"Berkeley and Madison, two pinnacles of evolutionary progress."

[dgauss]

Words just spoken by Bill Walton, famed Boston Celtic, in the pre-game commentary to the Wisconsin Badger / Cal Golden Bears (Berkeley) basketball game. He went on to praise WI as a team where "Everyone does everything and it's not like anyone is a ball hog out there." He seemed to really enjoy this description.

Bill Walton, socialist? Or am I reading too much into college basketball commentary?

[NewDeal_Dem]

1. maybe. he was involved with leftist politics when he was younger.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19750410&id=TnQlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t_IFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1686,1626076


The Sacramento Bee had a story about the Kings new color commentator, which just barely touched on Walton’s hippie past by noting that “During his college days, he became a devoted follower of the Grateful Dead (and to this day quotes lead guitarist Jerry Garcia) and was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War rally.”

Which woefully understates how much of a counterculture figure the guy really was.

Sports Illustrated said back in 1976 that Walton was seen by some as a “doped-up, whacked-out, weirdo, Commie-loving, acid freak hippie with lice in his hair and Patty Hearst’s phone number in his datebook.”

The year before that, S.I. called him the “second-richest radical in the U.S., after Jane Fonda.”

Then there’s Time magazine’s description, which reads in part:

“An enigmatic, moody man, Walton is a bitter critic of U.S. society. ‘I don’t believe in capitalism,’ he said when he signed his pro contract. ‘I believe wealth should be spread around.’ Walton’s deal gave him $2.5 million.”

Walton was also connected to the left-wing militant movement of the time—though just how tied in is a little murky. And he was at least on the fringes of the whole Patty Hearst affair.

He hung out with Jack Scott, a sports writer and radical (and Walton’s later biographer) who famously hid Patty Hearst and other members of the Symbionese Liberation Army at a Pennsylvania farmhouse for a while, and then drove Hearst across the country, disguised as his pregnant teenage wife.

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/bill-waltons-long-strange-trip-to-sacramento/content?oid=1905203

[Arugula Latte]

2. I know zip about sports, but

I have heard about Bill Walton being a cool guy, very progressive and liberal.

Here he is wearing tie dye:


Oh, and Go Bears!