ESPN personality race baits with black players
OPINION - Cowherd says what he says to move the ratings needle, which is his job. Unfortunately for us all, far too often he relies on ugly and baseless stereotypes to accomplish this...
After hearing the ignorance that oozed from Colin Cowherd’s mouth the other day, I have no doubt that if he didn’t know already he would swear up and down that Tom Brady is black.
A few years back, Brady, the three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback of the New England Patriots, knocked up his girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, and then promptly cut out on her, leaving her to attend Lamaze class all by her lonesome.
Pure class.
Brady left his pregnant girlfriend for another woman, so-called supermodel Gisele Bundchen, and eventually married and fathered a child with her.
Presented with this scenario and not knowing that Brady is indeed white, one has to assume that Cowherd would automatically say that Brady is black, and that this is stereotypical black male behavior. After all, Cowherd, a loudmouth ESPN screamer who apparently sees himself as part sports talking head and part Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ready and willing to dole out misinformation and snake oil to anyone who tunes in.
Shortly into John Wall’s rookie season in Washington, Cowherd concocted a wacky correlation between Wall growing up without his father in his life translating into what will be Wall’s inability throughout his career to be a true leader.
Uh, what? Nobody with half a brain believes this, especially the people who are paid to build NBA franchises. But Cowherd too often engages in stereotyping to cover up his lack of understanding of the sports he is paid to talk about.
Earlier this week he was at it again, proclaiming that the NFL, with its majority of players being black and reared in single-parent homes headed by women, couldn’t possibly be prepared to handle the stern discipline coming from Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Cowherd employs the work of another pop sociologist masquerading as a sports columnist to back him up when he refers to a recent piece by CBS’ Gregg Doyel. In the piece, Doyel miscasts as a widespread a feeling among black NFL players and media outlets that the commissioner is purposely disciplining black players more than whites.
Please, with the possible of exception of the James Harrison’s rant last week, nobody in the NFL is calling Goodell racist. As defined at dictionary.com, a racist holds a “belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”
I guarantee you that neither Doyel nor Cowherd, who probably hardly ever sets foot inside of an NFL or NBA locker room, is privy to one conversation involving an African-American athlete who shares these views.Additionally, most of these media outlets that Cowherd and Doyel point the finger at are the last places on earth where one might expect to find the promotion of racial harmony.
Many of them — in some of the most liberal bastions in this country — are as non-black as a gathering of the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Cowherd further shoves his foot up his mouth when he throws out 71 percent as the percentage of single-parent households in the African-American community headed by women.
Had he bothered to do his homework rather than assume that his substantial listening audience was made up of sycophants hanging on to his mostly ill-informed words, he would know that according to a 2009 American Community Survey, African-American households headed by women represented 30 percent of all African-American households.
While this is no reason for anyone to poke their chest, it is at least the truth and a far cry from the outlandish number careless Cowherd foisted on his listeners.
To a much lesser degree, this faux pas reminds me a little bit of the brouhaha that presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann found herself at the center of last week when she signed that marriage contract without ever reading it.
Even Newt Gingrich, who has demonstrated to perfection over these last few months how to destroy your political future with no outside assistance, knew not to sign a document that proclaimed African-American children growing up enslaved in the 1860s had a greater likelihood of growing up in a two-parent home than they did under the last two years under President Obama.
Cowherd says what he says to move the ratings needle, which is his job. Unfortunately for us all, far too often he relies on ugly and baseless stereotypes to accomplish this.
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