It has been said that it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
If you’re an ill-considered blabbermouth getting paid to run your yapper, though, there’s usually no hiding.
New York Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall, a five-time Pro Bowler whose career has been defined as much by off-field strife as it has his ability to get open, said on Showtime’s “Inside the NFL” that white players are disciplined differently in the NFL than black players.
It was a regrettable assertion, one that was impossible to support with evidence and one that Marshall, who is black, began backpedalling on almost as soon as he’d made it. But as the latest in the spate of race-baiting pieces in various media today, the story had traction for a while.
Marshall was undoubtedly just trying to “keep it real,” as it were, but because he failed to show that league punishments to white and black players for similar infractions have been disproportionate, his reality check bounced.
First, a salient point: White players are not disciplined differently in the NFL than black players.
Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was suspended for four games for a sexual assault that he was never charged with. Before a tape surfaced showing Baltimore’s Ray Rice knocking his girlfriend unconscious during an argument in an elevator, Rice was suspended for a grand total of two games for the incident.
Former Dolphins offensive lineman Richie Incognito was suspended for a season for hazing a teammate.
Both Roethlisberger and Incognito are white, as is New Orleans coach Sean Payton, who was made to sit out a year after word came to light of the Saints’ having a “bounty” program where defensive players were rewarded for hits that injured opponents.
White players don’t get let off any lighter than black players do because, as color goes, the league is concerned only with the legal-tender shade of green, and will aggressively dock those — African-Americans and European-Americans alike — whose actions are thought to harm the NFL “brand.”
Marshall’s race remark came in the wake of conversation about New England quarterback Tom Brady, who led the Patriots to an opening-day win over Pittsburgh after having his four-game suspension for the deflated-football ordeal vacated by a judge.
What Marshall could have said, and had a point in saying it, was that quarterbacks today are protected like an endangered species, or that the Patriots’ reign throughout the 21st century has had a certain weasel-y quality to it.
The Jets’ wideout elected to make it a race issue. Marshall wore out his welcome in Denver, Miami and Chicago before joining the Jets. He doesn’t burn bridges; he napalms them.
He has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, or emotionally unstable personality disorder, or whatever adjectives the doctor puts before the word “disorder” to indicate that there is some static in the attic.
So, the greater question is, what on earth is a guy like this doing behind a microphone?
Getting those ratings, hopefully, that’s what. Decency and dignity are readily discarded today in the face of possible financial gain.
This is nothing new. Years ago, former major league baseball player and renowned head case Jimmy Piersall was hired on to bring color to the TV broadcasts of the Texas Rangers and Chicago White Sox before eventually losing those jobs due to — believe it or not — inappropriate remarks he made on the air.
A stratospheric level of screwball behavior doesn’t necessarily spoil one’s chances of landing a forum on which to bring the crazy. This is the same culture, remember, where Jerry Springer’s procession of intergalactic freaks had an unusually long and well-sponsored run.
Race-baiting can be the last refuge of the scoundrel, and Marshall dropped the ball because a steady stream of bogus racism charges like the one he made dilutes the actual instances of racism that do still occur.
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