Confession: I love to watch Mike Tyson with his pigeons. There’s something about watching a guy with a facial tattoo—not to mention a guy who reportedly beat his first wife, was convicted of rape, bit off a guy’s ear, and has had seven children by three different women—play with birds. Naturally, Taking On Tyson is great TV. It succeeds in humanizing perhaps the baddest bad guy in the history of sports.
But after reading today’s New York Times Magazine piece “The Suburbanization of Mike Tyson,” I almost hate the guy again.
I believe that no life, no matter how squandered, is over until it is over. From the ashes of defeat can come great and inspired victory—no matter one’s background, reputation, or misdeeds. But all this talk about the suburban home that Tyson bought from his buddy Jalen Rose (talk about irony, given Grant Hill’s editorial this week in the same paper), unplugging phones, eating vegan, and going to Gymboree classes (can you imagine the look on the faces of the other moms when Mike walks in with his 2-year-old daughter?) has me thinking about redemption more broadly.
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As Tyson says in the Times piece, it has taken nothing less than a “paradigm shift” for him to come down to earth. Two things seem to have brought about all this clean living: rehab and his children. In February 2007, Tyson checked himself into the Wonderland Center, a rehab facility in the Hollywood Hills, for the treatment of various addictions. He “felt safe,” he said, and stayed there nearly a year. Then, in May 2009, came the tragedy of losing his daughter Exodus, who died at age 4 at her mother’s home in Phoenix; she was strangled when her neck was caught in a cord hanging from a treadmill. Tyson blamed himself for not being able to save her. It drove his desire to live better and be a more active father.
Children can have a pronounced effect in even the most vicious institutions. My friend Julio Medina was locked up in Sing Sing for over a decade. He wanted to do something about the gang stabbings that happened every day inside. So he asked permission from the warden to post the handprints of inmates’ children along the most dangerous corridor in the prison. Killings immediately dropped.
My wife and I have been involved in the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston for years. They provide all kinds of athletic and educational services to kids in bad neighborhoods, but the most important thing they provide is safety. Over 90 percent of the children report they feel safer at nightclubs, where armed guards protect patrons, than in their own communities.
What about the kids who have no “safe” place to go, who run right into trouble? If Mike Tyson, a vicious and, by his own admission, insane criminal, can be rehabilitated, what about the other 2 million men we have locked up in prison? What about the nearly half who are African-American?
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Watching Mike with his birds and reading about him today made it clear that it hasn’t been a quick journey for the boxer. His story shows the difficulty of making fundamental personal changes after life-altering mistakes.
Tyson’s demons haven’t disappeared fully. In The Times, he mentions his “click-outs”—when “he feels alternately so low that he wants to jump out the window and so angry that he wants to crack someone’s head open with a pipe. ‘They come on you … out of the blue.’”
But the man has a loving wife and children, a year of life skills learned in rehab, and, of course, bird therapy. Tyson hopes to land genuine acting roles where he gets to play someone other than himself, or at least a man who isn’t feared by all of America. Taking On Tyson is a big step forward.
I, for one, will be rooting for him. Like with any other guy who’s made horrible mistakes (I sure have), there’s only good to come of a man turning his life around.
But how many other American men—especially African-American men—will get that same chance? Tyson forces me to face the reality that we’ve thrown in the towel on a whole generation of American black men—or at least the 1 million in jail. And unless something changes in our education and prison systems, we’ll throw away the next generation too.
—Photo -Bert23- www.aerosolplanet.com
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I look at the journey to manhood for the African American male as a journey across a tightrope across the abyss. Historically, we have been taught that we are not only dispensable, but nearly unnecessary; especially in the lower economic class communities; an attitude that persists even to this very day. Poor African American men were stripped from their homes when Women in those same poor African American communities learned via positive reinforcement from the government that they were financially better off without their husbands than with them. And the natural extrapolation of that idea led to men only being… Read more »
I find Tyson’s journey to be a thoroughly compelling one. Having grown up a few neighborhoods away from where he did–a place where masculinity often meant behaving loutishly or risk being called a fag (which I am)–it’s good to see a man, black man, hu-man take a sad song and make it better (or at least attempt to change the melody). Tyson, like so many, come from places of low self-esteem and have few positive role models that are considered masculine, tender, and it’s a shame. So many “celebrities” seek fame, hoping it will heal the low self-esteem that drove… Read more »
I don’t think “we” have given up at all. They’re in prison because THEY gave up. On themselves and on their families. And I have a hard time garnering any sympathy for them whatsoever. Not to mention Tyson was a millionaire with unlimited resources who threw it all away. Now consider the resources they have available to them even in jail. They could get their GED and even college degrees while behind bars. On our dime. And I’m all for that. I’d rather my taxpayer dollars go to rehabilitation and reduce the rate of recidivism (holy alliteration Batman). But many… Read more »
Hmmm, where to begin? Color me unimpressed or effected. I guess when it comes to athletes and celebrities, their trials and ultimate quests for redemption, I’m pretty jaded. For the sake of his wife and children, I pray that he finds peace everyday because the demons he wrestles with don’t go away. Though their voices may grow faint as real love’s voice grows louder, they will be there. Love him? Hate him? Meh, not on the radar. To me, the man I want to hear about is the one who brings about this kind of change sans Tyson’s resources and… Read more »
Amen. Though if we are going to waste our time on Charlie Sheen we might as well talk about someone who at least seems to be trying to be good.
Oh Lawd! Don’t even get me started on Mr. Tiger Blood. My “day job” is in TV, specifically, I’m an editor in broadcast journalism and I’ve already had much more of that train wreck than I could stand… by the end of the first day of that garbage. Le sigh…
I don’t know what to think with Tyson. He grew up socipathic. While Cus D’Amato helped Tyson, he babied him, covered up two attempted rapes, and gave him no outlet for maturity once Cus died. Tyson has beat women, raped women, beat men, robbed and assaulted as a kid, lost millions, cheated on his taxes, and been a bad father. I was at the gym last week and saw him on Ellen’s talk show. I was speechless as how Mike friggin Tyson could be on daytime, patty cake television, with the patron saint of mainstream feminism, Ellen Degeneres. I am… Read more »
Fair enough Lance. I too find him fascinating, and also hard to figure out whether to love or hate. That’s why I wrote what I did.
I too feel conflicted about ‘second chances’ and who deserves them or not. I mean… Look at Stan Tookie Williams, he started the biggest gang in the country but in jail did a 100% turnaround yet was still on death row.
This is powerful. Good work.
Thanks David.
It’s really a tragedy that we gave up on ‘rehabilitative’ modes of dealing with crime and punishment before it really took off. How do we as society though work through who deserves a second chance? So much time we see headlines of horrific crimes and our first thought ‘I hope they lock them up and throw away the key.’ I know because I think this myself sometimes. I’ve been very interested in the writings and lectures of Angela Davis against the Prison-Industrial Complex and I do think that private prisons are a very problematic part of our social landscape. Because… Read more »