McNabb pulling the race card? How ironic ... and ridiculous
Freeman: McNabb on the money
Black quarterbacks look the same to me. Every last one looks like a guy who should be playing running back. Or defensive back. Or receiver. They look like anything but a quarterback, which used to be an all-white position and should have stayed that way.
Right, Donovan McNabb? That's what you think I'm thinking. That's what you think lots of people are thinking. We don't like black quarterbacks -- never have, never will. So implies McNabb, who went on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on Tuesday night and slapped the race card on the table.
|
|
| Donovan McNabb has been taking some punishment on the field, and now he's inviting more off it. (AP) |
And McNabb said: "I pass for 300 yards, our team wins by seven (and critics say), 'Ah, he could've made this throw, they would have scored if he did this.' "
And of white Carson Palmer and Peyton Manning, McNabb said: "Let me start by saying I love those guys. But they don't get criticized as much as we do. They don't."
Granted, McNabb has reasons to be bitter. He plays in a vicious sports city where some of the dumber citizens have probably said racist things to him over the years. He was once attacked clumsily by Rush Limbaugh, who said McNabb was overrated but protected by media that "has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
Limbaugh is the living, breathing, lying, painkilling proof of the difference between sounding smart and being smart. He talks fast and uses big words and can lead a group of lemmings over a cliff more effectively than George Wallace ever could.
But Limbaugh isn't smart. Can't be. To say what he said about McNabb in 2003, when McNabb was a dominant quarterback, was stupid. Limbaugh paid for it by losing his side gig with ESPN. America -- black America, white America, our America -- didn't tolerate his racial stupidity.
So why are we going to tolerate racial stupidity coming now from McNabb? Toleration in the name of entertainment allowed racist blowhards like Limbaugh and Don Imus to spew invective over the airwaves. But toleration in the name of political correctness has allowed white-bashing demagogues like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Sr. to inflame racially sensitive cases like the ones starring Tawana Brawley and Duke lacrosse.
You go ahead -- tolerate McNabb's comments. Or be like my colleague Mike Freeman and embrace McNabb's social commentary. Me, I'm calling McNabb on it. I'm calling it stupid. I'm calling it intellectually lazy. And I'm calling it cowardly.
His career is sinking, and instead of facing it head on, he pulled out that big, ugly race card and tried to hide his decade-worst 68.8 passer rating behind it.
McNabb is myopic. He thinks he has it rough? Try being Rex Grossman, the quarterback of the Chicago Bears, who gets ripped even as he is leading the Bears to the Super Bowl. The next two most critiqued quarterbacks in the NFL are probably the Jets' Chad Pennington and the Giants' Eli Manning. All three are white.
McNabb? He's old and fading, and judging from his HBO appearance, he's not taking it very well. In his own city, columnist John Smallwood called out McNabb in the Philadelphia Daily News on Tuesday. McNabb, Smallwood wrote, "is like a batter with warning-track power." The old McNabb "is gone." This McNabb "looks bad."
