Fear of a Black Cam

[Token]

You wanted him to "fake smile"?

You feel exactly the same way about this, right?

1. What does Nick Saban being a complete dick have to do with the NFL MVP pouting at his post game presser?

2. Are you ok with that?  Do all of you suddenly take back all the Saban bashing because you suddenly understand why he gets upset and walks out when Cam does it?

 

[AUChizad]

1. What does Nick Saban being a complete dick have to do with the NFL MVP pouting at his post game presser?

Oh nothing, except it's the exact same fucking thing.

Worse, actually, to anyone not firmly planted up Saban's ass.

SABAN: Aggressively surly and dickish to the press. Doesn't care for their (legitimate) questions so he screams at them and runs out.
CAM: Dejected and sullen. Doesn't care for their (incredibly stupid) questions (or the asinine setup where he can barely hear said dumb questions over the guys who beat him yelling about how they shut him down, he can't throw, etc.) so he mumbles that the interview's over and walks out.

How in the flying fuck can Saban's behavior be super awesome OMG such a hard-nosed, take-no-bullshit straight shoorter, and Cam's is disrespectful and he's a trash person because of it?

2. Are you ok with that?  Do all of you suddenly take back all the Saban bashing because you suddenly understand why he gets upset and walks out when Cam does it?

First, you answer. Are YOU ok with Saban doing it? Only a problem when Cam does it. As I already said, yes I think it's worse when he explodes and degrades the press compared to just giving terse, short answers until he'd had enough. I also think if anyone should know better between the 64 year old and the 26 year old, it's the former.

I would have reacted exactly the same way. I'd be willing to bet he'll go back and say he didn't handle it the best possible way that he could, but FUCK that. He shouldn't have to be perfect. NO ONE else is held to those standards. ONLY HE has to be perfect in every way to avoid the hate mobs, and even then, it's not enough. There is no winning move. Like I said before, if he came in there with a smile on his face, there'd be a million and one hot takes about how he's not taking this seriously enough and how is smile is "fake" and "disingenuous" like we've heard dozens of times before. So fuck every single one of them.

[Token]

Oh nothing, except it's the exact same fucking thing.

Worse, actually, to anyone not firmly planted up Saban's ass.

SABAN: Aggressively surly and dickish to the press. Doesn't care for their (legitimate) questions so he screams at them and runs out.
CAM: Dejected and sullen. Doesn't care for their (incredibly stupid) questions (or the asinine setup where he can barely hear said dumb questions over the guys who beat him yelling about how they shut him down, he can't throw, etc.) so he mumbles that the interview's over and walks out.

How in the flying fuck can Saban's behavior be super awesome OMG such a hard-nosed, take-no-bullshit straight shoorter, and Cam's is disrespectful and he's a trash person because of it?
First, you answer. Are YOU ok with Saban doing it? Only a problem when Cam does it. As I already said, yes I think it's worse when he explodes and degrades the press compared to just giving terse, short answers until he'd had enough. I also think if anyone should know better between the 64 year old and the 26 year old, it's the former.

I would have reacted exactly the same way. I'd be willing to bet he'll go back and say he didn't handle it the best possible way that he could, but FUCK that. He shouldn't have to be perfect. NO ONE else is held to those standards. ONLY HE has to be perfect in every way to avoid the hate mobs, and even then, it's not enough. There is no winning move. Like I said before, if he came in there with a smile on his face, there'd be a million and one hot takes about how he's not taking this seriously enough and how is smile is "fake" and "disingenuous" like we've heard dozens of times before. So fuck every single one of them.

No, he's a dickhead  He's always been a dickhead.  But you won't go back and find me championing his crusade or justifying him acting like a dickhead. 

Cam acted like a bitch and got called out for it. 

[AUChizad]

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14742227

and

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/25477790/peyton-manning-cam-newton-was-extremely-humble-after-super-bowl-50

[WiregrassTiger]

Did Cam act spoiled and irritable? Yes.

Is it because he's immature? I think so.

Is it because he hates to lose? I think that's certainly part of it. Any good competitor hates to lose. But, he has to learn to handle it better.

Did he act like a "bitch"? I don't think so. But, I'd enjoy seeing some people tell him that in an alley away from cameras. Just like I saw some classy Bama fans call him Scam to his face after the Iron Bowl this year, of course in a big crowd and as they are walking by pretty fast.

Has this been blown out of proportion because it's Cam? Of course. If it was a lesser name player, I don't think this would even be an issue. It looks like something Jim McMahon would've done in the 80's to me.

Cam loves the spotlight and he's a sore loser. I don't care. I still love Cam because he's genuine. He loves kids and he's still one of the best QB's I've ever seen play.

[Kaos]

Did Cam act spoiled and irritable? Yes.

Is it because he's immature? I think so.

Is it because he hates to lose? I think that's certainly part of it. Any good competitor hates to lose. But, he has to learn to handle it better.

Did he act like a "bitch"? I don't think so. But, I'd enjoy seeing some people tell him that in an alley away from cameras. Just like I saw some classy Bama fans call him Scam to his face after the Iron Bowl this year, of course in a big crowd and as they are walking by pretty fast.

Has this been blown out of proportion because it's Cam? Of course. If it was a lesser name player, I don't think this would even be an issue. It looks like something Jim McMahon would've done in the 80's to me.

Cam loves the spotlight and he's a sore loser. I don't care. I still love Cam because he's genuine. He loves kids and he's still one of the best QB's I've ever seen play.

I love you.

[Token]

Has this been blown out of proportion because it's Cam? Of course. If it was a lesser name player, I don't think this would even be an issue.

Yes, because likes to celebrate after every first down. After every big play. Not because everyone hates Cam. Because he loves the spotlight. But only when he's shining, never when it doesn't go his way.

He's the leader of the team. He should act like it.  Instead he chose to act like he has every time he's been in a bad situation.  But nah, it's just because all these damn bammers just hating.

[CCTAU]

Yes, because likes to celebrate after every first down. After every big play. Not because everyone hates Cam. Because he loves the spotlight. But only when he's shining, never when it doesn't go his way.

He's the leader of the team. He should act like it.  Instead he chose to act like he has every time he's been in a bad situation.  But nah, it's just because all these damn bammers just hating.

Well they are rejoicing. Hell many of them chose to root for Manning, a dredged VOL rather than cheer for the former bammers on Carolina.

Sounds like that ass is still chapped from 2010 for many of them.

[War Eagle!!!]

Did Cam act spoiled and irritable? Yes.

Is it because he's immature? I think so.

Is it because he hates to lose? I think that's certainly part of it. Any good competitor hates to lose. But, he has to learn to handle it better.

Did he act like a "bitch"? I don't think so. But, I'd enjoy seeing some people tell him that in an alley away from cameras. Just like I saw some classy Bama fans call him Scam to his face after the Iron Bowl this year, of course in a big crowd and as they are walking by pretty fast.

Has this been blown out of proportion because it's Cam? Of course. If it was a lesser name player, I don't think this would even be an issue. It looks like something Jim McMahon would've done in the 80's to me.

Cam loves the spotlight and he's a sore loser. I don't care. I still love Cam because he's genuine. He loves kids and he's still one of the best QB's I've ever seen play.

This is how I feel.

[War Eagle!!!]

Not because everyone hates Cam.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Dude gets treated to a different standard. He has since he played at Auburn. He has since it is "common knowledge" that he got away with getting $200,000 from Auburn and his preacher father covered for him.

[CCTAU]

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Dude gets treated to a different standard. He has since he played at Auburn. He has since it is "common knowledge" that he got away with getting $200,000 from Auburn and his preacher father covered for him.

Inflation?

[Snaggletiger]

Reggie Bush feels slighted.

[dallaswareagle]

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Dude gets treated to a different standard. He has since he played at Auburn. He has since it is "common knowledge" that he got away with getting $200,000 from Auburn and his preacher father covered for him.

Inflation?

APR on $180,000.

[AUChizad]

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/peyton-cam/2981478

[AUChizad]

Black Twitter is outraged at Cam for having the audacity to say we're beyond racism as a country and he doesn't think racism are his critics' primary motivation.

http://www.gq.com/story/cam-newton-versace-pants-race-and-football

Then the Panthers started winning—a lot—and all of a sudden maybe leadership wasn’t actually Cam Newton’s problem. “Only thing changed was that our record was pretty bad.” Then it was pretty good. It’s like whatever was essentially flawed in Cam was…not an essential flaw at all. It was a win-loss record. The more his team won, the more maybe Cam was a real leader after all. Playoffs three seasons in a row, Super Bowl last year. Cam showing up on your TV every Sunday like Tony Soprano garroting new victims. And meanwhile ostensible sports fans found new things to get upset about. He smiled on the field and on the sidelines. He danced after touchdowns. “The chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts,” hyperventilated a woman named Rosemary Plorin (who, to be fair, later apologized), again in a letter to The Charlotte Observer, a wonderful newspaper that’s kept its lights on during this difficult time for newspapers thanks in part to reactionary complaints about Cam Newton.

Reactionary—or, as Cam’s longtime backup quarterback Derek Anderson has put it, “flat-out racist.” An honest question: Can you name a contemporary athlete who has been subjected to more veiled and sometimes outright racism than Cam Newton? Is this even a controversial opinion, to think that Cam lives in a world of coded and not-so-coded critiques that basically boil down to resentment about the existence of such a sublime black quarterback?

Acording to Cam Newton, yes, actually. It is. “I don’t think of it like that,” he says. Shaking his head softly.

I want to be clear about a few things here. We’d met maybe 25 minutes prior—one of those situations where we’re both trying to talk about a lot of things in a relatively short amount of time. It’s amazing, the scale and duration of what Cam’s endured from the football public; it’s why I wanted to ask him about it. But faced with a national-magazine writer and a switched-on tape recorder, you too might say something other than what you really thought, if that thought seemed like a dangerous, potentially uncontrollable thing to share with a stranger. With a person whose motivations you couldn’t be sure of. Maybe today he woke up and felt like being just a quarterback, not a black quarterback. Maybe he feels fatigue at having to have this conversation with any random reporter who thinks he’s entitled to his thoughts on this subject. Maybe losing the Super Bowl, and hearing all the criticism of Cam Newton that poured out afterward, left him in a place where he just wanted to retreat, at least in front of a reporter, and for once in his life just not be responsible for explaining away the cruel and insinuating things that other people say about him. Maybe he just didn’t feel like participating in the whole economy of outrage that surrounds him today.

Actually, I know he didn’t feel like it, because this is how the rest of this conversation goes:

Your now former teammate Josh Norman said last year, “I’m going to be precise when I say it: It’s hate.”

“His response may be somebody else’s response, but that’s not how I feel.”

Do you feel like football fans are racist toward you?

“It’s not racism. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.”

So if it’s not that, what is it, do you think?

“I’ll let you be the judge. I don’t look at it like that. I look at it like some people have certain beliefs, and I have my own belief, and we can agree to disagree on certain things. But this is what makes sports so amazing, that we can start a discussion around a table, in the newspaper, in the magazines, that will get people’s attention. And that’s what sports does.”

In January, right before the Super Bowl, you said: “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.”

“I don’t want this to be about race, because it’s not. It’s not. Like, we’re beyond that. As a nation.”

You really think so?

“Yeah. I mean, you bring it to people’s attention. But after that, that’s it.”

Not saying Cam doesn’t mean what he says here. I couldn’t begin to know that. But I do know that he and his father, Cecil, have said and indicated otherwise as recently as four months ago. In April, after the Super Bowl, Cam gave an interview to Ebony and got to talking about the hoodie he’d worn during his Super Bowl press conference. He asked them if they would consider taking his photograph wearing a hoodie again. According to the magazine, Newton’s father explained to them why: “The hoodie can represent a lot of things as it pertains to a young Black man. Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter. Even as athletics can function as a leverage piece for African-American expression, it still points to the inequities that go on.”

My guess, based on the few public quotes from Cam Newton and his dad on this subject, is that what Cecil told Ebony is more or less how Cam actually feels. But now, when I bring up this exchange in the magazine, this is what he says: “For what it’s worth, I really wear hoodies. Like, that’s a fact.”

Is that why you wanted to wear it for the photo shoot, though?

“I know why I do certain things, and it’s because how it makes me feel. I’m comfortable in a lot of things that I wear, and wearing a hoodie happens to be one of those things.”

Look—even by the standards of professional sports, the NFL is by far our most buttoned-down, militaristic, conservative, tyrannical, anti-individual league. Maybe it’s because it’s been so lucrative for so long. Maybe because it’s always been a capital-t, capital-g Team Game that has allowed for precious few flashes of individuality. The NBA is a collection of personalities, of aggressively civic-minded guys like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony, who began this year’s ESPYs broadcast with an urgent re-assertion of the value of black life. It’s a league of players who share opinions when they have them, even when those opinions are controversial, or fuck with the league’s money. Not the NFL. It prefers its stars to be anonymous pitchmen, or at worst, big and dumb and cuddly. There’s a rule about taking off your helmet on the field and actually showing your face. There’s a rule about excessive celebration. The league is so massively popular in part because it is scrupulous about never betraying a political opinion beyond an unwavering faith in American greatness. It’s a sport for men like Cam’s now retired Super Bowl 50 opponent Peyton Manning, who celebrated his last moments on a professional football field by seeking out the pizza CEO Papa John in the midst of a crowd and kissing the man’s flushed bronze cheek before kissing his own wife. A real-life deleted scene from Talladega Nights.

Meanwhile, Cam Newton’s most famous on-field gesture last year was the dab, a dance that comes from whatever the spiritual opposite of corporate America is. He hangs out with Future and Jeezy on the sidelines of Panthers games. He’s been spotted at the Atlanta strip club Follies. Is an outsize personality in a game that does its best to be devoid of human personality at all. And he knows this, the expectations the league has of him, the way they sometimes run counter to who he is as a person and as a man. “That’s the deal. Like, I knew this coming into the league. It’s a responsibility that I have that’s unbeknownst to anybody else. Or it’s like a pinnacle that you’re put on. People expect certain things from you. Undue things, and easy things. And that’s cool, you know. And that’s what I do now.”

It’s arguably part of his job to look me in the eye and say that a hoodie is just an article of clothing. Which isn’t to say it’s not a choice. It very much is. But you could understand why he’d make it. Even if it’s dispiriting to hear. It’s probably dispiriting to say, too. To channel the most anodyne version of himself through conversations like the one below:

Do you have an opinion on Donald Trump?

“I don’t. I think he’s an unbelievable businessperson. That’s probably it. But outside of my personal belief, that’s just, you know, my personal belief.”

Did you vote for the North Carolina governor that enacted that bathroom law?

“Um…that’s too personal. You know, I gain nothing by answering it.”

I think the bill is repellent. I’m not trying to be coy.

“I love people too much to care about those type of things.”

That’s exactly why it bothers me.

“I went to school to study sociology. You know, and that’s something that really gets my attention. I don’t look at things through color lenses. I don’t look at things through genetic images or whatever. Their sex. I just love the different type of vibes people bring. I try to alleviate any type of bad energy. But I could care less. I love a person because of who they are. And that’s who I am. So whatever you are personally, I don’t care. You know, if you a good person, you a good person. No matter what anything, from religion to politically to, you know, sex preferences—”

Wouldn’t that be a reason not to vote for the North Carolina law?

“But that’s too personal. That’s when you put the microscope to the person. But overall, I don’t care. Man, in my circle, and especially growing up in Atlanta, you see everything!”

[dallaswareagle]

Black Twitter is outraged at Cam for having the audacity to say we're beyond racism as a country and he doesn't think racism are his critics' primary motivation.

http://www.gq.com/story/cam-newton-versace-pants-race-and-football

What will they do when they run out of people to hate? 

[chinook]

What will they do when they run out of people to hate?

spit on your grave?

[dallaswareagle]

spit on your grave?

Not mine, barbecued and scattered into the wind. 

[Buzz Killington]

What will they do when they run out of people to hate?

Target whitey with violence.  Oh wait...

[dallaswareagle]

Target whitey with violence.  Oh wait...

To lazy to leave their own hood, so they burn it down. Maybe I shouldn't complain.