NFL Cornerback Chris Carr Talks About Ron Paul, Reason, and the Underappreciated Tolerance of NFL Locker Rooms

Chris Carr is a 30-year-old well-traveled NFL cornerback and kick returner whose career ended in December with the New Orleans Saints. He's also a loyal subscriber to Reason, and we had him on The Independents Wednesday night to talk about his political evolution, tolerance in the locker room (his answer may surprise), and his prediction for Super Bowl Sunday. Check it out:

Follow him on Twitter @triplcarr. And stay tuned tonight for a full episode devoted to the Super Bowl, including crazy superstitions, marijuana agitprop, hangover cures, a conversation with actress Katie Aselton of the hilarious football fantasy show The League, and brutal guac-off between myself and that earrings lady. Tonight at 9 ET!

Comments

[John]

Amazing how a meritocracy produces tolerance. When everyone is there because of their abilities, people stop caring about what color their skin is. It is almost like affirmative action and the CRA perpetuates racial animosity or something.

[Auric Demonocles]

Nah, the NFL is racist because Brady, Brees, Manning, and Rodgers are all highly marketed just for being white. It's got nothing to do with anything besides that.

[John]

I know. Black players like Dion Sanders, Calvin Johnson, Walter Payton and other greats never got any endorsement deals and were largely ignored and forgotten by the media and fans.

The whole league is about celebrating white quarterbacks. I mean, the media never even mentioned that Doug Williams was the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl or that Russel Wilson and Colin Kappernick were the first two black QBs to play in the same conference title game.

It is racism all around.

[wareagle]

best part of the Williams thing was his being asked how long he had been a black quarterback.

[John]

Williams seems to be a really great guy. He quietly put up with Gibbs starting the grossly inferior Jay Schrader that season and bided his time. He was amazingly patient with the media and never played the race card about anything.

[Number 2]

In fact, every time he was asked, he insisted that he was not a "black" quarterback, but the quarterback of the Redskins.

[kris713]

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[Rasilio]

Don't forget Jim Brown and Ed "Too Tall" Jones, those guys just fell off the face of the earth once their playing careers were over

[Number 2]

Wilson and Kapernick were not the first two black quarterbacks to play in a conference championship game. Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick were. How could you forget? Joe Buck and Chris Collingsworth reminded us literally after every play that these two African-American men were, in fact, African-American.

[wareagle]

like any other professional sport, the NFL is about winning. Short of being a child molester, I imagine the locker room could give a damn what a guy does so long as he shows up on Sunday.

[RBS]

Just ask Riley Cooper.

[John]

The fact that people under 30, especially athletes, call each other the N word about four times a day didn't hurt.

Every time I heard Micheal Wilbon clutching his pearls over the horror of Riley Cooper dropping an N bomb and his teammates largely not caring I wanted to jump through the television and scream "It is not 1968 anymore. No one gives a fuck about that shit anymore old man!!"

[wareagle]

and the Cooper thing blew over pretty fast. Michael Vick was among the first to stand up for him.

[F. Stupidity, Jr.]

The new Mike Vick seems to be a really cool guy.

[John]

I think so too. I honestly think he grew up in an environment where dog fighting was accepted. I don't think he had any idea doing it would get him into trouble. And frankly, there is no way in hell dog fighting should ever land someone in federal prison. I say this as a huge dog lover. But federal prison?

[Auric Demonocles]

It sounds like there is a decent chance that Hernadez might get off on the murder charge (though he will certainly go down on the gun charges). I'm guessing if that happens he will manage to get back into the league (probably, and hopefully, not on my team).

[John]

I find it hard to believe they won't convict him. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming from what I have read.

The victim was last seen getting into a car with Hernandez.

The victim was afraid enough of Hernandez that he made a point of texting his girlfriend telling her who he was with in case any harm came to him.

The victim's body was found near Hernandez' home.

Neighbors heard gunshots from the area in between the time Hernandez was seen on his own security cameras leaving his house with a gun and when he returned.

Hernandz tried to destroy both his security camera tape and his cell phone the morning after the murder.

He is guilty as hell. If he is let off, Massholes are more brain dead than I thought they were.

[playa manhattan]

The motive was pretty solid too. He had been smoking PCP almost daily and was getting pretty paranoid.

[creech]

But every tv crime show seems to say circumstantial evidence isn't enough.
Well when it is piled high it sure is because no reasonable alternative explanation is possible.

[John]

The whole "they only have circumstantial evidence" line is one of the dumber ones ever put on TV.

Circumstantial evidence is usually the most reliable and powerful evidence. Lab results can be fudged. Eye witnesses are nearly always wrong. Confessions can be coerced. But circumstances are what they are.

The other thing about circumstantial evidence is that the defendant has a chance to present an alternative explanation for them. If he is innocent, he will be able to do that. If he can't explain them, it is a pretty good bet his is guilty.

[RBS]

My evidence professor, who also happens to be a sitting District Court court judge, reminded our class of this all the time.

[John]

Good for him. Which is the better evidence of murder, some crook getting a deal and saying he saw me do it or me taking out a large insurance policy on the victim two days before the murder and purchasing a handgun of the same caliber as the murder weapon?

The latter are both just "circumstantial evidence". But they are a hell of a lot more persuasive.

[RBS]

Of the 90 something hours of law school those 3 from evidence are by far the most useful.

[John]

I won the Amjur award for evidence back in the day. Got an A+ in a school where those were rarely given out and every first year class was graded on a strict bell curve. I loved evidence. It always made sense to me. Every rule was the result of a sensible logical distinction. I may be the only nut in the world who thinks the difference between a hearsay exception and non hearsay makes perfect logical sense.

[BakedPenguin]

Just curious - why didn't you go into criminal law?

[John]

I did for a bit in the Army and loved it. But mostly I didn't do it because of money. State DA's don't make jack. The life of a criminal defense attorney is pretty hard. There really isn't a lot of money in it.

Also, unless you are really cynical, it wears you down. You making your living off of human tragedy. Even throwing a real dirt bag in jail involves indirectly inflicting a lot of harm on his family who often are not dirtbags and deserve a lot better than what they get. In the end, I am a bit too much of a dogooder to ever really be the kind of person who can do prosecution year after year.

I could do defense and some day might after I retire when it will be for extra money not my only income. My only problem with defense is that as a defense attorney you are obligated to make every possible argument, even the ones you know are ridiculous. You can't be dishonest. But if there is a reasonable way to make the argument, you have to make it or face an ineffective assistance of counsel.

It never bothered me for a moment to defend factual guilty people. But it always bugged the living hell out of me to make arguments that I didn't think were valid and wouldn't have bought if I had been the judge. My wife thinks I am nuts. She cannot fathom how it didn't bother me to defend real criminals but somehow felt bad for making what I felt was a less than valid argument.

[cavalier973]

My wife thinks I am nuts. She cannot fathom how it didn't bother me to defend real criminals but somehow felt bad for making what I felt was a less than valid argument.

I have a friend who told me he would defend someone who he knew was guilty, because the government sets certain rules for itself, and it was his job to make sure that the gov't followed its own rules.

[John]

Your friend is exactly right. Just because someone is really guilty, doesn't mean the government shouldn't have to prove it or that they are guilty of what the government says they are.

The way I always explained it was that if defense lawyers refused to defend anyone they thought or knew was guilty, we would no longer have trial by jury but trial by defense lawyer, since anyone whom the defense lawyers refused to defend would be presumed to be guilty and almost certainly convicted pretty much by default. I don't want such a system.

Defending guilty people is like cleaning up the trash or fixing the sewers. It is a dirty job most people wouldn't want to do. But it is a job that someone has to do or the whole society falls apart.

[BakedPenguin]

... if defense lawyers refused to defend anyone they thought or knew was guilty, we would no longer have trial by jury but trial by defense lawyer...

That is a very cogent point.

[wareagle]

and there are a couple of other murders to which Hernandez may be connected.

[Rasilio]

I havn't heard anything indicating he was likely to get off but you are right, if he walks out of jail under the age of 32 and has kept himself in shape someone in the NFL will give him a shot.

Not the Patriots, he'd be toxic for them, but someone else would.

[RBS]

The Browns maybe? So they can...

[Auric Demonocles]

I notice even in their videos they still get in a plug for Matt's book. Sneaky.

[Dr. Frankenstien]

I'm just waiting for them to get former pro-wrestler Kane.

[RBS]

Kane still wrestles.

[Dr. Frankenstien]

I thought he quit wretling and was just part of the Authority as director of operations. Or do you know if he coming back into the ring.

[RBS]

He was in the Royal Rumble on Sunday. Eliminated pretty fast but still in there. I don't know if there any plans for him to wrestle beyond that though.

[Warty]

FUCK ART MODELL

[pob]

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[julia14juli]

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