An old Swedish proverb says, “Sweep first before your own door, before you sweep the doorsteps of your neighbors.” One NFL reporter with egg on his face today would have done well to heed this simple but sound advice.
Marlowe Alter, an NFL writer for the Detroit Free Press, tried to cancel Dan Campbell (seen in photo), a candidate for the Lions head coaching job. Twenty-two years ago while playing football at Texas A&M, Campbell remarked at a pep rally that he liked attending a university where "men like women and women like men."
Oh, what a painful, wounding blow that was to the LGBT community – and to Alter now! It caused outrage among faculty and students, Alter wrote.:
“ ‘I suffered the pain of listening to a football player tell me that A&M is NOT my university,’ said Eric W. Trekell, a spokesman for Texas A&M University Allies, a support network for homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people on the campus.”
Campbell responded in 1998 with a public apology, saying: “I offended some people, and I’m sorry for that. It was heat of the moment. It’s not necessarily that I directed it at anyone.”
Case closed from then until now. For public figures like Campbell, though, when you’re in the media fishbowl in today’s ultra-sensitive snowflake, cancel culture and you don’t tow the far Left line on certain issues, you can’t escape the dredging of ancient social media posts by self-righteous media smear artists like Alter.
“The incident was particularly harmful for some because, according to a university spokesman at the time, Texas A&M had come a long way since the 1980s, and had incorporated many educational programs for students and faculty members that involve issues of sexual orientation,” Alter wrote.
Here's where the story gets really sweet and hypocrisy comes in to play.
Nine years ago, Alter posted comments on social media that are much, much worse than anything Campbell said. He attacked African Americans and homosexuals. Try these remarks on for size.:
Oh, the irony! "I apologize for the unacceptable tweets from my past. There is no excuse for the language I used and I'm embarrassed. I do not condone that language. I’m sorry to anyone I have offended and deeply regret my actions," Alter wrote.
The N-word is bad enough, but the LGBT movement absolutely detests the word “fag.” In 2011, the late Kobe Bryant was mightily shamed – and fined $100,000 by the NBA -- for using it to address an NBA referee and ESPN blurred his mouth in video of the incident. Just last week PGA superstar Justin Thomas lost his sponsorship deal with Ralph Lauren because he was caught on video saying "faggot." The circumstances: he was mumbling under his breath to himself after missing a putt.
Campbell is just the latest sports figure to be attacked for old social media. Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, baseball pitcher Josh Hader and others have also been forced to run the gauntlet of media digging up comments from their youthful past. This is what the holier-than-though media loves to do. This time the media person was forced to do the same thing.
Somebody lend Alter a broom to clean up his own messy past.
