February 01, 2016

Cam Newton

Cam Newton

Source: Shutterstock

Slap me in the jowls and call me Elmer Fudd, but from what I can tell, this woman’s complaint has everything to do with perceived “poor sportsmanship” and nothing to do with Newton’s susceptibility to sickle cell anemia.

Then again, black athletes have taken “poor sportsmanship” and made it an art form. Muhammad Ali was a genius at this. Taunting one’s opponent and breaking them down psychologically can be a crucial element in sporting success. When Cam Newton does his trademark post-touchdown “dab” dance, he’s merely rubbing his opponents’ noses in the stench of their own defeat. Black athletes are not the only ones who do this, but they seem to do it more often and with a much higher level of theatricality. I’m not sure why it qualifies as a hate crime to notice this.

It’s probable that somewhere on Twitter and Facebook right now, someone is calling Cam Newton a “nigger,” but I doubt it happens very often, or else I would have seen screen captures of such comments in all of the abovementioned articles, trotting out some isolated comment as the smoking gun to prove America is still deeply and institutionally racist. With each passing month, America’s racial witch hunters reach deeper and deeper up their own asses scraping for evidence that most white Americans are deeply racist”€”rather than the truth, which is that they are deeply fearful of being accused of racism.

I found almost no evidence that would indicate that most white Americans have a problem with Cam Newton being black, but I did run across metric shit-tons of both white and black people accusing white people of having a problem with it. So as far as I can tell, the general thrust of all these verbal knife wounds is aimed at stabbing white people, not blacks.

When Super Bowl 50 kicks off next Sunday, Newton stands a chance to become only the third black quarterback in NFL history to lead his team to victory in America’s annual midwinter communal blood ritual.

Sunday’s game will pit the young black Newton’s Carolina Panthers against the Denver Broncos, who are led by the undeniably white Peyton Manning, who sports what is perhaps the largest forehead in professional sports if you don’t count horseracing. At 39, Manning will be the oldest starting quarterback in Super Bowl history. Whereas Newton is perceived as brash and showy, Manning is cerebral, workmanlike, and seemingly devoid of any perceptible personality traits. So it will be the loud black guy versus the quiet and dignified white guy. It will be a Rocky film come to life. But that’s only because Cam Newtown and his media sob sisters”€”not Peyton Manning or the irredeemable white “racists” in flyover country”€”made it an issue in the first place.

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