Blowback over quarterback’s sexist remark shows progress in sports.
Cam Newton is only 28, but he appears to be beholden to another time, an era when he wasn’t alive but must wish he had been, a time when if you were a man who told a joke to demean a woman in a nontraditional role, the world laughed with you.
How shocked Newton must have been then by the overwhelming silence that greeted his little joke about The Charlotte Observer ’s Carolina Panthers beat writer Jourdan Rodrigue Wednesday afternoon.
Newton looked so pleased with himself as he dropped his punchline on what was an entirely appropriate question about one of his receivers:
« It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes,’” Newton smirked dismissively.
The Panthers interview room was filled with about 30 sports media members, most of them male. Not a one of them laughed. “Dead silence” is the way veteran Observer columnist Scott Fowler described it.
The noise, it turns out, was on its way. It came a couple of hours later on social media, and it was deafening. It appeared in the form of tweets — from women and, more important, from men, especially men in the sports media — defending Rodrigue specifically and women in sports media in general while lambasting Newton.
For those of us who often had to go it alone in the midst of this kind of sexist nonsense 25-30 years ago, the reaction was as heartening as it was eye-opening. A thought crossed my mind: While Newton’s comment came from somewhere deep in the middle of the 20th century, this national response I was witnessing definitely belonged in the here and now.
I thought back to 1990, to what happened to the Boston Herald ’s Lisa Olson, who left the country — yes, the country — after being horribly mistreated by several New England Patriots, then by some Boston media members and fans.
And now this. The sports world was calling out sexism and pointing its finger at the perpetrator while defending a professional woman in a way I had never seen.
The NFL in particular came down forcefully on Newton, calling his words “just plain wrong and disrespectful to the exceptional female reporters and all journalists who cover our league.”
Then, Thursday around noon, Dannon announced it was dumping Newton as a spokesperson for its Oikos brand.
“We are shocked and disheartened at the behavior and comments… which we perceive as sexist and disparaging to all women.”
I’m not saying that’s a first, but I’m having trouble remembering a company in the past reacting that quickly to sexism. Racism, yes. But sexism?
Then came Gatorade. It didn’t cut ties to Newton, but it did severely lecture him, saying his comments were “objectionable and disrespectful to all women.”
Why Newton and the Panthers didn’t issue blanket apologies Wednesday night in the midst of the onslaught against Newton will remain an unsolved mystery.
Perhaps, boys being boys, they didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
Isn’t it wonderful to see how wrong they were?
