Fox Sports: Ex-NBA player rips Haiti, compares country to ‘homeless men’ […] Shirley has been dropped as a freelance writer for ESPN for his comments on Haiti.

Really? What did he say that got him punted? Isn’t it all about unicorns and rainbows when talking about Haiti these days?

“I haven’t donated to the Haitian relief effort for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street,” he wrote. “Based on past experiences, I don’t think the guy with the sign that reads ‘Need You’re Help’ is going to do anything constructive with the dollar I might give him. If I use history as my guide, I don’t think the people of Haiti will do much with my money either.”

“We did the same after Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “We were quick to vilify humans who were too slow to respond to the needs of victims, forgetting that the victims had built and maintained a major city below sea level in a known target zone for hurricanes. Our response: Make the same mistake again. Rebuild a doomed city, putting aside logic as we did.”

I see two sides to this problem. True, he’s a public figure and if he proclaims his opinions in public, they can and will impact his “public figure related” job. This is a fact of blogging, tweeting, or Facebooking.

Freedom of Speech does not absolve you of taking responsibility for your Speech.

However, he does have a point. New Orleans and Katrina was a debacle in terms of Federal response, but it was a city that was warned of a coming hurricane and they did little-to-nothing to prepare for it. They are a city below sea level. They did have so many false alarms over the century that they became lazy in terms of heeding warnings of hurricanes. They need to take some responsibility for the aftermath of hurricane, the same way the government has to.

Haiti did not have the same warning. They got levelled within seconds. I can’t even ask “why weren’t more buildings earthquake safe?” because it’s not normally at risk of quake; this was a surprise attack unlike life for cities on the west coast. However. This guy has a point. Haiti has been a mess for hundreds of years. They’ve had one political implosion after another. They’ve had dictators that have stripped the populous of human rights and one coup after another has devastated the nation. The world recognizes that Haiti has a higher AIDS infection rate in the population than any other nation and that helps tear apart the culture. Over half the population is under 18. They have no notion of birth control – aside from abstinence – and that’s also helped to destroy their country. And while a number of people will point out that birth control isn’t approved for Catholics – and the nation is mostly Catholic – I have to point out two things: the country has legally recognized Voodoo as a national religion, so there are options, but also, having sex outside of wedlock is a non-Catholic thing… you can’t have that both ways: pick one part of a religion that flies in the face of another.

This reporter has another valid point: if he’s going to donate money to the relief fund, he wants the effort to teach a man how to fish rather than just giving him fish. His article is corse, harsh, untimely, and extraordinarily pompous, but he still has a point: are our current relief efforts going to help rebuild Haiti in the long run?

One thing that stuck out was the bit about panhandlers: I don’t give money to them either… for me, it comes from an episode where I saw a bunch of people hop out of a car in CT. Saw one guy finish up a Subway, walk to the corner, and put up a “Hungry – can you spare cash?” sign. I know, in this scenario, maybe he hadn’t eaten for a week before, but it just left me feeling… wrong. Also, how many times do you see a panhandler smoking while asking for food money? Cigarettes are a luxury for people – they are flat out expensive… if a beggar asks you for money, how do you feel if they take it and buy drugs with it? Is your money helping the problem? People say you shouldn’t loan friends money because you’ll resent them, if they don’t use the loaned cash in a way you agree with – panhandlers fall in the same group for me. I’d much rather donate to actual organizations that help people dig out of a hole and yes – I have donated in the past.

The problem with this “rebuilding Haiti,” so that they are in a better world position, is that right now is not the time to work on that. When there’s immediate pain, despair, need, and chaos, you have to fix that problem first before you can look longer term. Now is not the time to ding the mass populous for mistakes they or their leaders have made. They need help now no matter what they’ve done wrong in the past. If you saw a panhandler that had been stabbed and was bleeding in the street, you get them help now. You don’t stand there and lecture them or attempt to educate them about how to make better decisions in the future… right now, Haiti is bleeding from an open wound and it needs that to heal before they can address longer term problems.

Bottom line, this is another example of how people aren’t making their point correctly. His valid and thought provoking point is lost and negated by his tone and his lack of sympathy given the current situation. And while I respect that it’s his legally protected choice to (or not to) donate money/time/goods to whichever cause he wants to, the same way it’s his right to publicly proclaim his opinions… that right carries with it a responsibility which also needs to be recognized. And in this case, it has cost him his freelance job.

Ah well – ever forward.

How about that iPad?