As we reported earlier, the saga of the recently perforated New York Giants wide receiver, Plaxico Burress, continues to unfold and the story just gets curiouser and curiouser, to quote Alice. With that in mind, we thought it would be appropriate to bring you up to date on the latest news and responses from around the web. The Big Apple’s Mayor Bloomberg has weighed in on the subject and he is not a happy camper.
The NYPD first found out about Plaxico Burress’ bone-headed accidental self-shooting with an illegal handgun by watching television reports more than 12 hours after it happened, Mayor Bloomberg revealed this morning during a scathing press conference following a front-page story in The Post about the cover up effort.
Bloomberg tackled the Burress case head-on at the briefing, demanding that the district attorney throw the book at the Giants receiver and that he serve hard time, saying heads should roll at the elite hospital where sources told The Post workers lied for him, and reveal any shady dealings involved with the star’s gunshot wound.
“The police only found out about this because of a story on television. The hospital didn’t call and the Giants didn’t call,” he said. “The Giants should have picked up the phone right away as good corporate citizens. I don’t care if there’s a legal responsibility for them to do it.
According to the latest reports, after discharging the weapon into his own thigh, Burress had his buddy attempt to hide the weapon, (still not recovered by police) shopped around for a friendly hospital who would not report the incident, (the hospital agreed to do this instead of immediately reporting a gunshot wound to the police as required by law, and is also now in trouble) and gave a fake name to them when checking in. He didn’t enter a plea at his arraignment, thankfully, and was immediately released on bail. He won’t need to show back up in court until some time in March.
Before getting to the blog roundup, let me share with you an observation from one African-American friend who lives in the city and wrote to me about this story.
If Plaxico was any other black man in New York City and the cops got wind of the fact that he’d fired a handgun in a bar, they wouldn’t be negotiating with any lawyers for him to come stop by the station. They’d have already busted down his mother’s front door in the middle of Sunday dinner and hauled his ass out of there if they found him. And he wouldn’t be out on bail right now either.
But now… to the web! Dear Dear Diary offers us, Dear Plaxico Burress. You Are An Idiot, in which they remind us that Mr. Burress is not a poster child for the Second Amendment.
Clearly if you had any safe gun handling lessons, you would have been able to carry your gun in a sensible manner, and if you had the proper licenses, you could have done so legally. But all of this was lost on you, because you thought you were above the law because you were rich.
You aren’t rich. The people who sign your paycheck are rich. You are just a lucky bastard with a talent for playing football. And now that you have a hole in your thigh, you can’t play football. What good are you now?
I hope you will learn something from all this. Unfortunately, I think you’ll be crying about that chip on your shoulder about how all this happened because you were black and unable to get endorsement deals. No. It happened because you, Plaxico, are a frigging idiot.
Adam Gretz, at NFL Fanhouse, found it strange that Burress chose the alias he did when trying to cover up the crime at the hospital.
And, funny thing is, after Burress found a hospital that he deemed worthy of treating his self-inflicted wound, he wasn’t Plaxico Burress, either. He was Harris Smith.
If you’ll recall, before former-Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was serving time for running a dog-fighting ring, he was going by the name Ron Mexico attempting to cover up, well, a sex scandal of sorts. Since Burress wasn’t in a big hurry to get himself checked into a hospital, he probably could have spent some time using his iPhone to look up the Ron Mexico name generator and come up with something a little more exciting than “Harris Smith.”
Oddly enough, it turns out that my Ron Mexico alias is “Jesse United Kingdom.” They may want to tune that up a bit. Moving on! The blog Where Is The Outrage boils it down to the obvious questions.
Let me ask three basic questions — first, why do you need to go to a club where you think you have to have a gun with you? Secondly, you make a lot of money why can’t you hire bodyguards to protect you? Let them get in for carrying concealed weapons. Finally, it is two days before a big football game against your arch rivals the Washington Redskins why are you out at the club anyway?
The Daily Voice is concerned that Plaxico’s actions reflect badly on the entire black community and professional athletes in general.
Frankly, I am sick of these athletes doing dumb sh** to throw away their careers and possibly their lives. From Pacman, to Tank, to Michael, to Chad, it’s just sad. Oh come on field, they are just a small percentage of the athletes playing sports. Most athletes are out here living their lives on the straight and narrow and contributing to their communities. Why single out these guys? Because the amount that they have thrown away is staggering, and it amazes me that even with story after story of tragic endings because of bad choices, these rocket scientists continue to do the same crap.
Assuming he’s found guilty, Plaxico is supposed to be looking at a minimum of three and a half years in the crowbar motel. We won’t know until some time next year, but let’s wait and see if that happens or if Mr. Burress finds a way to get all the justice that money can buy.