Reggie White Day

Last Sunday was "Reggie White Day" in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The celebrated former defensive end for the Packers died the day after Christmas of some undisclosed ailment, and the sports media can't find enough adulatory gems to bestown upon his posthumous crown. Curiously, though, some of White's most notorious public moments have been left out of his eulogies. Contrast this with the mean-spirited posthumous excoriations that some of Susan Sontag's critics have doled out.

But no, you say, Susan Sontag was a public intellectual! Reggie White was a guy whose job was making people fall over! The comparison is specious!

But alas, you are wrong. White, an ordained Christian minister fond of using his sports celebrity as a platform for promoting increasingly bizarre ideas, beggared his own entry into public discourse by appearing in a series of full-page anti-gay ads in USA Today and the Washington Times in 1998. The ads, headlined "In defense of free speech," employed a familiar rhetorical trope of the Christian right: we are powerless and disorganized Christians beleaguered by rich white queers. (I'm happy to be working for the fourth richest of the so-called powerful homo agenda pushers, whose total annual operating budget is still only 3.9% the annual operating budget of Focus on the Family and only 36.6% of the annual operating budget of the American Family Association. Those flunkies and their failed math! More on the myth of rich queers.)

After the fallout from his ginormously offensive comments to the Wisconsin legislature, White was unrepentant, saying, "I didn't start a ministry to please everybody." From the horse's mouth, folks. White was foremost a soapbox opportunist; his football career was merely a huge soapbox that guaranteed his opinions would be heard. So do the man a favor in his death, and hold his legacy accountable to the ideas he was so proud to have made public during his life. Some of these key ideas were, in fact, once presented to state legislators:

White had been invited by Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen to talk to lawmakers for about 10 to 12 minutes about his recent trip to Israel, his work with urban youth and his New Hope economic development project in Green Bay.

But White, speaking without notes, delivered an address that resembled a lengthy sermon with numerous references to the Bible and pronouncements about sin and morality.

In making a point about the need for all races to work together, White discussed differences between races that many lawmakers said they found to be inappropriate stereotypes. Among his comments about races:

Blacks: "When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to a black church, you see people jumping up and down because they really get into it."

Whites: "White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job with building businesses and things of that nature. And you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people around the world."

Hispanics: "Hispanics were gifted in family structure. You see a Hispanic person, and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home."

Asians: "When you look at the Asian, the Asian is very gifted in creativity and invention. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They are very creative.""When you put all of that together, guess what it makes? It forms the complete image of God," he said.

In another part of his address, while talking about sin, White said "one of the biggest ones" is homosexuality.

He added he was offended that homosexuals "compare their plight with the plight of black people" and say they they have been persecuted and discriminated against. "Homosexuality is a decision; it's not a race," White said.

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3/26/1998)