Thursday, April 2, 1998

Silence is golden

By Blackie Sherrod

The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - Jimmy Snyder is dead, Al Campanis doesn't feel well, Ben Wright has withdrawn, and Fuzzy Zoeller has a bellyful.

If you could enlist these gents as a chorus, they would testify that man's most valuable accessory is a button for his lip, at least in their individual experiences. In other cases, it doesn't seem to matter.

Take the words of the Rev. Reggie White, the loquacious Green Bay Packer. In a ramble before the Wisconsin Legislature, the reverend apparently offended a variety of folk. Homosexuality, said he, is one of the biggest sins in the Good Book. Hispanics are so strong in family they can put 30 people in one house. Early settlers chose to enslave blacks rather than native Americans "because Indians knew the territory and knew how to sneak up on people."

Reverend White also enlightened legislators by revealing that blacks like to sing and dance, that whites have a talent for making money and that Asians are able to turn a television into a watch, whatever that means.

At one time, his words would be shrugged aside. But now, there was a sizable outcry that affected Rev. White not one whit. "I'm getting tired of people patting me on the back, anyway." When some donors to his New Hope Ministry began to twitch, the pastor said, "Don't re-evaluate me. Forget about me. I don't need your money."

Whatever your call on Reggie White, you must applaud the man for sticking by his words. At least he didn't claim he was misquoted. If you have a problem interpreting his sermon, says Reggie, then the fault lies with you, not him.

In truth, only rarely does a member of a minority group draw much censure for his declarations. Had the speaker been Brett Favre, you wonder what the decibels would be.

Remember when the Rev. Jesse Jackson referred to New York as "Hymietown?" There was only token mumbling from Jewish people. Rev. Jackson is black.

But when Jimmy Snyder listed reasons for black athletic prowess (quoting from a black researcher, incidentally), it brought him national censure and cost his job. Jimmy was Greek-American.

Recently, Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson lectured that basketball players from the South are more athletic because that's where the slave ships docked. There was scarcely a protesting hiccough. Richardson is a black man. You wonder what the reaction would have been had the words come from Bobby Knight.

When Ben Wright mentioned lesbianism on the LPGA golf tour, he was pried from his CBS microphone. Fuzzy Zoeller was trying to be cute with a wisecrack about Tiger Woods, and he was beheaded by media and volunteer sociologists, and it cost him a bundle in sponsorships.

After apologizing all over the place, Fuzzy now attacks the attackers. "How many times do I have to apologize?" he said, with some heat, to a recent interviewer. "It's over with. For some reason, (bleep) sells. I don't understand why, but it does. I've lost my respect for you guys. Now I understand why athletes don't talk to you guys." Zoeller, it says here, has a valid point.

The exaggerated sensitivity creeps into the written word, of course, especially in public print. Writers walk a tight line. You can say Aussie but not Jap. Redskin but not Blackskin. Goat but not monkey. You can say Troy Aikman ate a watermelon, but not Michael Irvin. Perish forbid that any high school call its team the Rebels.

On other than racial lines, however, publications have lifted the gates. In newspapers, including this one, you might find words that were strictly taboo a decade ago. For years, I have subscribed to the "New Yorker." Once it contained the elegant prose of James Thurber, A.J. Leibling, Nathaniel Benchley, Peter De Vries and other graceful pens. Nowadays, the magazine prints words you wouldn't hear below the deck of a British frigate.

But for the majorities nowadays, one good rule of thumb is that silence is not only golden, it's most prudent and practically running over with self-preservation.

(Blackie Sherrod is a sports columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Write to him at: Dallas Morning News, Communications Center, Dallas, Texas 75265.)

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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