LEFTOVERS: Columnist gangs up on Jackson
Much remains to be learned about why new Washington Redskins wide receiver DeSean Jackson was unceremoniously cut by the Philadelphia Eagles last week.
Rumors and innuendos are flying around the Internet and social media, but the only hard truth is the Eagles believed that whatever baggage Jackson was carrying with him outweighed his immense production and ability on the football field.
The Redskins apparently feel the opposite, having signed Jackson on Tuesday night.
Apparently, they didn’t check with New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick.
The notoriously and purposefully controversial scribe penned a piece Monday that used a lot of “ifs” and “perhaps” to essentially say he believes Jackson has gang ties.
And not just Jackson.
“Why would it be shocking if DeSean Jackson is affiliated with a gang, and thus likely to be party, witness or have knowledge of blood and body-bag crime? At this point, in a world gone nuts, there must be dozens of NCAA, NFL and NBA players who belong to drugs-guns-murder street gangs, young women’s auxiliaries included,” Mushnick wrote.
As the sports blog Deadspin wrote about Mushnick’s column, “So true. Jackson is rumored to be in a gang, thus he has witnessed a murder, thus MANY athletes are in gangs and have witnessed murders. What kind of gangs? Oh, just your standard ‘drugs-guns-murder’ gang. Just the other day, I was hanging out with Chris Bosh and he told me that HIS drugs-guns-murder street gang is WAY cooler than Dwyane Wade’s drugs-guns-murder street gang. They do the drugs-murder-guns thing way better.”
Mushnick continued.
“The condition of money-mutilated college sports placed Jackson, on full scholarship, at prestigious Cal-Berkeley, where, perhaps, he first met Crips in the library or when invited to play on their intramural softball team. Jackson’s an enormously talented receiver or no one would care if he lived — maybe even to 30 — or died.”
Remember, Jackson’s gang ties are complete speculation at this point. While Mushnick makes an interesting point about society in general only caring about Jackson’s well-being because he can catch passes, the columnist is essentially painting Jackson as guilty and hiding behind the old premise that you can say anything you want about someone as long as you just add “allegedly” to the end.
More information will come out in the coming weeks about Jackson and, with the facts, better judgments can be formed. But let’s hold off on convicting Jackson of being a despicable human being and an accessory to murder because his hand signals on the field resemble gang signs and as Mushnick puts it, “if his off-field act tilts toward the criminal, his on-field conduct is a form of premeditated, first-degree assault on his sport. He’s among the NFL’s most self-involved post-catch me-dancers, exceedingly self-impressed, regardless of the score or other pertinent team circumstances.”
Yep. He dances, so he’s a killer. Pretty sure nobody ever blamed that Riverdance dude for the potato famine.
Mushnick once indirectly accused Adrian Peterson of being partly responsible for the murder of his 2-year-old son, so we could just say that Mushnick is a race-baiting jackass who spews nonsense from his keyboard just to get a reaction like this.
You know, allegedly.
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