It’s Very Difficult to Avoid the Subject

Here is a piece of advice that by suggesting, we are not taking ourselves.

Boycott Mike Tyson.

Don’t listen, don’t watch, don’t even discuss him.

As David Whitley writes in the Orlando Sentinel: “Tyson is this generation’s Rosemary’s baby. He cries, and society recoils. Then we dish out $54.95 for the next pay-per-view bout....

“Now Tyson has become a combination of O.J., Princess Di, the Ebola virus, Clinton’s love child and the Elephant Man. We hate to look. We hate ourselves for looking. But we can’t help ourselves....

“What can stop him? [Lennox] Lewis will, please, oh please. And you could do your part by ignoring Tyson.”

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Speech analysis: Academics had some interesting things to say about Tyson’s extreme use of profanity when they were consulted by Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post.

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown, said Tyson’s intent is partly simply to shock, and partly to denigrate women.

“Calling attention to a sexual being is compromising to women in a way it’s not to men. And if you take it to the most extreme, there’s an implied statement that you can be raped,” Tannen said.

Reinhold Aman, a philologist who edits Maledicta, a journal devoted to the study of profanity and other types of cultural graffiti, sees it differently.

“He has very little self control,” Aman said. “It’s not that he’s doing it on purpose. It’s almost at the point of Tourette’s syndrome.”

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Trivia time: What do Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie and Gordie Howe have in common?

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Horse sense: By now you know trainer Bob Baffert and Prince Ahmed Salman of Saudi Arabia “bought” the Kentucky Derby when they picked up War Emblem in April.

Others passed because of suspicious X-rays. Not the maverick Baffert.

“Baffert is by Unconventional out of an Iconoclastic mare,” writes Rick Bozich in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

“He does things his way. Always has. Always will.”

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Sock it to him: Not that his sport doesn’t get any respect, but...

Clint Mathis is being touted as a potential breakout star for the U.S. team in the upcoming World Cup. He was passing through the lobby at a hotel where the Montreal Canadiens also were staying when a woman stopped him.

“My future son-in-law is an avid hockey player and fan,” the woman said. “Can I have your autograph?”

Mathis politely obliged, the New York Times reports, then did a double-take.

“Did she say hockey?”

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A fine whine: There’s a tiny bit extra riding on Game 7 of the NHL Western Conference semifinal series between the San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche tonight.

It’s the value of the limited edition 2002 S.J. Sharkie’s Chardonnay produced by Emilio Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill.

If the Sharks lose, it might be time to drink the memorabilia.

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Trivia answer: All wear--or wore--No. 9.

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And finally: Tyson, eloquent as usual, on the boxing ability of Lewis:

“His accomplishments talk for itself.”