When the Milwaukee Bucks’ Chris Douglas Roberts and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Rashard Mendenhall had the temerity to suggest the assassination of Osama bin Laden was something that oughta not to be universally celebrated, both athletes received no small share of criticism. While not signing up for Medenhall’s 9/11 skepticism, The Nation’s Dave Zirin pleads, “let’s stop perpetuating the idea that athletes have forfeited their right to say whatever they damn-well please.”
Whether or not you supported some or all the wars of the last decade (I think they’ve been a hellacious, unconscionable waste of human life that has serve to make the world a more dangerous place), there is a bigger lesson that the guardians of Jock Culture seem to be trying to teach: by being an athlete you have signed away your right to have an opinion beyond your choice of sneaker or sports drink. This is something that runs very deep in the marrow of our sports culture: that athletes, particularly black athletes should just “shut up and play.” They should feel fortunate to just to have the good fortune to get paid and they have no right to say anything that might make anyone even a bit uncomfortable.
If you look historically at athletes who today are admired for their courageous honesty—people like Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Jim Brown, and Bill Russell—they were all told by the sports columnists of their day that they should button their lips and just play. When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black gloved fists, a young sportswriter for the Chicago American by the name of Brent Musberger wrote, “One gets a little tired of having the United States run down by athletes who are enjoying themselves at the expense of their country,” going on to call them, “a pair of black-skinned storm-troopers.”
In other words, to be a political athlete in any way that doesn’t involve wrapping yourself in the flag has always been apostasy in the eyes of the guardians of Jock Culture
What a complete pant-load. If you are man enough to say what you believe, be man enough to take the criticism.
Oh, and don’t make this a “Black” thing, either. Set your Wayback Machine for the John Rocker incident…guy said what was on his mind, and got deep-fried for it. Fair is fair, what’s good for Rocker is good for Mendenhall.
By the way, comparing Muhammad Ali to Rashard Mendenhall is like comparing a Lamborghini to a Yugo. Ali took a personal stand based on religious and personal principles and paid dearly for it. Mendenhall thumbed out a few words…
Bottom line – Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the repercussions of being stupid.
“If you are man enough to say what you believe, be man enough to take the criticism. ”
Seems like Mendenhall’s been taking plenty of criticism.
“and don’t make this a ‘Black’ thing, either.” Fair enough. When the assholes suggesting Mendenhall is unqualified to discuss anything besides football apply the same standards to Luke Scott, Zirin will probably not make it a “black thing”.
“Ali took a personal stand based on religious and personal principles and paid dearly for it. Mendenhall thumbed out a few words”
So Zirin should wait for Mendenhall to lose his job before defending him? “Thumbing out a few words” is no more or less inefficient than trolling blogs and message boards. The 9/11 revisionism aside, I don’t think Mendenhall’s totally out to lunch. Evening news viewers in the USA are meant to be sickened, horrified, etc. at footage of foreigners dancing in the streets when a terrorist act has been committed. Meanwhile, our military invades another country, shoots an unarmed man to death in his PJ’s and the Youth Of America start reenacting a Coors Silver Bullet commercial. There’s nothing radical or anti-American about holding human beings to a standard other than savagery & bloodlust.