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Of course, it’s gotten me in trouble. There was the night during a Turner broadcast, at the time when the PETA people were in the process of forcing the NBA and NCAA to use synthetic basketballs instead of leather, that I said that the only thing animals were good for was eating and wearing.

Another time I said to a white reporter I know, “I hate white folks.” I was talking to a writer I’d known for years and years. And I asked him later if he had taken offense, and I believe he wrote a piece in his newspaper that said he was never offended. He was actually offended that somebody who wasn’t involved in the conversation in the first place had come in and interpreted something without knowing the relationship between me and the reporter. So where’s the context? If you just put that on the air and you don’t know the relationship of the two people, what was being discussed, what the mood was, are you informing the viewer of anything or just inflaming?

If you know the people involved, can you not tell an off-color joke anymore? Are we that screwed up? The media has us so screwed up right now that we think every sentence that comes out of everybody’s mouth has to be politically correct. That’s bullshit. I tell you what; if the politically correct police ever came into a professional locker room . . . oh my God . . . we could start World War III every day in there. I wish I was on a team right now with a bunch of Catholic guys, with everything that’s gone on recently in the Catholic Church. Damn, I’d be killing them guys, just killing them. And, of course, I know there’s a very serious element to the charges of sexual abuse. The priests guilty of sexually abusing those kids—they’re minors—ought to be put in jail as far as I’m concerned, as I’ve said. It’s a serious story. But don’t tell me that’s going to be off-limits in a locker room, because it isn’t. If I was playing with my man Joe Kleine, who is Catholic, right now, oh, he would never catch a break.

Thank God for Jerry Springer’s show. I thought only black folks were that screwed up until I watched Jerry Springer. The beauty of that show, of all those daytime shows, is that they show how screwed up everybody is, regardless of race, ethnic background, gender or anything else. If you can sit back and get a good laugh from that stuff . . .

But one of the reasons I need to be really careful about what I say on television is that I know people are going to believe it and take everything so literally. And you know how I like to joke and have fun and poke fun at certain things or institutions. But somebody sitting out there in South Dakota who has a different sense of humor may say, “That guy is an asshole.” That’s why on the basketball show, I’ll try to stay away from personality a whole lot, especially when I’m being critical. Now, I’m going to take on things I think are wrong or people in big places. But I have to remind myself about how people are going to take things.

But I still think we need to be able to poke fun at one another. I told somebody not too long ago who is short that little people shouldn’t be riding in first class during flights. Little people should ride in coach. You know if you’re little. I don’t fly first class because I need better meals. I do it because of size. I hate when you walk through first class and you’ve got little two-foot people filling up the first class seats while all the tall people are walking to the back of the plane. It’s about comfort. Those two-foot people can be comfortable in coach. If you’re 6-2 you can’t even get your damn knees inside the seat in front of you. I don’t know how anybody taller than 6-4 can sit in those seats. And the airline executives don’t give a damn ’cause they never walk back there in the first place. I don’t fly first class because I’ve got a lot of money. I do it because I need the room. But sometimes, it’s not available, so I have to sit in coach, next to a person who’s going to talk my ear off and ask me,