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Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Cam Newton vs. Peyton Manning

I'm not a football fan, but I watched a little bit of the Super Bowl two nights ago just because I'd read a little bit about Cam Newton.

He expresses his joyous egotism so utterly without inhibition and artifice it's almost endearing. He's the kind of athlete sportswriters used to describe as a "man-child," though you don't hear that phrase much anymore because of its racial implications.

Pretty much everything the press has been saying about him is true. Yes, it's inappropriate for him to celebrate his touchdowns so gleefully when his team is losing. Yes, a little more self-awareness would be nice. And yes, he should have made more of an effort in the post-game press conference on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Peyton Manning is generally regarded as the epitome of good sportsmanship.

I don't see things as being quite that simple.

Yes, Manning carried himself graciously in victory, shaking hands and exchanging hugs with all sorts of people, saying all the things he was supposed to, and sharing credit whenever possible.

But it's pretty obviously all an act. Manning does what he thinks he's supposed to do, and says what he's supposed to say, rather than just be honest.

As far as the honesty goes….Manning may or may not have taken the human growth hormone which was mailed to his house; I'm having a hard time buying the claim that it was just for his wife. That comment about how he was going to drink a lot of Budweisers that night also raised suspicion. If he didn't have a sponsorship deal lined up with them, why would he not have just said "beers" instead of naming a brand? And mentioning that he was going to take some time to thank "the man upstairs" sounds good. But if you're truly religious, why not just thank Him quietly without broadcasting that fact?

Manning does deserve credit for being one of the all time great quarterbacks, if not the greatest. Even more than that, he deserves kudos for being incredibly tough, surviving as an NFL quarterback until age 39.

And there's certainly something to be said for having the discipline to always behave graciously. Societies can't function if people don't act as they're supposed to, rather than reverting to a childish petulance.

But at the same time, if everyone put on act the way Manning does all the time, the world would be a pretty boring place.

Newton, by contrast, didn't try to fake anything. He was disappointed after the game, and didn't try to hide it. He didn't bother to recite any of the usual cliches about how his team would get 'em next time, and didn't bother to praise the Broncos or Manning, other than to sullenly say they executed better.

Good sportsmanship is always nice. But c'mon, does anyone really believe the gracious loser ever means what he says?

Yes, Newton is all the things people have said: an immature braggart, a sore loser, and an out of control egomaniac. I'm not arguing with any of that.

I'm just pointing out that at least he's not a phony. And there's something to be said for that as well.

15 comments:

whorefinder said...

Newton gave every opponent watching a huge gift: they now know that he is supremely sensitive in his ego. In other words, beyond mere physical weaknesses in his game, he is very psychologically vulnerable (for an NFL quarterback). Players should continuously razzing throughout a game and the week leading up to it; once he misses a few passes or his team falls behind, that combined with the razzing will make him implode. I predict that in the next few seasons, when the Panthers aren't winning (no one expects another 16-2 run), there will be a lot of blowups on the sidelines, him throwing Gatorade bottles, fights with coaches, etc.

This is typical of black quarterbacks. Vince Young and Michael Vick could not handle adversity in the NFL, including criticism and booing fans. Vince Young's mother actually asked the hometown fans to lay off her son because he was having so much trouble; that's pathetic. Donovan McNabb wasn't strong psychologically, as his lackadaisical play in playoff games attests to. The kid in Seattle seems emotionally balanced enough to make it, though that's probably his strong religious code keeping him in check.

This reminds me of how blacks are extremely sensitive to psychological insults/teasing/intimidation. Much more so than non-blacks.

One reason the word "nigger" and other slurs against blacks have become worse insults than non-black racial slurs is because of the effect such insults have on blacks. People have long noticed that blacks' emotional levels often exceed non-blacks: they are louder and happier, louder and sadder, or louder and angrier. But they can also be flipped on a dime: a happy black can go to angry violent black in the blink of an eye. Non-blacks take longer to change emotional states.

When a black is teased, they get angrier/upset much more quickly and well out of proportion to the tease. The ghetto culture of "dissing" and revenge for such dissing is part of this: blacks murder one another for looking at them the wrong way. That denotes not toughness but psychological fragility.

Razzing in sports was long part of the game. But since the 1960s we've seen a steady movement against it. We can't say racial insults, or sexual slurs, or even call someone a gay or female put down. This has served to help blacks succeed more in sports, since they have to deal with less and less razzing. It has also hurt non-blacks, since they can't razz opponents as much as they would like, and also because blacks can razz them more than they can razz blacks. Larry Bird in the 1980s used to razz black opponents constantly, and had a Hall of Fame career; today, he'd probably be suspended, subjected to sensitivity training, and maybe even banned, but his career would not have been as successful.

All in all, this is another piece of evidence showing how sociopathy is more prevalent in blacks than non-blacks. Sociopaths' egos are extremely sensitive to negative treatment, either seeking revenge or blocking out the event or harboring a grudge for years on end. As the Anonymous Conservative has written, if you can't remove yourself from the vicinity of a sociopath, the best solution is to psychologically enfeeble them.

Unless Newton's father gets a hold of him---luckily for him, he has a father around, which is probably why he's a QB and not a wide receiver or tight end----and Newton becomes more emotionally controlled, I can see his career breaking down in 2-3 years as he's no longer faster than everyone else on the field and he's too stubborn to learn to be a true pocket passer ("practice! we talking about practice!") and his psychological sensitivity gets to him, as black opponents razz him and he can't run over people like he used to.

John Craig said...

Whorefinder --
Interesting comment, and I'm guessing you're right about Newton. But I'm going to disagree with you here. I don't follow football closely, so can't comment on the psychological fragility of black quarterbacks. But I do follow track and swimming closely, and I've never noticed that getting psyched out to be worse among black runners or swimmers. In fact, I'd say they're less vulnerable to it, on average.

The best way to measure that in track or swimming is with athletes who do incredible times in small meets but then can't perform their best when on the big stage. The only black sprinter I can think of who's like that is Asafa Powell, a former world record holder who's a notorious psych out and never seems to do well at the World Championships or Olympics. But other than him, no one. At the opposite extreme is Usain Bolt, who is so relaxed that he can joke around while about to get into the starting blocks. I associate getting psyched out with people who think too much and care too much about the big event, and thus become overly tense or paralyzed by anxiety. Those aren't behaviors I associate with blacks.

In swimming, the worst group as far as getting psyched out are the Japanese, who consistently do well in Japan but then swim slower at the WC or Olympics. Whites vary but generally do their best at the Olympics. (And the Japanese are, in many ways, the opposite of blacks.) Of the few blacks who are in swimming -- most of those are sprinters -- almost all rise to the occasion, whether at Olympic Trials or the Olympics.

Of course, razzing isn't part of the culture in either running or swimming, and maybe that would change things. But it is in basketball, and the best performers there are inevitably blacks. And maybe the greatest clutch performer of all time there i Michael Jordan, who, by the way, is probably a sociopath. I agree with you that sociopaths will hold grudges forever, but I disagree about their ability as performers. They tend to be the most invulnerable when it comes to the big moment, just because they have such unbridled egos and believe in their own abilities so strongly.

taylor said...

There's a rumor that Cam Newton pranked Tracy Wolfson of CBS by feeding her his semen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFOqgaRivpU

And this was before he was an NFL Quarterback. Regardless of what was in the bottle, it's true that a world with athletes like Cam Newton is more interesting.

John Craig said...

Taylor --
Wow, if that's true, if I were her, I'd be pretty angry.

I'm assuming you're using "interesting" as a euphemism.

taylor said...

I don't know, she seemed pretty excited to drink that "Cammy Cam Juice"

and yes, 'interesting' as in this blog is 'interesting'...

Just kidding, of course.

I actually sort of agree with whorefinder's analysis of black quarterbacks. They just have a history of lacking the maturity that goes with QBing an NFL team. I think the reason you don't see it in other sports, or even in other football positions, is because QBing a team really does require considerable leadership abilities. Frequently losses are unfairly blamed on the QB. Or, at the very least they're expected to account for them. Personally I can handle my emotions when it comes my own failures, but it can be pretty enraging when you're held accountable for others failures. That seems to be where they often fall short.

John Craig said...

Taylor --
As I said, I don't really follow football, so I'll defer to you and Whorefinder on this.

High Arka said...

Thanks for the post. Now I know who won the Superbowl (the team of the man you called "Manning"). Game aside, your observations are great. If you're going to watch grown men prance around like that in special suits, you might as well get more of them dancing and hooting around. Save sportsmanship for contests where decency is integral to the proceedings.

Anonymous said...

Life is simpler-indeed, is too complicated to manage without-stereotyping, in a sense.

Humans are, by nature, scared of snakes. Many snakes aren't poisonous, and most of the ones that are are not a threat if you see them and don't corner or provoke them, but humans survived by innately having a fear of snakes. Those who didn't disproportionately were bitten and died by those which were poisonous. If I see a snake, any snake, in the wild I stay away from it, unless it's a cottonmouth and I have a shotgun or a pistol with snake loads handy. (Those can be aggressive.)

The simple take on blacks, unless you know them as individuals, is to assume they are children in powerful adult bodies and deal with them accordingly. Don't show fear, but don't bother them, and if spoken to reply politely but firmly. If small talk is called for, keep it noncommittal and nothing to do with politics or any current event with black connotations whatever. That isn't always fair-some blacks are interesting and decent people, and you will miss out on some interesting or entertaining discussions-but it minimizes your risk profile. With young muscular black men the risk is physical: with black women or older men, or kids, it's often legal or a matter of employment.

My father lost his job at a large business because two black women accused him of harassment, alleging he was trying to seduce them. My father has poor social skills, and he has indeed tried to seduce women with varying degrees of success at his employers, but he has absolutely no interest in black women and most especially in black women, or any others, weighing over 250 lbs, as these did. (He claims that his ideal women were Francoise Hardy and Audrey Hepburn-both waifs.) They ganged up on him because they felt he was "racist" for spending hundreds of hours getting one of their 'sistas' fired-with long, meticulous documentation over years-for doing absolutely no useful work whatever and occasionally stealing merchandise. I still have copies of their statements, which read as though they were written by second graders.

Dad, who is now in his eighties and has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, learned from that and was able to find another job and retired out okay, but the incident has left me postjudiced. I mostly just avoid blacks, along with obvious homosexuals, members of one percenter motorcycle clubs, and those I know to be dishonest, violent or disturbed.

John Craig said...

Anon --
That was an insightful comment. I"d never thought of the analogy to snakes, but it's good one.

Interesting story about your father. One noticeable racial difference is that blacks will almost always show great racial solidarity. And that solidarity, if it were shown by whites, would inevitably be called racism. In fact, whites are called racist for merely being realistic about blacks -- or a black, like your father was -- let alone getting revenge on a black who had gotten a white fired for justifiable reasons.

I consider Audrey Hepburn supremely attractive too, so just looked up Francoise Hardy out of curiosity. I share your father's tastes.

Not sure why you avoid homosexuals; they are rarely dangerous. (Though coincidentally yesterday the NY Post ran an article on he most infamous cannibals of all time, and well over half of the men were homosexuals, which was striking given that they are less than ten percent of the population.)

Anonymous said...

I don't hate homosexuals or wish to harm or distress them, I think the majority are not specially bad or evil, I just find males who are effeminate tedious and annoying, which is why I said "obvious homosexuals". Lesbians are either manhaters or they want to be one of the boys and either way they distress me also, but again, I bear them no ill will. I just tend to leave them alone.

That was my bigger point: it isn't a violation of one's civil rights to associate with people you find, as the Spanish say, "sympatico". That doesn't mean I wouldn't toss a life preserver to a drowning dieseldyke, petty larcenist, Hell's Angel or for that matter even a real known bad person. The fundamental civil right, as I see it, is free association. I hang out with people I find commonality and amity with, even though many of my best friends and I disagree on many things. I avoid people sometimes for perhaps not wholly rational reasons-some aspect of their personality seems off-putting to me, or some characteristic, inborn or acquired. That does not equal hate or a transgression of their rights, or even civility and politeness.

Consider the matter of dating, male-female relationships and sex. Chrissie Hynde (an example I'll use because I read her biography recently) finds the idea of going out with or even kissing a carnivore repugnant. Now I think Chrissie is pretty for her age and I always liked her music, but am I to regard her refusal to even consider me (an enthusiastic eater of steaks, burgers, pork chops, and the occasional squirrel or rabbit I can plink in the back yard) as a potential suitor as an offense against me? Likewise, in high school I really had a thing for a girl who was a great swimmer and a mean bass player, but, she was Jewish and her parents forbade her from dating goys. Should I resent her or her parents for that? At the time I did, but today I understand perfectly and I told my son that I disapproved of his dating blacks, mestizas, or Jewish girls. After a misspent youth as a cougar hunter, he married a younger Scottish redhead and they have two pretty ginger tots now. My father was aghast at first-he had a couple bad experiences with redheads and always cautioned me against them-but he's gotten used to it now.

If you choose to shy away from certain ethnic or racial or religious groups, that's no different than avoiding, say, people with tats or piercings, Trekkies, people who drive Priuses, or cigar smokers. If that's a loss to you, it's a loss to you alone, no one else. (I say that as a hard core Trekkie in my youth and a cigar smoker now.) They have no more right to hang out with you or do business deals with you than you or I do to hang out with (name celebrity of your choice). And I guess that's what makes me mad at social justice clowns and "anti-racists" and anti-"homophobes" the most: this idea that I have to like, approve of, and nondifferentiate between this group or that group, No, I do not. I have to respect their rights, and as a matter of decency, in a lifeboat situation I should help all and sundry so long as I am in a position to do so without harming myself. If I'm not armed and I see a black criminal attack a black woman, I'll call the cops on my cellphone. If I see one attack a white woman not willfully putting herself in harm's way (such as, let's put it bluntly, mudsharking) I might grab a tire iron and charge in, and I might not. Is that an offense against black women?

John Craig said...

Anon --
Gotcha. By the way, if you're going to write in again, you might adopt a "pen name" just so I know it's you who's talking.

Everything you said resonated with common sense, and I agree with all of it. I, too, believe in freedom of association. And, the fact is, virtually nobody has a "representatively diverse" set of friends.

What bothers me the most about the SJW's is not even that they insist that everybody be equally liked, it's the hypocrisy inherent in the idea that whites are evil if they make realistic observations about other groups or characterize them in any way while at the same time every other group is allowed to make all sorts of (untrue) generalizations about whites: that they're inherently evil, and oppress the other races, etc. The same principle holds true about men vs. women, and straights vs. homosexuals. Progressivism is now all about enforcing hierarchies while paying lip service to banishing them.

orionwrench said...

SJWs demand you pay lip service to their idols of multiculturalism, feminism and pansexualism, even if they know full well you don't really agree. This is how Soviet Russia and, to a lesser extent, Nazi Germany worked.

I believe that blacks and whites and other groups are different from each other. I believe men and women are different from each other. I believe heterosexuals and homosexuals are different from each other. "Different" means "not the same". It doesn't mean better or worse.

My experience is that blacks are generally, taking one for another, lower in cognitive ability, in conscientiousness, and possess much shorter timeframes of preference and length to which they will defer gratification, than whites. Some whites are worse than some blacks in any or all of these metrics, of course. (I avoid those even more assiduously.)

My experience is that men are better suited for some jobs than women and women are better suited for some jobs than men. (Women are much better at repetitive small tasks like electronic assembly, sewing, things like that.) In some jobs it doesn't matter. And, of course, in raising a family, the man working outside the home and the woman raising her children is a much better model than the reverse.

My experience is that obvious homosexuals, transsexuals and transvestites, while good at some jobs are often unstable and cause no end of issues in many workplaces and tend to have serious medical and emotional issues. Those that don't are very typically the "straight acting" and discreet ones, and so you don't know or care anyway.

I associate and hire accordingly, to the best of my ability.

I'm happily (re) married now, but if I were still on the market, so to speak, I would exercise the same prerogatives. I'd avoid Blacks, mestizas, women with a history with same, switch hitters, and women with feminist complexes, SJWs and liberals generally, biker chicks, and women with criminal or mental health system histories. Even though I am not terribly religious, I also avoided women who were outspoken atheists, heavily into the occult or astrology, or members of religions that conflicted with my own general background.(This included Jewish, Jehovahs witnesses, Islam, and a couple of others, but I did have an enjoyable dalliance with a jack Mormon once and an Iranian woman.) And, of course, vegetarians, hoplophobes and potheads.

From the above, it must seem as if I am some sort of super-picky person. I figured that out of 300 million people, 150 million had to be female, and out of that, eliminating those that were too much younger or older, those already attached, and all of the above, that still left a pretty reasonable playing field. I never lacked for quality dates and wasn't sexually frustrated very much either.

John Craig said...

Orionwrench --
It's the middle of the night (for me), so I'm a little slow -- it just hit me, you're yesterday's anonymous commenter, right? It took me a minute to "recognize" you.

I can't disagree with anything you say. I do think it's important to keep an open mind and recognize that there are exceptions to the racial tendencies you outlined -- which you do. But if one has a truly open mind, one will also acknowledge that those tendencies do exist.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd apply pretty much the same set of rules you do with women. A little bit of liberalism doesn't bother me with women, it seems to come naturally with some of the more feminine ones, but I'd definitely avoid any hard Left types, especially SJW's. And I don't mind vegetarians either, as long as they're not preachy about it.

I've learned the hard way about both sociopaths and Aspies, and I'd certainly avoid them in the future too, but, I suppose, that goes without saying.

If you've rarely been sexually frustrated, then you're in the lucky minority.

orionwrench said...

Yes, I thought the name would be obvious, from the P-3 Orion reference.

As it turns out my wife was a chef at a first rate hotel, and her culinary skills were a big part of why I reneged on my "never again" promise after the Big D. I can't imagine anyone who didn't eat meat would be so good at cooking the stuff. But my objection to "non-preachy vegetarians" is that I've never met one, certainly not a female one. If someone chooses not to eat meat, I have no objection. It's that they all on some level or another consider it a moral issue. And, really, if I lived with one I'd feel guilty about it and it would ruin me for meat eating.

One of my best friends is a woman who is a serious Christian, in that she really and genuinely believes and acts on her doctrine. I respect that. I never dated her because I figured there would have been sexual pressure, and I did not want to have that tension. There would also be the pressure I would feel to convert to her particular brand of Christianity, which is a rigorous one.

That also relates to my belief that we should not have immigration from Muslim countries of Muslims. America is not an Islamic country, it's never going to be one, and since Muslims just don't see separation of state and religion as something Islamic, really, it's more respectful to tell them that they should live in an Islamic country. In which they can be fully and rigorously Islamic.

It's my belief that the tectonic forces, so to speak, on our culture along with the general decline of our empire will result on the United States splitting up into several separate states. It probably won't happen in my lifetime, but my kids will live to see it as old people and their kids will be in the full of it. I hope it's like Czechoslovakia, not like Yugoslavia or the previous American Civil War. I think race, religion, and geography will all enter into it. I'm guessing that one or more of these will be explitly Christian and that there will be a secular-Jewish ethnostate on the East Coast encompassing present day NYC and north New Jersey and its environs. And there will probably be an all-White state, though with present day Portland and Seattle I can't see it being Covington's NAR.

John Craig said...

Orionwrench --
Sorry, missed the reference. (I did recognize the commonsensical, matter-of-fact tone and writing style, however.)

I've met a few vegetarians who aren't preachy about it, though, admittedly, they are in the minority.

Couldn't agree with you more about Muslims. They wouldn't bother to call it"the religion of peace" if it were actually so, and the more hard core among them feel that Islam should dominate everywhere.

I hear a lot of people say that we're headed toward separate ethnostates. I don't know. Ugh, that's a lot of upheaval. I think it would be a lot easier for the races to get along if the airwaves weren't constantly inundating us with this nonstop anti-white propaganda: whites are the root of all evil, etc. That riles up blacks, who tend to believe it, and makes whites understandably resentful.