November 23, 2022

Dr. Edwards was once an outstanding athlete on the San Jose State track and field team.  He was the coordinator for the 1968 Olympic Project. He had been a contributor to “The Original Inside Sports” for over four decades.

Michael Wilbon’s Washington Post colleague John Feinstein called him “the biggest ass kisser and cheerleader in sports media.”

When former NBA great and ESPN analyst Charles Barkley’s interview on CNN went viral as it related to his opinion on black men in America/Michael Brown and Ferguson. I contacted Dr. Edwards to make sense of the uproar. I also spoke to Michael Wilbon of ESPN to get his take on his friend Barkley’s views on racism and black men in America. Wilbon agreed that we can all disagree! This was all being said as it related to ESPN’s Kenny Smith’s “Open Letter” to his colleague Charles Barkley.

Wilbon had written two books on Charles Barkley. He said “Harold I didn’t hear the interview (liar) but I will see Charles tomorrow and I will get a response!” I turned to ESPN’s PTI to watch Wilbon and his partner the overrated Tony Kornheiser. during that segment of the show there was no mention of Kenny Smith’s Open Letter to Barkley so I moved on. Wilbon has become a Big Liar–his word has meant absolutely nothing in 2021.

WILBON AND I SHARE A LAUGH–THE LIES HE STARTED TO TELL WERE NOT FUNNY!

This was Dr. Harry Edwards’ take on Barkley and Wilbon:  “I love Charles Barkley– as long as he is sitting on the sports desk at TNT trying to explain why the Clippers will never win a championship as long as their toughest, most consistently competitive player is a 6’1″ point guard.  But when he begins to offer jaw-droppingly ignorant and uninformed opinions on issues from Obama’s Syria/ISIS policy to the “criminal” predispositions and proclivities of the Black community, I find something more productive to do like taking out the garbage or cleaning up my lawn. And the saddest part of it all is that he apparently doesn’t realize that the networks and interviewers are just flat out CLOWNING HIM!!!  It’s a “What crazy crap can we prompt Barkley to say. And all the better if it is an attack on Black people!”

The “guess what Charles Barkley said on CNN?” factor is incentive enough for the networks to persist in presenting and promoting this clown show– long past the time when it is not either funny or even remotely engaging. Now both Barkley and Wilbon look like clowns– and justifiably so.”

Forget Michael Wilbon – he is just as sick and confused as Barkley. He is the guy who while sitting on a major cable network anchor desk said ” I call my Black friends “Nigger” all the time – and there is nothing wrong with that.” This is a sentiment that Barkley agrees with– until the White boy sitting next to them calls somebody “Nigger” and then they want him fired! So don’t hold your breath for Wilbon to exercise either the balls or the intellectual integrity to challenge Barkley on his bull shit.

Dr. Harry Edwards

Summary: Guess Who is Coming back to Dinner?
Barkley and Wilbon took center stage again when NBA Super Star Kyrie Irving posted a documentary on his social media twitter page titled “Hebrews to Negroes.” The Jewish Community found the post offensive!

In the meantime, Kyrie never posted he liked or disliked the documentary. The Jewish community is blaming the wrong guy for distribution of the documentary–try billionaire Jeff Beos of Amazon and the clowns, Howdy Doody and Clarabell (Barkley and Wilbon) who were joined on their soapboxes by Stephen A. Smith, ‘The King’ Lebron James, Shaq O’Neal and too many others to mention in this limited space.

In the meantime, Barkley went on a crusade to every media network who sought his opinion to denounce Irving even after NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Brookly Nets owner Joe Tsai admitted Irving was not anti-systemic. Someone overruled them.

From the outside looking in I find Silver to be more in tude with doing the right thing than all of the pro sports commissioners (MLB-NHL-NFL).

I had the opportunity to watch the video debate between Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith on Inside the NBA. The topic, Kenny’s Open Letter to Barkley as it related to Michael Brown and Ferguson.  I was further confused by Barkley’s response to Smith for adding the word “Slavery” to the dialogue in his Open Letter, but he found nothing wrong with his friend Michael Wilbon using the word ‘Nigger’ as his word of choice while addressing his everyday buddies? What ever happen to common sense?

My opinion, Kenny had every right to bring slavery into the conversation. There is an old saying “If you don’t know your history you are bound to repeat it.” It is evident to me that Barkley does not know his black history. Shaq O’Neal made a valid observation (seldom heard) when he said, “I don’t believe all the evidence is in, in the Ferguson case” but he was smart enough to leave the debate in the hands of Smith and Barkley. Shaq and Herschell Walker have a lot in common, they both are big supporters of law enforcement–be they right or wrong.

Any objective person no matter the color of one’s skin could easily see that black folks in the town of Ferguson were set-up to fail—they were in a no win situation. Still burning and looting should not have been an option.

First, it does not take a Grand Jury 100 days to reach a decision on whether Officer Darren Wilson should be send to trial. Second, why would the Governor of the state of Missouri put 400 National Guardsmen on standby before the decision is handed down and why is the decision read at 9:00 pm? Why would a responsible leader put the town in danger by giving the looters an opportunity to seek and destroy under a cover of darkness? The abscence of the 400 National Guardsmen that the Governor put on alert once the burning and looting started—nowhere to be found? Why were there no arrest made on the first night of the looting and burning? Smells like a set-up to me. The same set-up I was an eye/witness to in DC in 1968 when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, TN.

I was working in the U Street corridor when the orders were send down to the police to only moderate the looting and burning on the first day. The next day there were wholesale arrest, much too late for many businesses and residents of the inner-city—they had lost everything! A piece of Black History Charles Barkley knows absolutely nothing about because of his hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil mentality.

Charles Barkley claims without the police many black communities would be like “The Wild, Wild West!” And his most ridiculous observation ‘I don’t think the death of Eric Garner was a homicide.”

Garner was the black man choked to death on a New York street corner while selling loose cigarettes. He died while six white cops wrestled him to the ground, one had an illegal choke hold barred by the NYPD. He said several times to his attackers, “I can’t breathe.” But no one was listening. The Grand Jury freed the white cop.

Despie this entire incident being caught on body cameras, there are still claims the cameras are the solution to police brutality. The guilty cop still gets a free pass to murder a black man? Something is wrong with this picture!

I have spent 50+ years working in the schools, streets, playgrounds and courts here in the DMV.  I have seen the Good, Bad and the Ugly in law enforcement. There are some goods cops but they are outnumbered by the bad and ugly. The bad and ugly are usually the cowards who hide behind their guns and badges. In today’s world it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the thugs from the cops. Some people say, “They are one of the same.”

For some reason beyond me the Powers-To-Be can’t see the Big Picture when it comes to police brutality in this country. No amount of body cameras are going to solve the Ebola like disease of racism embedded in police departments throughout this country.

“The Code of Silence and The Blue Wall” were established to protect crooked and corrupt cops are the real problems. Plus, the criminal justice system is overrun with judges who go along to get along with the corrupt cops. Until we can find a way to change the plantation mentality thinking of Charles Barkley and the “Us against Them” attitudes of cops around the country, we are going to continue going around in circles while the Al Sharptons and the Jesse Jacksons are allowed to keep hustling the black community pretending to keep hope alive while our children and black men die in the streets. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/sharpton-on-fbi-informant-claims-i-am-not-a-rat/#x

How many unarmed Jewish/white men are shot down in our streets by cops and walk away free to shoot again?

The spooks who are now sitting behind the door have grown, thanks to my pioneering sports talk radio platform, “The Original Inside Sports!” Joining James Brown (CBS), Kojo Nnamdi (WMAU Radio), Michael Wilbon (ESPN), Kevin Blackistone (Washington Post), Dave Aldridge (Athletic), and Jarrett Bell (USA Today), are the secondary spooks sitting by the door, it is often said, “Birds of a feather flock together”, meet Andrew Dwyer, Christie Winters-Scott and Monica McNut (Roundball Report) and Richard Dwyer (WUSA TV 9).

The new spooks sitting by the door–can be found at the Roundball Report, host Andrew Dyer and co-host Christy Winters-Scott (ESPN) and Monica McNut (ESPN)–they forgot!

It was once unheard of to discuss sports and politics on sports talk radio and television. Muhammad Ali and Inside Sports changed the landscape.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest racism in America at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, City. The real American heroes.

“Harold, congratulations, your archives are valuable and should be given the broadest possible exposure.  Your discs and videos of your programs belong in the new Smithsonian Institution of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).  A wing of the new museum will be dedicated to the struggle in sports and will be titled “Leveling the Playing Field”.  Your work was a major force over the years in leveling the playing field, especially in terms of the struggle to define and project “Our Truth!”  Dr. Harry Edwards