Consulting my Black Star Handbook

I hate everyone. Seriously.

I know it's a shocker to hear that I'm angry once again, but every time I flip to the sports page in a newspaper, I see another headline or article that pisses me off. I'm trying to get fired up for my favorite time of the year - football season - but instead I'm forced to wade through dozens of articles that have very little to do with athletes actually playing sporting events.

Let's go back to Monday, and I'll explain what I'm talking about. I'm fascinated by the newest version of Team USA's basketball squad, so I open up the newspaper in hopes of reading how Kobe, LeBron and friends have been doing in the FIBA Americas Championship. But instead of reading about their latest 40-point blowout, I see a gigantic headline about the dark side of basketball.

According to an article in the Philadelphia Daily News, crooked referee Tim Donaghy still might receive a league pension, even after pleading guilty to two felonies Aug. 15. That's right, even though the 40-year-old pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting betting information through interstate commerce, Donaghy could still receive a severance package and $78,000 a year starting at age 58, or as soon as age 45 with a reduced payout.

There aren't too many ways to spin that story. An official makes a ton of money illegally while simultaneously cheating the integrity of the game and now his employer, the NBA, still may pay him more money than your average American makes in a year - even after this guy goes to jail. That's roughly akin to me saying thank you to my wife after she drunkenly smacked me around (again).

So needless to say I gave up reading my newspaper Monday. I wake up the following morning, ready to give the world another chance, and grab my sports page out of the newspaper once again as I sit down to eat my CoCo Puffs. With the start of the NFL season comes the start of fantasy football as well, so I'm hoping to scan some boxscores to see how guys like Laurence Maroney, Marshawn Lynch and Anquan Boldin are doing. But silly me, this is the week Michael Vick's world comes crashing down, so there was zero chance I was going to be able to read about anything that actually involves current NFL players. So I gave up and decided to see what everyone was saying about Vick. Boy was that a mistake.

We all know what's going on with Ron Mexico, and the fact that he's admitted guilt and will be serving jail time once a judge decides Dec. 10 how long to send him away for. But that hasn't stopped a half dozen individuals who have little or nothing to do with this case from telling me how I should think and feel about the former NFL poster child. The first moronic comments came from New York Knicks underachiever Stephon Marbury, who came to the defense of Vick and compared dogfighting to hunting.

"I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals," Marbury said. "You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors.''

Maybe this is why Marbury's shoes only sell for 15 bucks - he's not bright enough to be able to count any higher than that. What's great is, almost as soon as the words came out of Stephon's mouth he began backpeddling (showing more effort in this than he has on a basketball court in years). The next day Marbury wanted everyone to know that Vick "is 100 percent wrong" and that his quotes were taken out of context. Of course they were.

And Marbury wasn't the only NBA player with something to say about our country's most notorious dog fighter. Ron Artest, who is the closest thing professional basketball has to insane wanted to speak up to show his support for Vick.

"I might get in trouble for this, but I want to call him," said Artest said. "I want to support him and be there for him because [these are] tough times. I don't support the dog fighting. I can't watch it. I can't imagine another dog biting a dog. It makes me nauseous."

Most casual sports fans only know Artest because he started the big brawl in Detroit a couple of years ago. But what most sports fans probably don't know is that Artest's Great Dane, named Socks, was taken away from him earlier this year because he failed to take care of it and his neighbors repeatedly called the authorities over his lack of care for the dog. So Artest is mental and has had an issue with the law involving his own dog - clearly he should be the public figure who steps forward for Vick.

After three strikes, I gave up on the sports section and figured I'd go to the entertainment section, to read about how awesome the movie Superbad is doing in the theaters and see how long it'll be until authorities take Britney Spears' kids away from her. But I still can't get away from the negative sports stories. Right there, on the front page of the entertainment section of the newspaper was actor Jaime Foxx, coming to the defense of Ron Mexico.

"It's a cultural thing, I think," said Foxx. "Most brothers didn't know that, you know. I used to see dogs fighting in the neighborhood all the time. I didn't know that was Fed time. So, Mike probably just didn't read his handbook on what not to do as a black star. I know that cruelty to animals is bad, but sometimes people shoot people and kill people and don't get time," Jamie continued. "I think in this situation, he really didn't know the extent of it, so I always give him the benefit of the doubt."

As someone who subscribes to the Black Star Handbook, I really had to laugh at how ridiculous Foxx's comments were. Did he honestly think that PETA and the Federal Government wouldn't have gotten involved if it was Brett Favre or Tom Brady instead of Mike Vick? I mean, Brady just became a baby's daddy, so he's definitely got some thug appeal and street cred these days and Favre comes from the backwoods of Mississippi, where the phrase "you got a purdy mouth" is considered socially acceptable. Why would Foxx automatically let the white man off the hook and blame it on Vick not being able to read?

Since it is clear that I'm not going to be able to enjoy my morning newspaper again in the near future and every superstar who opens their mouth these days immediately regrets it, I might as well get involved. No, not in dog fighting (I told you, I read my Black Star Handbook). I'm going to begin my new career as a media relations expert for morons like Marbury, Artest and Foxx. If I can keep them all from saying dumb shit, then the media will have to write about something else, and then I can finally enjoy my morning paper again.

Brian Murphy is the 2005 Defense Department's sportswriter of the year. And he still doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Contact him at murf@the5holes.com.