Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Post Mortem on Former Titans Quarterback Steve McNair

NEWS UPDATE
PHOTO: COUPLE ON VACATION FROM REALITY IN HAPPIER TIMES...
MCNAIR'S EXOTIC, 20-YEAR OLD IRANIAN GIRL FRIEND KNEW SHE WAS BEING TWO-TIMED. SHE CAME FROM A CULTURE OF HONOR KILLINGS AND TOOK IT UPON HERSELF TO SET THINGS STRAIGHT WITH HIM WITH A SEMI-AUTOMATIC HAND GUN SHE'D PURCHASED THE DAY BEFORE. SHE SAW HER (FALSE) HOPES WITH THIS MARRIED MAN WHO WAS USING HER FOR SEX AND NEVER GOING TO MARRY HER, SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL.

TWO MORE-THAN-IRONIC events happened shortly before former Titans quarterback Steve McNair was fatally shot in his love condo four times---right temple once, heart twice then left temple--while he was passed out/drunk in the early morning hours of the 4th of July by his current exotic "girl friend/soul mate," Iranian Sahel Kazemi, that I find of great and fascinating symbolic interest:

First, he'd just made a community service Public Service Announcement (PSA) for suicide prevention, in the strictest sense of the word suicide. Only, Steve forgot to remember that suicide comes in all shapes and sizes and colors, fast and slow, and all things in between. He forgot that he had been committing slow suicide for years with all his womanizing, fasting living, bar hopping and infidelity to his wife and four sons.

Second, earlier the Friday night of his murder, Steve was out with some of his sycophant friends at the Blue Moon Lagoon out on the Cumberland River---one of my most favorite funky restaurants in Nashville (only I like to go with a my favorite date when it's cold and uncrowded---and was accosted by one of his former, ahem, girl friends who saw him, went over to his table and accused him of secretly slipping her a date-rape drug a year earlier. She said her boy friend was going to kill him and created such a scene she was forcibly escorted out the door. After all, everyone loved and protected Steve's image, no matter what the reality, and anything that threatened his iconic persona had to expelled.

It was well-known that Steve McNair was a womanizer. Because he was famous, everyone ignored the elephant in the room. He got a free pass. Until the night his free pass expired, so to speak.

Earlier that fateful week, McNair had been in the car with Sahel when she was pulled over and charged with a DUI as he rode in the passenger seat. She was hauled in to jail while he made a quick exit from the Escalade that was registered in both their names into a taxi. He was furious but later bailed her out of jail.

Lots of other red flags, but you get the gist. Steve McNair, like Michael Jackson, was another dead man walking, who made headlines when he finally, actually died.

He will never open that new restaurant Gridiron he was so excited about. He'll never see his wife and four sons again. He'll never make another public service announcement or mentor another up-and-coming Titans quarterback---all because he was hooked on feelings that desperately drove him from one woman to another and another without regard to the real feelings of his wife and little boys.

And no matter what interference Titans nice-guy coach Jeff Fisher runs about "the great Steve McNair he knew," Steve's low-life living of sex, drugs, alcohol, and bar hopping should be a cautionary tale for all of us and in the end detracts from all the good, community service work he's done over the years.

In the end, bullets in the head and chest ended the long, slow suicidal spiral of former NFL great, Steve McNair. Mark Sanford, Eddie George etc, are you listening?
As Nashville grieves for its great idol Steve McNair, let's give grief where crief is due: Mechelle McNair and the four boys she had with her unfaithful husband. May God be with them all.

Special thanks for the great local coverage to Kleinheider at the Nashville Post. His best piece here. And also to the Nashville City Paper.

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