Earlier today, I heard some morons with a microphone who get paid to spew verbal diarrhea on sports talk radio castigating Cam Newton for his recent comments. You know which ones, when he told a Charlotte Observer reporter yesterday, “I’m an African-American quarterback that may scare a lot of people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to.”
The sloppy sports shock-jocks scoffed and scolded him on air, saying they’d seen Randall Cunningham and Michael Vick before Cam, so they had no idea what he was talking about. Their erroneous and egregious assumption was that once you’ve seen one black quarterback, you’ve seen them all. They grew increasingly agitated with his assertion that he’s hated on simply because he’s black, wondering aloud why he had to bring race into the discussion.
Here’s a newsflash, you dimwits: race, whether you choose to admit it or not, is and needs to be at the core of every discussion we have in America.
But that’s only if we want an honest confrontation with the truth with an aim at a true accounting and reconciliation of this country’s past and present sins, as opposed to the idiocy of believing in the fairy tale of a post-racial society simply because President Barack Obama resides in the White House, Forest Whitaker, Denzel and Jamie Foxx have won Best Actor Oscars in the new millennium and since Sarah Palin gave Glen Rice some booty back in the day.
For a player with such preternatural talents, Cam Newton has been criticized and vilified at every turn from his days as a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at Auburn, through the scouting combines, the NFL Draft as the #1 overall pick and his first few seasons in the league.
We’ve never heard a single off-field incident questioning his character, yet we’ve got many who feel like the mom in Tennessee who must have been lobotomized at some point, you know the one, the lady who wrote a letter that was published by the Charlotte Observer saying that her fourth-grade daughter was scarred by his “… chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts and the in your face taunting of both the Titans players and fans.”
She went on to say,” Your behavior brought out like behavior in the stands.”
Did this chick walk out of a time machine from the 1851 World Fair and into her first NFL stadium?
When I attended my first New York Giants and Jets games in the Meadowlands and at Shea Stadium as a kid back in the early days of Lawrence Taylor and Richard Todd, I was appalled by the behavior of the rowdy, inebriated fans in the stands who cursed, urinated and fought right in front of me on numerous occasions.
It was the most disgusting display of human behavior I’ve ever witnessed, and it happens at NFL stadiums every week.
To this day, unless I’m working an NFL game or have luxury box accommodations, I refuse to go sit in the stands, let alone bring my children to that foolishness and bastion of hooliganism. Cam Newton hadn’t been born when I went to cheer on my favorite pro teams for those first times, but I guess the Dabbin’ of his spiritual matter caused those idiotic fans to act a fool in the early ’80s, huh?
I wonder what the reaction would be to the sexually explicit, ubiquitous Discount Double-Check had Aaron Rodgers been born black. Or Brett Favre’s demonstrativeness. Or Johnny Manziel’s litany of on and off-field foolishness.
Cam Newton is the NFL MVP, a force of nature that led the league with 45 touchdowns — 35 passing and 10 rushing — during the regular season and propelled his team to an overall record of 17-1 and a berth in Super Bowl 50.
The Panthers have won 22 of their last 24 games, Cam has taken the torch from Peyton Manning and Tom Brady as the league’s face of the future, and people are defecating on themselves because he’s dancing, winning big and having fun.
This is the fourth straight Super Bowl that will feature a black starting quarterback. But I don’t care how many times you’ve seen Warren Moon, Russell Wilson, Donovan McNabb, Teddy Bridgewater or Akili Smith, we’ve never seen anything quite like Cam Newton.
He’s big, strong, handsome and throws effortless darts like Dan Marino once did. He also happens to run like NFL Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson once he takes off in the open field.
Has anyone else ever seen a 6-foot-6, 270-pound block of granite that plays the QB position like Cam before? I sure haven’t. He’s an entirely new species, the LeBron James of the NFL.
And people can’t stand it.
Cam’s ascension, and the reaction it’s causing is pretty obvious and predictable if you understand America’s insidious disease of racism. With this bizarre myopic shift toward the xenophobic hysteria of Donald Trump, is it any wonder what lies at the root of the Cam hate?
The blacks and hispanics are taking over America, the peanut gallery wails, and Cam Newton is taking over a stale NFL that will not hesitate to fine someone for a creative celebration.
Anyone who has studied housing patterns and discrimination and is familiar with the white flight phenomenon of blockbusting knows the dynamics of this situation.
Of course people are scared of Cam Newton. It’s a phenomenon unique to the African-American experience. Barack Obama was tolerated by the fringe until he became President, and then they attacked like famished wolves.
Well, Cam just moved into the White House of the NFL and the usual suspects, a bunch of angry, scared, hateful bigots, whether they’re aware of the how and why of their cultural lobotomy’s, are losing their ever-loving minds.
And me, myself, personally, I’m loving every minute of it.
