Manning and the Media

The recent flap in the sports media over Peyton Manning is worth noticing. The story itself is trivial and insignificant. Depending on whom one believes,  about twenty years ago Manning as a young college player either mooned a teammate while a female trainer was working on his ankle, giving her an unintended but unwelcome view of his testicles and backside, or flashed her with that view intentionally.  As might have been expected in those post- Anita Hill and pre-Monica Lewinsky days, there was a series of  accusations, legal actions, and settlements which went on for a good while.  There was no hint in any version of the story of sexual assault, groping or striking the woman,  or anything beyond puerile and  moronic horseplay of a sort not too unusual in teenage boys.  The story was old news and had been so for over a decade until several sportswriters and commentators revived it after the Super Bowl.

Now, all of a sudden, we are getting a campaign of shocked and sanctimonious denunciations of Manning and pompous ruminations about whether or to what degree this destroys his “legacy” or even proves he is a phony and an evil person. That is odd enough that it’s useful to try to figure out why.

The first thing one might notice is that the offense, even Manning’s version of it, violates the canons of political correctness as they apply to gender. Here was a woman working in the locker room with a bunch of youthful jocks.  One of them behaved like a youthful jock in a locker room, instead of realizing that women are  strong, tough as nails,  and able to function in any environment  or situation and simultaneously  delicate Victorian flowers who will be horribly damaged by any sort of unseemly conduct or language, and then conducting himself accordingly.  The horror is there for all to see.

The next  thing which comes to mind is that Manning is white, and for many in the media there are different standards  for white and black athletes. Violent run ins with cops and ordinary citizens, profligate fathering of illegitimate children, beating up women (so long as no pictures or videos hit the news), and rap sheets  of assorted felonies are accepted as  normal and unremarkable and either unmentioned or quickly dismissed or forgiven if the athlete is black. White guys generally are more likely to be  expected to behave themselves and to be given nothing like this sort of slack when they do not  - even in comparatively minor ways.   (While on the surface this might appear to be sensitive to and solicitous of black people, in fact it shows a clear prejudice against them, since the indicated  conclusion is that the people doing this  do not think blacks are  worthy of being held to and capable of meeting usual behavioral standards.  In that assumption  they  find themselves in agreement with a common opinion of anti-black bigots and racists.)

Politics may also be part of it. Manning is a Republican and  young, attractive, popular, articulate, competitive, and in need of something to do with the rest of his life. Most of the people in the media are on the left, and there could have been a desire to torpedo a possible political career in the wrong party.  Then there are the simple explanations of envy, resentment, and schadenfreude which always should be considered in such cases.

This is all  just guess work, the product of lazy speculation on a warm Saturday afternoon, but the scope and intensity of the thing  are  strange.