Stupid Questions

Today, at first, I thought I’d write something about Imminent Domain. Why? Because a year ago today the Supreme Court of the land issued an opinion regarding the issue. It basically gave cities the clear right to take someone’s home they worked long and hard for as long as it’s for the vaguely described betterment of the public good.

Yeah, uh-huh. So hypothetically, if the city wants to put in another park (to add to the 1,239,083,021 others in town) and they want to take my house -- the Supreme Court has now given them the go-ahead. Nice.

Brush up on some reading about the issue. That’s today’s challenge.

But the meat of my post today is an excerpt from a column I read on a pretty regular basis from FoxNews.com. It’s Mike Straka’s Grrrr! Column featured every Tuesday and Thursday.

In the columns he mainly vents about people’s stupidity and shallowness (so true and funny too!), but today’s was a round-about way of praising Mark Cuban.

Now Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks. Yes, they lost the NBA title this week, but it’s not on a lack of caring or passion from their owner.

Cuban’s a very blunt in-your-face kinda guy and has drawn great criticism. But not from me. I like him and his mannerisms. And apparently so does Straka.

The excerpt follows:

Wednesday, June 21, 2006
By Mike Straka

If I were a billionaire, I'd be Mark Cuban.

After all, Cuban is a better Grrr! guy than I am. OK, maybe not better at Grrring, but richer anyway.

I think that if I had enough money to own my very own high definition network, I'd take the Grrr! to the wide screen, and order up an eye-light so that my green eyes are always visible and sexy.

But that's just me. Cuban is content to Grrr the referees, the NBA and the sports media to their faces and on his blog, but not so much on his own network.

Regardless, I say, "Hear, Hear!" Mark Cuban is not afraid to say what's on his mind or to tell it like it is. He's not afraid to tell a reporter, "You know what, that was a really stupid question."

To me, he's a breath of fresh air.

Cuban is among a very short list of important rich guys who actually take the time to get back to reporters quickly and succinctly.

The other guy is Donald Trump — another guy not too busy to return a call, like when I asked him after "Rather-Gate" if he'd fire Rather if the Danster were a contestant on "The Apprentice."

(Here is where a link was inserted to a voicemail Donald leaves Straka saying said he would fire Rather. Sorry, couldn’t quite get it to work. Got to FoxNews.com to read the full article – links and all.)

According to Cuban’s blog this week, after his Dallas Mavericks dropped the NBA championship series to the Miami Heat, he told reporters in the locker room he would be happy to answer questions if they had good ones to ask.

Cuban wrote:
"I told them I would if they asked good questions and didn't ask the same clichéd questions they had asked after other games. It was interesting how quiet everyone got.

"Then someone asked, 'Is this your worst loss ever?' What the [expletive] kind of question is that? Is this for a VH1 special? 'Worst Losses Ever?' If it was, then maybe it was a decent question. Otherwise, how do you answer that question?"

You see, that's hilarious. So many times reporters throw up softballs in order to get the subject talking. We do that to get quotes for print and soundbites for television and radio, and we do it often.

The point is, Mark Cuban is a breath of fresh air.

You see, he doesn't really have to answer to anybody. If Tom Cruise decides someone asked him a stupid, cliché question, well, since Paramount is paying him a lot of money and his image in "M:I:3" is what they're paying him for, he's probably going to suck it up and answer the same-old sorry question. He wouldn't want to jeopardize any of that box office mojo by arguing with reporters, now would he?

But Cuban doesn't have to, and that's his beauty.


Thanks for reading guys. And just you wait… we’ll see the Mavs and Cuban in the years to come. They’re not going away anytime soon.