January 17, 2007

Thank God an NFL player is not a famous role model like a college lacrosse player

Last April, I asked in VDARE.com why the New York Times was running endless stories about the Duke lacrosse team when A.) The rape charges were pretty obviously all a hoax; and B.) Lacrosse is tiny sport, while America's biggest sport, football, sees well-known players arrested for violence all the time. As I pointed out, just that week the quarterback at Utah St. and the backup quarter at glamorous USC had been charged with rape, while star Chicago Bears cornerback Ricky Manning had attacked some poor nerd working on his laptop at Denny's at 3am. Could it possibly have to do with the Duke lacrosse team being 98% white, while the three football players were minorities?

Now that Manning will be in the NFC championship game this weekend, the NYT today gets all warm and fuzzy over him:


After Wrong Turn, Bears’ Manning Retools His Life
by Karen Crouse

That reversal of fortune mirrored what has happened in Manning’s life over the past 10 months. Last April, within days of receiving a contract offer from the Bears, Manning was arrested and charged with assault after an incident at a Denny’s restaurant in Los Angeles. Manning has acknowledged getting into an argument with a customer and pushing him in the head before leaving. After the news of his latest arrest became public, the Carolina Panthers declined to match the Bears’ five-year, $21 million offer for Manning, who was a restricted free agent.

The 25-year-old Manning already was on probation from a previous assault in Los Angeles, and if his case had gone to trial he faced the possibility of a prison sentence. “I wasn’t willing to take that risk,” he said. Intent on putting his past behind him, Manning pleaded no contest to a felony assault in the fall and was sentenced to three years probation, one year of anger-management counseling and 100 hours of community service. He was suspended for one game by the N.F.L. for violation of its code of personal conduct, causing him to miss the Bears’ 17-13 loss at New England on Nov. 26. ...

What happened at the Denny’s in Los Angeles, not far from the U.C.L.A. campus where Manning attended college, was avoidable. He can see that clearly now.

For starters, he did not need to be out with a friend at 3 a.m. “Me being out at 3 o’clock at night and partying and being around people that can take advantage of me is just not a good situation,” he said. “Initially I reacted to getting disrespected when I thought I shouldn’t have been,” he added. “O.K., I shouldn’t have done that. But I thought I had done the right thing by walking away, by leaving.”

But he was arrested nonetheless and his public image took a brutal hit. “It was tough, knowing that what happened gives people a misconception of me,” Manning said. He added, “It took for that to happen for me to learn.”

Since April, Manning has joined the Bears’ family and created a family of his own. He keeps his relatives closer, having come to the conclusion that they are the best company because they will not lead him astray. He flew in some cousins for the game Sunday, some of whom had never traveled by airplane before. Roughly 90 minutes after the game, Manning headed toward the exit, following the wedge created by his wife, Tosha, and his cousins. In his arms, he was cradling his sleeping son.


Awwwwww, isn't that sweet? Funny, how the NYT left out NBC's report:


Early on a Sunday morning last April, at a Denny's in Westwood, near the UCLA campus, a Swedish citizen of Persian descent named Soroush Sabzi was minding his own business when, according to court documents, he found himself the target of insults. Sabzi, a student with an avid interest in computers, now 26, was called a "faggot," according to a Los Angeles County probation department report unsealed Tuesday. He was also called either a "f------ Jew" or an "ugly f------ Jew," according to the report. He was told, "You look gay," and called "geeky," the report says.

Sabzi tried to signal for help. Instead, he was slapped. A few moments later, he was on the ground and, the probation report says, citing a Los Angeles police department account, he was hit some more and fell into a bathroom at the restaurant.

Ricky Manning Jr., a Chicago Bears cornerback who played college football at UCLA, pleaded no contest Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court to a single count of felony assault in connection with his role in the incident. ...

Moreover, the probation report suggests that Manning has "reportedly aligned himself with gang values and gang ties" and has been "implicated as the shooter of a rival gang member." Those allegations are unsubstantiated; the report contains no further details or explanation. The deputy probation officer who wrote the report did not return a call seeking comment.


Manning claims he only hit the victim in the head and didn't call him anything: "My agent is Jewish, my ex-fiancee is half-Jewish and black, my two lawyers are Jewish, and so it was kind of not funny to me," Manning said. "But it was hurtful for him to say that, to make me seem like I would say some things like that which definitely wouldn't happen."


Phil Mushnick wrote in the NY Post on Oct. 1, 2006:


But imagine - and by now most of us can - the fallout if Manning and his pals, African-Americans, had been white, and their victim had been black. And imagine if the victim's claim in the police report read that, instead of being cursed as a Jew and a homosexual, he'd been called a "f - - - ing n - - - - r."

Then take it from there - the no contest felony plea, followed by a specious insistence of innocence, followed by the Bears' "disappointment with Ricky," followed by the NFL's position that "it's under review."

Imagine the outrage from the news media, the sports media, politicians and, yes, Chicago's own Rev. Jesse ("Hymietown") Jackson.

Just imagine.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

SO Mel Gibson is the new, errr Anti-Christ because he says some things in private while drunk and arrested, but assualting a guy, call him a 'faggot' and a "f__ing" jew" and he still a darling in the media's eyes...
Is there any better indicator just how warped mainstream media still is, and how much it warps americans perceptions of reality...'if americans' only knew" .....

Anonymous said...

Personally, I think some of my fellow American Jews got a little overheated about Mel Gibson. If he doesn't like Jews, I have no problem with that -- it's a free country. Who hasn't, at one time or another, had negative thoughts about another group? I have a problem when someone expresses his anti-Jewish sentiments by, say, shooting up a Seattle Jewish center. The danger on that score is decidedly higher from certain Muslim immigrants than it is from old school Catholic movie star/directors. It was pretty boneheaded of Gibson to mouth off during a traffic stop though, since they are all recorded (even more boneheaded was his decision to drive home drunk -- he couldn't afford a limo ride home?).

With respect to Mr. Manning: the NY Times's article is shameful but not surprising. The Times has long veered past any concept of fairness toward minorities to being strenuously pro-black and pro-Latino regardless of the situation. About the only thing a black man can do to upset the NY Times is be a conservative Supreme Court Justice.

Dave

Anonymous said...

While sportswriters are,as Steve has pointed out,supremely PC,making their living talking to very large black and Latin fellows,sometimes the veil slips. Recently,during the Tank Johnson Affair,Ricky was quoted as being a tad upset about Tanks' struggle.He was sympathetic,referencing his own plight of court appearances and lawyer fees,all of this when,"I didnt do nothin'!" I guess his apology maybe wasnt totally sincere...ya think?:(

Anonymous said...

i already posted about how this happens in the NFL.

i hardly need to go into detail, since this last weekend provided yet again several examples of bad behavior, and even outright bad play, by black players, and the resulting media coverage which was slanted ludicrously in their favor.

lord help any white player who comments on his coach or dares to drop a pass. if he's even allowed to catch passes.

la griffe du lion would have no trouble pointing out the discrimination white players face in the NFL at this point. the NBA by comparison is much more efficient at selecting players.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone remember the era (I think it was in 1980s) when people where being falsely accused by prosecutors of molesting children based on testimony dragged out of children with the promise of rewords. According to PBS frontline special Janet Reno was evolved in that down in Miami, putting some innocent people behind bars and as a reward she made attorney general of the USA.

Do not jump to belive what prosecutors say.

Justin said...

While the Duke lacrosse thing definitely was a racial fiasco (with a really easy narrative about a black woman getting sexually assaulted by rich white people) the more likely explanation for football players getting away with everything is simply that they're football players and getting away with everything is simply what football players do. I mean, NBA players can barely get away with tattoos, and Shaq himself--the richest and most dominant guy in the league--couldn't be excused from his "ching chong" incident. And let's not even get into the Kobe Bryant "rape" fiasco (close to a mirror image of the Duke case in terms of racial roles.) (I should give credit--the "football players get away with everything" theory was first proposed by David Aldridge.)

Anonymous said...

To tie this story into another recent thread on iSteve, it's debatable whether the Persian-descent victim in this case would be considered "white," at least in a cultural sense. Though the fact that he was Jewish might give him a claim to a sort of honorary whiteness.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

Anonymous said...

Steve and Justin are both right. Race plays a role in this, but compare media treatment of Barry Bonds (who deserves everything he gets, but still) with that of Shawne Merriman. Both men are black, but Merriman gets much less negative press coverage.

Anonymous said...

Justin,

Most white people, including myself, were all for Kobe getting off and most of us (me too again Im afraid) never really believed the ski-lodge girl went up to his room all by her lonesome not to have sex. After details of her nutty behavior and past came out, whites almost universally did not believe her.


Any of you really think that little Arab man who was a Swedish national kicked his OWN ASS and made the story up? Thats neither here nor their however.


Wanna know what makes us whites really mad? Stories like this one:
http://www.wbir.com/news/regional/story.aspx?storyid=41102 not getting any play in the national media (at least not yet, but Im sure email boxes are full of angry letters demanding it) that get no play outside of the hometown hardly at all. Why? Well its because 4 black men carjacked, raped, kidnapped, beat to death and set on fire a young white couple going for a fast food break on a Sunday morning.


Where are the denounciations of "hate crime". Where are the Reverends? Do you have any idea of how much more often minorities rape whites than vice-versa? Could you imagine what the respone to that crime would have been if four whites had done that to a black couple heading to Starbucks?



Parting shot:::::the hispanic crime wave in Nashville which is very real, gets completely swept under the rug as much as possible by our own Gannett-chain paper, the Tennessean, as much as possible. Suspects are not described by race as often as they can get away with it, only first names are given in stories as often as possible to hide ethnicity, stories simply aren't reported (drunk driving here and the ensuing crashes are through the roof amongst illegals) and the legal status of criminals almost has to be shoe-horned out of the local media who wishes to cover it up.

Anonymous said...

"Wanna know what makes us whites really mad? Stories like this one:
http://www.wbir.com/news/regional/story.aspx?storyid=41102 not getting any play in the national media (at least not yet, but Im sure email boxes are full of angry letters demanding it) that get no play outside of the hometown hardly at all"

Wa Wa Wa. Cry you little baby. You are free to go post the story on stormfront.org and whine about it with your little racist buddies. I am sure they will care, and maybe even give you head to make you feel better.

Anonymous said...

Wa Wa Wa. Cry you little baby. You are free to go post the story on stormfront.org and whine about it with your little racist buddies. I am sure they will care, and maybe even give you head to make you feel better.

12 year-olds should not be posting on isteve.

Anonymous said...

Do you think that maybe Tom Wolfe is responsible for the heightened interest in the Duke lacrosse team? Look, you have a bestselling book come out thought to be more or less based on Duke, in which the whole school is portrayed as a moral cesspool and the lacrosse team in particular is portrayed as a bunch of animals. You have a national debate about whether this is an accurate description of college life. Then you have an incident that seems to settle the debate. I think that is a legitimate news story.

And if you don't believe lacrosse players were portrayed as animals: Recall that while all male characters behave badly, the main frat boys and basketball players are humanized with back stories, while no lacrosse player gets this treatment. Also recall that the frat boys do at least take the trouble to seduce the women they lack respect for, while the lacrosse players are depicted manhandling the main character in broad daylight when she wanders too near their tailgate party, necessitating her rescue cave man style by a frat boy. In fact, if I recall correctly, the first frat boy is seriously injured in the rescue attempt and it only succeeds because one of the lacrosse players is his fraternity brother and chooses to back him up.

It seems to me there are two possibilities for why Wolfe chose to write the book this way. One is that in his research lacrosse players actually struck him as animals for whom manhandling women is totally in character. The other is that he actually only researched the basketball players and frat boys, and chose to depict the intersection of all their worst tendencies in the lacrosse players, who combine the testosterone and athletic glamor of basketball players with the money and connections of the frat boys.

I know Wolfe is popular on this blog and campus lefties are not, but you have to admit they're united in depicting lacrosse players as Neanderthals. And the reasons for that must either reflect well on the lefties or reflect poorly on Wolfe.

Anonymous said...

And you didn't even mention the Cincinnati Bengals.

Steve Sailer said...

Anne should read my review Wolfe's "Charlotte Simmons" and my April article on how the hunt for the Great White Defendant at Duke was anticipated 19 years before in Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities."

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050102_wolfe.htm

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/060430_unequal_justice.htm

The moral point, however, is rather simple: just because you might be an arrogant preppie jerk, you shouldn't be framed for a felony.

Anonymous said...

there are 15 players on an NBA team, versus 53 players on an NFL team. in other words, there are more than 3 whole NBA teams worth of players on a single NFL team.

and, the NBA only has 30 teams and the NFL has 32 teams. so that's 450 players versus 1696 players.

that's a lot of bad players, bad teammates, and bad criminals for the media to cover up and protect.

not only is the media locked in permanent spin mode, the level of play in the league is in decline.

ChrisV82 said...

FoxNews carried a small AP article about Ricky Manning's assault, and the New York Post had a one sentence blurb in its "Sports Shorts" section. The Post had 13 articles of or relating to the Duke lacrosse team, however, while Fox News had hundreds.

So is Fox News and (less so) The Post being racist and having a double standard? I would argue no. This country has a long history of whites attacking blacks; the history of black on white crime is far less. Does this mean that the media should put a racial lens on what stories they decide to focus on? Probably not. However, the Duke case had two ready made storylines - whitey raping poor black girl, and dumb jocks raping defenseless girl. It sells papers (or brings in viewers, or online views).

Furthermore, another NFL player getting in trouble isn't that big of a deal, so to speak. After all, there were eight arrests in 2006 within the Cincinnati Bengals organization (which were covered quite extensively in the news), and in 2005 players on the Minnesota Vikings were accused of drunken behavior, nudity and visible sex on a boat. This is typical NFL stuff. On the other hand, with Duke, you have a bunch of kids, who presumably "have their whole future ahead of them," and they're facing the metaphorical end of their lives because of this incident. It's very interesting, in theory.

At the end of the day, news is about selling advertising, not setting an ideological agenda. Fox News is conservative not because they care, but because they know they can soak up conservatives' dollars. CBS (or the New York Times or whatever) is supposedly liberal because they believe it will give them the largest audience, thus giving them the largest revenue dollars. It's the free market at work, nothing greater.

Anonymous said...

To their credit, the NYT mentioned the Long Beach Halloween black on white beatings today. It was in an article about black/latino violence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/us/17race.html

TomV said...

Anne:

"And if you don't believe lacrosse players were portrayed as animals: Recall that while all male characters behave badly, the main frat boys and basketball players are humanized with back stories, while no lacrosse player gets this treatment. Also recall that the frat boys do at least take the trouble to seduce the women they lack respect for, while the lacrosse players are depicted manhandling the main character in broad daylight when she wanders too near their tailgate party, necessitating her rescue cave man style by a frat boy. In fact, if I recall correctly, the first frat boy is seriously injured in the rescue attempt and it only succeeds because one of the lacrosse players is his fraternity brother and chooses to back him up."

No, you didn't recall correctly. The first guy who tried (and failed) to rescue Charlotte was a lacrosse and frat guy named Harrison. I never understood why Charlotte didn't feel more indebted to him than to Hoyt, who entered the ring only after Harrison was knocked out and soon suffered the same fate. Neither of them stopped Balko; they just attracted enough attention and bought enough time for security to arrive.

Harrison was also the guy who turned away Beverly when she showed up pathetically at his door in the middle of the night, so at least he wasn't a sex maniac (or at least not with a Junior social X-ray like Beverly).

Also, in another scene where a bunch of loutish lacrosse players faced off with the Millennial Mutants, the most disagreeable character was Chinese-American Camille Deng, who told the players to shove their sticks, net first, up their behinds and was insulted racially in response. Charlotte herself thought so, and one player, as if able to read her mind, reciprocated by being nice to her ("Hey babe"). And one should remember, too, that the whole episode was first provoked by the Mutants' off-handed slurs against jocks in general.

I swear I read Charlotte only once and do have a life. Wolfe's stories are just very memorable to me.

Anonymous said...

> This country has a long history of
> whites attacking blacks; the history
> of black on white crime is far less.

Incorrect. I forget where I saw it, but the total historical record of crime stats in the USA (back to about the civil war) show an unborken history of much higher rate of black-on-white crime than white-on-black.

What we see today in America re: race and crime is pretty much how it's already been, liberal sociological explanations of the phenomena notwithstanding.

Steve Sailer said...

The news media should come with warning stickers: "What we show you are Man-Bites-Dog stories, not normal reality. If you try to live your life according to what we tell you, you will be sorry."

Ted Heistman said...

Isn't the main reason a story gets run though, is if the people in it are good looking?

You know its like if a fat ugly woman gets murdered by an ugly redneck- that won't run. If some person living in a trailer park gets their homely looking girl abducted that won't run. You won't hear about it.

If rich good looking white people do crimes or are victims of crimes, its a story.

If some big scary looking black guy from the ghetto, acts like...well, like he's from the ghetto, its not a story. Even if he's a football player. The guy he beat up was probably doofy looking.

If he murders his good looking white wife...Now that might be a story.

These Duke Lacrosse players are very photogenic.

ChrisV82 said...


Incorrect. I forget where I saw it, but the total historical record of crime stats in the USA (back to about the civil war) show an unborken history of much higher rate of black-on-white crime than white-on-black.


Well, even though you can't remember where you saw it and can't show the actual figures, you've certainly rebutted years of historical precedent.

And why don't we have a white history month??

Anonymous said...

At the end of the day, news is about selling advertising, not setting an ideological agenda. Fox News is conservative not because they care, but because they know they can soak up conservatives' dollars. CBS (or the New York Times or whatever) is supposedly liberal because they believe it will give them the largest audience, thus giving them the largest revenue dollars. It's the free market at work, nothing greater.

I've heard this said quite often but suppose we broaden the discussion of media content beyond just news. In 1997, NBC broadcast the Spielberg movie "Schinder's List" largely free of advertising, whereas , in 2004, after the Mel Gibson movie "The Passion" came out, network officials told the media that they would likely never broadcast it. Some of them cited violence concerns, which was specious, because when Senator Coburn dounounced the airing of S.L. on the same grounds he was cowed into issuing an apology.

For the record I have not seen either movie since neither one interests me, but it is my considered opinion that the media exectives, owners, and prominent advertisers have priorities that often conflict with pure money-making.

Furthermore there is a feeback reaction between the media and its consumers. They can craft tastes somewhat then the consumers can want more of it. That consumers would be solely responsible for content of media defies logic. There are, afterall, two parties involved, each with vested interests. Consumers can change the channel, but when all the channels are similar, it won't have much effect on the media attitudes.

Wa Wa Wa. Cry you little baby. You are free to go post the story on stormfront.org and whine about it with your little racist buddies. I am sure they will care, and maybe even give you head to make you feel better.

That's basically how the MSM feels about (real) conservatives. "Take your concerns for truth and justice and go &(*& yourselvees". That's reality.

Anonymous said...

The news media should come with warning stickers: "What we show you are Man-Bites-Dog stories, not normal reality. If you try to live your life according to what we tell you, you will be sorry."


I am noticing more and more videos of violent black children on CNN, FOX etc. Usually with very little commentary, especially relating to race.

For CNN especially, I am thinking that they are feeling "we report -- you decide."

These often become the "most watched videos" of the site.

Anonymous said...

i don't agree with the angle that the media is simply reporting the news that will sell.

that sounds like hollywood executives trying to explain why so few movies with strong and obvious christian themes have been produced after many decades of market research and trying to tap into built-in fanbases.

"Oh, a Christian movie would never sell! We're out to make money, not lose it!"

yeah, who would buy tickets to see that? a christian movie would only have a GIGANTIC built-in fanbase. it would only have the largest available fanbase in the entire US.

even on isteve.com it seems like people are trying to do mental gymnastics to avoid admitting that the media is generally engaged in a long and never ending process of trying to keep american race relations in good shape by censoring and spinning the news.

it's gotten to the point where if the police are looking for a rape suspect, you automatically know he's not white if the media won't describe him.

as it pertains to the NFL, they spin, spin, spin. has ANY black criminal in the NFL ever been described as a bad person? aren't they always "outstanding young men"?

rcocean said...

Jody,

Not to go off-topic, but Hollywood now gets almost 60 percent of its boxoffice from overseas. In some cases, the movies make 2/3 of their boxoffice in Europe and Asia.

So, any movie that doesn't appeal to people in Japan/China and France/Italy isn't going to be made.

Hollywood is owned by INTERNATIONAL corporations. Stop thinking of Hollywood as American because it isn't.

Anonymous said...

Chris V: "Well, even though you can't remember where you saw it and can't show the actual figures, you've certainly rebutted years of historical precedent."

Actually, he was rebutting your unfounded remarks, not historical precendent.