Whitlock: Cam, Peyton Victims Of Social-Media Race War

boozeman

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Cam, Peyton Victims Of Social-Media Race War
by Jason Whitlock

Social media won. Cam Newton is unapologetically Instagram. Unapologetically Twitter.


With his staged, “I will win my way,” Muhammad Ali-alluding Instagram post, Cam Newton joined Robert Griffin III, Colin Kaepernick and Johnny Manziel as prisoners of the false-narrative, identity-confused, social-media world.

Social media and the bloggers/tweeters who live for social-media approval begged the MVP quarterback to choose polarization and permanent victimhood. Newton enthusiastically obliged on Friday, posting a cheesy, Alex Rodriguez-ish pic and Dan Gilbert-ish message on IG.

A picture of Ali over his right shoulder, Newton stared “thoughtfully” across his left shoulder with these words posted beneath him:

This season has been an incredible journey and I want to thank PANTHERNAT1ON and all of the fans that iNSP1RED us to great achievements. iAMnøtPERFËCT and I will make mistakes but I will continue to work on improving each day trying toPERFECTallMYimPERFECT1ON. Pursuing greatness is my commitment, and I will continue to be TRÜ to myself, to my FAM1LY and to making all of YOÜ who follow me PROUD! iW1LL W1N… MY WAY… and hope to iNSP1REüALLtoW1N…. ürWAY! -1OVE#dontBEaPUPPET #stayTRÜtoÜ

Seriously, this is Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert ranting in comic sans after LeBron left Cleveland and Rodriguez coordinating the photo shoot.

Worse, this is Newton surrendering to the 100k-plus tweeters and their puppeteers. Twitter is a fictional world where “Sharknado” trends and no one watches. Twitter spent the second half of the NFL season trying to convince Newton that a letter to the editor complaining about his end-zone dancing was a subliminal message to white America to join the KKK.


Writers in love with Facebook likes and Twitter retweets and absolutely zero legitimate connection to sports culture argued that Cam’s dancing and first-down celebrations made him as unapologetically black as Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King rolled into one read-option quarterback.

When did Malcolm, Nelson or Martin dance?

Let me tell you who dances. Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, Chris Brown and Beyonce.

Social media loves black men dancing, shucking and jiving, and thinking those things make a black man unapologetically black. You know when social media falls in love with a black man who doesn’t dance? At his funeral. Or when Parkinson’s disease renders him harmless.

Cam Newton has fallen for the social-media okey-doke. We’ve seen it before. RG3 and Kaepernick have already traveled this road. They crafted images, messages and pictures specifically designed to win over the identity-confused, volume tweeters and Instagram posters. They responded to the appropriate criticisms of the media, fans and football peers by waging a public-relations war through social media.

How did that work out? How’s it working for Manziel, another millennial QB fixated on social media?

It doesn’t work. Twitter and Instagram lie.

The white mother in North Carolina who complained about Cam’s end-zone celebration isn’t racist. She’s no different from the black Tennessee Titans linebackers who challenged Newton during the regular season over his dance. And now that Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware and Wade Phillips exposed the Kryptonite that can shut down SuperCam, black NFL players and athletes-turned-broadcasters are more than comfortable expressing their true feelings about Cam’s dabbing and pouting.

I like Cam Newton. I still think he can be the football version of Magic Johnson, a joyous athlete who makes the game feel fun and accessible. But if he chooses the bitter, victim route, he won’t reach his potential.

You can’t be Muhammad Ali on a football team, especially not at quarterback. Boxing is an individual sport. Ali, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Mike Tyson stepped into the ring alone. They could swallow all the negative, polarizing energy surrounding them and use it as fuel against an individual opponent. A quarterback steps into the ring with 10 other teammates, 10 individuals with 10 different personalities and backgrounds. What fuels Cam may not fuel the right guard from Iowa or the tight end from Mississippi or the wide receiver from California.

A quarterback has to choose a power source that works for 10 other guys. It’s a leadership position. Ali had to lead one person into battle. RG3 chose a power source that only worked for RG3. When he stayed in that Seattle playoff game with a bad knee that made him a liability, RG3 let his teammates know he thought he was more important than everyone else on the roster. That single act planted a virus that eventually undermined Griffin in Washington.

People criticized former NFL coach Jim Fassel for pointing out that Cam’s pregame, gold MVP cleats were a bad sign. Fassel is a coach. He led a team to the Super Bowl. As an assistant, he worked with some of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, including John Elway. Fassel knows football and football culture far better than the Twitter-azzi, the bloggers who have never covered the sport and many of the former players who defend every Cam misstep because they want to be friends with him.

The gold MVP cleats signaled that Cam brought the wrong mindset to Super Bowl Sunday. Cam was thinking about himself, an individual, Muhammad Ali. The Panthers reflected their quarterback on Sunday. They played like distracted, selfish individuals. They played like a team that already achieved its main objective.

Newton needs to disengage from social media. He’s too young. He can’t see through the lies and mine social media for its good value. Using social media to prove black authenticity is a mistake that has led many millennial African-Americans to choose polarization and extremism over the path that led Barack Obama to the White House.

Hmm. It’s enough to make you think social media may be being used as part of a plan to prevent another Obama. Rather than bringing us together across racial lines, Twitter and Instagram divide us. They tempt race-bait writers – on the right and the left – disguised as journalists to constantly promote false-equivalency narratives.

Because Cam has been criticized as a poor sport, left-wing race-bait media/tweeters are now retelling Peyton Manning’s story of inappropriate behavior at the University of Tennessee 20 years ago. The untrained-journalist-turned-columnist at the New York Daily News, Shaun King, who breathed new life into the Manning story argued that the media ignored the Manning court documents years ago because the media protected Manning. Not true. Years ago the media adhered to standards of fairness. We tried to recognize the things we could not know. We recognized that some things stated in a court document could be misleading or untrue. You know, just like police reports mislead, so do court documents.

That is not written to excuse what appears to be poor behavior by Manning as a college student. It’s written to state that King’s salacious, one-sided, overwritten story did not reveal some buried truth. This Manning story has been told multiple times. King just timed and framed his telling in the most sensational way possible and when Newton defenders most desperately wanted a white QB to be villainized.

It won’t be long until right-wing race-bait media retell Kobe Bryant’s story or Jameis Winston’s. It’s a never-ending, tit-for-tat battle between black and white race baiters to prove one race is worse than the other.

There are no real winners in this race-bait war, just a bunch of people with limited talent adding IG and Twitter followers. Social media race-baiting is the new, leaked sex tape. Maybe the problem is high-volume tweeters don’t have time for (or interest in) sex.

Here’s hoping Cam’s next IG post has pictures of Joe Montana, John Elway, Doug Williams, Steve Young, Tom Brady, Russell Wilson and other Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks rather than a boxer.
 

Cotton

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Spot on.
 
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