Many were quick to deem Newton’s elaborate touchdown celebration excessive. Titans head coach Mike Mularkey suggested it might have bordered on a breach of the NFL’s forever fungible code of ethics. Mularkey said this a day after Carolina outscored his team by 17 points, so it’s fair to say he may be biased. ESPN’s resident Hot Take specialist Skip Bayless, never one to shy away from imposing his own incoherent standards on a well-known athlete, made it clear that he was not a fan.
Now, these reactions were about what was expected. What stood out, however, was an a letter to the Charlotte Observer written by a concerned mother, Rosemary Plorin. In the letter, which quickly went viral as these things do, Plorin described how she was shocked and appalled by Newton’s gyrations on behalf of the nine-year old daughter she brought to the game:
Because of where we sat, we had a close up view of your conduct in the fourth quarter. The chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts and the ‘in your face’ taunting of both the Titans’ players and fans. We saw it all…
My daughter sensed the change immediately – and started asking questions. Won’t he get in trouble for doing that? Is he trying to make people mad? Do you think he knows he looks like a spoiled brat?
I didn’t have great answers for her, and honestly, in an effort to minimize your negative impact and what was otherwise a really fun day, I redirected her attention to the cheerleaders and mascot.
Ignoring the fact that cheerleaders are partial to some pelvic thrusting of their own, the letter concludes with Plorin admonishing Newton: “what you modeled for them today was egotism, arrogance and poor sportsmanship.”
The letter inspired conversation across the internet, mostly of the mocking kind. Twitter quickly made parallels between her “think of the children” tone and that of the Simpsons’ Helen Lovejoy. Others noted that the complaints sounded an awful lot like those the Ed Sullivan Show received after inviting Elvis Presley to perform. You know, back in the 1950s.
More incisively, Deadspin’s Greg Howard make a compelling case that the language used in Plorin’s letter, along with Bayless’s comments, perpetuated the stereotypes that continue to surround African-American athletes: “We still see it all the time,” wrote Howard. “Like with Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who two years ago made the play of his life and then sent the nation into hysterics by having the audacity to be fired up in a postgame interview with Erin Andrews. He, like Newton and any number of black athletes who went off the safe and paternal script, forgot his place.”