them was, it wouldn't be an obscene gesture, fascist or not.

It makes Tony Parker look like an ass.

 

the main question here is : what does the "quenelle means" ... i say it has the meaning u want it to have. is it some kind of finger, a support gesture, an anti semitic one ? the choice is yours, mine is made. and i REALLY dont think Parker, Diaw, Riner, Anelka etc etc r some kind of nazis, do you ? i hope the league will not overblow this, but i understand your point

and for all the rest, yes Dieudonné is a sulfurous person, but he does it on purpose, and lines r not crossed imo. Le Pen the Grandfather of his child ? hilarious if you ask me, i did not believe it when i read it first (Le Pen is said to be racist, Dieudonné is black ...) . Yet i understand people can be shocked, but i still think this whole thing is blown out of proportions

 

cant edit my post, i meant godfather and not grandfather of course

 

Eh yea. How about survived the war in Bosnia while half of my family was killed because we were Muslims. How about lived in Germany were Nazi's used to scare the **** out of me while just going grocery shopping. I can go on and on.

People are getting way to emotional about stupid stuff now days. This is nothing IMO. Dudes are black, it doesn't even make sense.

 

the gesture could be seen here as a kind of "i dont give a *****" imo, but not a thing to do i agree. but TP has done some dumb things in his life, just try to listen to his music

 

I agree 100%! Parker should be banned from all games against teams with Jewish players. Another option would be to trade him to a team with a jewish player for cash considerations only. The team should have a player who is not a pg so he can be on the court with that Jewish player and learn to live peacefully with the Jews.

 

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10216051/tony-parker-san-antonio-spurs-sorry-controversial-photo

 

I'm not a fan of poltical correctness or using the law to go after people just because of things they say, but with that said, Parker's actions were at least as bad as Shaq's about Yao Ming and probably closer to John Terry's about Anton Ferdinand on the scale of alienating fans.

Anelka actually did it during a game, which is worse, but then this is Anelka we are talking about. My not liking him has less to do with whether or not he's a neo-Nazi as much as disgust at him for deliberately provoking fans by being a jackass and ruining an otherwise enjoyable football match.

I was totally supportive of Cantona in the "king fu kick" contraversy considering he was responding to anti-French slurs from a drunk fan, and I actually threw away a gifted pair of Beitar Jerusalem shoes out of shame after fans booed and shouted anti-Islam chants at two Chechen player (their own players). I've also read a lot about players like Sol Campbell, Paul Ince and Mario Balotelli suffering from racist fans...no one wants that in sports. It should be the one place free of that nonsense and there's not a sports federation in the world that doesn't want to take action against it.

 

This is not the same thing as that Soccer player. Eff the NBA if they fine/suspend him.

 

That was my first thought when I saw TP's pic.

 

Just because it is not known to you doesn't make it not a big deal.

 

French Nazi sympathizer = Vichy collaborator = firing squad.

 

It's anyone's right to call something as offensive.

My issue is that I don't mind complaints because how else do people know what's affecting them. The response is a different issue.

How the public and the owners deal with it are two different matters. I think some commenters lose this nuance since they probably would never be placed in this circumstance, or they feel their minority would be marginalized because of this.

The apology is enough, but I'd push to punish tony if anything else came up if only because the apology is given under good faith.

Other people will disagree, their right too.

 

i agree with that, i think everybody agrees that racism or hate based on religion is bad and should be banned from everywhere, here the problem is a gesture that was NOT affiliated to racism or jews having been used by racist people and causing trouble to people who used it for something else ... that's where i disagree with suspensions / fines rumors, even for Anelka that i do not like (i did not even know he was still playing prior to that "incident"). btw an unknown player in the french league of soccer did it prior to anelka this year and nobody talked about it ... he was caucasian, when parker, diaw, anelka, etc r (obivously) black, i hope this is a coincidence or it would be kind of an irony ...

 

As Israel rounds up Africans for detention, I am supposed to give two ads about how offended they are by gestures?

 

much ado about nothing

 

its not about Israel it's about a nazi like salut, and the meaning of it when athletes who are roll models do it.

Fans imitate them, and do it outside places like a death camp and a street where a man shot children's in the head in the city of toulouse France, just for Bering Jews, not Israelis.

so now you understand wats wrong with it?