Larry Johnson is an Unimaginative Bigot

First of all, I apologize for getting on my soapbox at the expense of comedic content. It’s kinda in my contract that if I write for your site, I’ll probably pop off about this once.

So Kansas City Chiefs running back and current Target of the Week Larry Johnson is currently suspended for this week’s game and maybe further. After ripping coach Todd Haley on his Twitter machine, he responded to critical Twitters with his favorite gay slur. (Like I say every week, Twitter is a fantastic outlet for players to let fans know just exactly what kind of dumbasses they are). To prove he’s man enough to say it to people’s faces, not just on Twitter, he reportedly used the same slur on people in the locker room. And he’s now suspended. And I have to say I’m pretty happy about that. But what’s he really suspended for? We’ll probably never know. What if he’d used the same slur in a volatile defense of his coach and organization? What if the Chiefs were in first place instead of last? Additionally, considering the myriad stories of how he treats women, Larry Johnson is a pretty easy person not to like. But what if it were someone like Drew Brees? I have a feeling that Larry Johnson just managed to create the perfect storm, and under different circumstances, this might have turned out different. But I hope I’m wrong.

The package for this product reads, "Not intended for use by gay people"

From what I can tell, there really isn’t a huge history of sports suspensions over gay slurs. John Rocker did include some in his famous rant, but the deluge of criticism mostly focused on the racial stuff. The only one I can really think of is Hawaii coach Greg McMackin’s 30 days in the offseason for his assessment of Notre Dame’s pregame dance. And considering he coaches at a school that dropped “Rainbow” from their team’s name because they didn’t want the

It makes perfect sense to use gay slurs at Notre Dame after they kicked the shit out of your team in a Mr. Shit Bowl that no one cares about

association with homosexuality, he definitely could have skated if not for external pressure. I’m happy to see that external pressure being applied because it’s about time. However, when I was about 7 or 8, Al Campanis and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder were blackballed, pardon the expression, from their respective professions for making racially insensitive comments. Is slurring one’s sexuality really any different than slurring one’s ethnicity? The difference is just that this country has a longer history of racial slurs not being OK. But once upon a time, not that long ago, we were in the same place with racist language as we are now with homonegative language.

I’m using the term “homonegative” rather than “homophobic” because we can generally agree that gay slurs and using the term “gay” as pejorative are negative statements. We can’t confirm that the people saying them are actually afraid of homosexuals or the possibility of their own homosexuality. Embarking on a possibly terrible analogy, I hate cilantro. I’m not afraid of it; I just want no part of eating it.

I know some out there can get after me for being a pointy-headed liberal and holier than thou and whatnot. I know I piss people off by calling them out on calling things “gay,” and certainly did it a lot at our ancestral homeland. Your meeting was “gay?” Was it really? Does it have sexual intercourse with other same-sex meetings? Did you go to the meeting and all the guys in it had sex with each other and all the women in it had sex with each other? If not, I’m going to guess that it probably wasn’t. So why the language?

I have been lucky in a sense that I’ve spent my life in two major metropolitan environments and was raised by parents that are generally accepting of homosexuality. Some may make an argument that they may feel homosexuality is a choice. My own personal view is that it’s genetic. But even if it isn’t, is there really a solid argument for a lack of acceptance of those who may enjoy something different than

If Jimmy "The Greek" had just insulted gay people instead, he'd be safe and sound working at CBS. Well, except for the fact that he's dead

yourself? I hate cilantro, but I perfectly understand that lots of people don’t and I don’t begrudge their enjoyment. You can throw up a religious argument, but it doesn’t stand up. I’ve read the Bible and I’ve never found an exact condemnation of homosexuality at all, only language that people can use creatively to fuel their agenda. And even so, would you believe everything that’s in the Bible? How do you know the Bible wasn’t the creation of a game of ancient Mad Libs (which by the way, was an excellent premise for a comedy sketch, thank you very much)? And sure, I understand the whole “super macho man professional locker room caveman idiot” argument, but that doesn’t make it OK, and that doesn’t make stands can’t be taken. Maybe certain people come from an environment where homonegative language is more accepted, but it doesn’t have to be in their present environment. People can come from a community where people smoke the crack rock with impunity, but that’s not legal in the NFL either, unless you’re Lawrence Taylor.

Being on a sports blog, this is always a tricky and uncomfortable topic. Yes, there is a kind of bar mentality that allows people a pretty good rope. Without that, I wouldn’t have a column. But the seemingly knee-jerk obsession with defaulting to gay jokes when one has no actual content, usually in the comments (mercifully, I’m not talking about here) gets old fast. What does Will Leitch’s HOF plaque say? Just asking. Brady Quinn is pretty ridiculous. Does it actually matter at all if he’s gay? No, he’s still ridiculous either way. During the whole Facebook invasion debacle, quite a few commenters, including some pretty prominent bloggers, just hauled off and saluted the Facebookers with the same slur as Larry Johnson. Not a proud moment in a series of non-proud moments.

Somehow, when the chips are down and people are in their fight or flight mode, the insult they still go to is the one Larry Johnson used. In spite of all logic, it appears to be pretty ingrained with people. Last November, a pretty drunk Skins fan at Maeve was perpetually screaming the gay f-bomb at Joe Flacco and it was rankling some fellow fans. During halftime, we took him aside and asked if he would stop using that word. The guy said that he didn’t actually hate gay people and had gay friends and relatives, just like almost all of us do. So then why is he saying it? It took him exactly a minute into the 3^rd quarter before he dropped it again. My go-to insult generally involves someone having sex with animals, be they monkeys, pigs,

The Chicago White Sox' float in the Chicago Pride Parade was an "Eat Me" cake that turned into a Bridgeport Deathmobile

horses, you name it. I guess if you wanted to make a solid argument against me, you could say that wanting to do the wild thing with pigs is likely in someone’s DNA as well. But come on. My point is that why do people always have to go there? At our basest moments, it seems most of us think the way to go is to attack someone’s manhood. But what actually makes a man? Does one’s attraction even enter into it?

We’ll never know the real basis for the Chiefs’ suspension of Larry Johnson. But if the two entities do part company, I’m sure his future employer is not looking at his beliefs on homosexuality in terms of assessing the pros and cons of his signability. I can complain all day and all night here and write term papers about it (I have, and if I ever go crazy and go for a doctorate, I’d consider writing my thesis on it) and whatever, but the truth of the matter is that homonegative language is still largely accepted in sports and in society. As I said earlier, individuals can be barred from their professions for racial comments, but when Ozzie Guillen calls Jay Mariotti a “fucking fag,” days before the Chicago Pride Parade no less, people giggle and say, “Oh, it’s just Ozzie being Ozzie. He says outrageous stuff.” “Outrageous” is saying Jay Marriotti should go have sex with a monkey. Calling him what he did is not only reprehensible, but it makes me have to defend Jay Marriotti, who I can’t stand either. Even Hawk Harrelson, who I hope gets hit by a train in his spare time, has the good sense to call Mariotti things like “heiniebird.” We all turn up our nose when Spanish soccer crowds chant racist taunts at opposing players, but when New York Ranger fans chant “Homo Larry” at a fan doing a silly dance, it’s, in the fan’s own words, “how it will always be and that’s what makes it part of the fun in going to a Rangers game in New York City, for God’s sake.” Right now, we can have it both ways. But we shouldn’t.

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Tags: double standards, gay, Greg McMackin, homonegativity, Kansas City Chiefs, Larry Johnson, lazy commenting, my serious pieces are ham-fisted blather, old king clancy, Ozzie Guillen, Twitter
Categories: Domestics

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Domestics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.