Jason Collins, a third or fourth string NBA basketball player, has come out of the closet — not because he is simply proud to be gay — but because he had to do something to boost his vanishing career.
Some really dumb people in the media and in the world of gay politics are heralding this “coming-out-of- the-closet-sports-hero” as the new Jackie Robinson. The stupidity and self-serving dumbness of these people is pathetic.
Not only does the comparison to baseball great Jackie Robinson make no sense, it implies to the bigoted do-gooders — who seem to have no clue that they are bigoted do-gooders — that gay people are anatomically different as far as athletic ability is concerned, and that some great and awful barrier had to be broken down to allow a gay man to play basketball. This is not only not true, it’s an insult to the kind of injustices to which Jackie Robinson and countless African American black athletes were subjected for ages.
Gay people have been playing basketball and all kinds of major league sports for ages, it’s just that nobody knew they were gay. Jackie Robinson, because of the color of his skin — something he could not hide or ignore — was intentionally kept out of the sport where he excelled. One can’t make even the slightest comparison to the woes of gay athletes. Of course a major league player of any sport would not be welcomed into or onto a team if he swished his way around the locker room or the playing field and flaunted his gayness. Even straight guys can’t mess around openly with women and think they’re major league sports careers won’t suffer. Ask Tiger Woods about that.
While gay groups throughout the world — and straight groups who like to treat gay men like trained chimps and seals — rallied for Jason Collins and his choice to come out as gay, it was pretty obvious to the trained eye that Collins needed to do SOMETHING to keep himself relevant. Had he not come out as gay and caused all this media blitz, Collins would have faded off into the sunset and earned a living cutting ribbons at new Piggly Wiggly stores. Let’s face it, Jason Collins is no mega star athlete. This media event isn’t like Michael Jordan coming out as gay. It’s just some NBA player who figured out how to market himself as a gay martyr — and it worked. You have to give him, or whomever is pulling his strings, credit for that.
Jason Collins had no real career left. He was a benchwarmer, and please, don’t think that his choice to come out was rooted in any kind of altruism or gay pride. He did it because he needed a job and he thinks that coming out as a gay professional athlete will be his new job. That’s the whole thing. His career will be his sexuality unless he shows that he is talented in other ways.
For the most part, it’s safe to assume that most gay people really don’t care that he’s gay, and it’s the straight people who make themselves feel good by embracing the whole coming out thing. They will make Jason Collins’ gayness a front page news item. Most gay men don’t even watch basketball — come on — be serious here.
Prior to his “I’m gay” announcement a few days ago, Jason Collins was a virtual unknown. His face was not recognizable enough to make it on a box of store brand popcorn let alone the Breakfast of Champions.
Hey, you can’t bash the guy for making it for 12 years in the NBA. Pretty much NOBODY can accomplish that, but you have to see things for what they really are, and in this case the truth is that Jason Collins is being recreated as a gay brand — but there’s a catch to all of this marketing and branding.
GAY DOESN’T SELL ! It doesn’t. Not even to other gays. Marketers know that so don’t think you’re going to see Jason Collins doing car commercials or Nike commercials — no way. Is it so hard to understand that it’s not the NBA that’s bigoted or opposed to homosexuality, it’s that the marketing folks who market their wares via professional sports, know that GAY is not a really powerful brand.
Hey, if “gay” sold cars or sneakers or fast food, the gay players would come out of the woodwork like lemmings. No — sorry — gay does not sell products and even the gayest marketing executive is not going to hand out his Buick contract to an openly gay athlete. It will never happen. If you watch the Logo channel you will note that most of the ads aimed at a gay male audience are usually phone sex lines or condoms.
Jason Collins will now become an object of fringe marketing. He will be beholden to the whims of kooky straight people who take on kooky causes. These psychos usually cause more damage than anything else, but they completely miss the fact that they’re stupid and phony and disingenuous and smarmy and maudlin and plain old annoying.
Of course no team will ever have the nerve to cut Jason Collins now that he is openly gay. If they did, the wrath of the do-gooders will fall down on them like a tower of bricks and mortar. Because of this fake niceness and totally bogus NBA bromance with homosexuality, an NBA team is stuck with a sub par player whose most recent talent is not basketball, but the fact that he likes other dudes and not chicks. That‘s pretty lame..
So what marketing niche will Jason Collins be able to fill with his newly revealed gayness? We here at TheDamienZone.com have a few ideas of where this is all going.
After the talk-show circus an dthe obligatory pilgrimage to Oprah, Jason Collins will become the new face (even though nobody knows what he looks like) of various anti-bullying campaigns and assorted gay pride stuff. Then, after the newness of all that wears down, he’ll probably get taken on as a gay trained pet seal by a sports network or talk show. Kindly note that no major network sports network with any major audience will touch him. He’ll be relegated to crap networks like Logo or chick-flick entertainment channels that do red carpet events and fashion stories.
Jason Collins will be the “masculine gay guy” and he’ll make a good living off of thet shtick for a few years. Then he’ll drop a notch and attach his name –which would have otherwise been forgotten — to local gay gyms and night spots. Young gay people will be invited out to the newest club to “meet Jason Collins” and then he’ll probably start taking his shirt off or flexing his muscles until he finally starts with his own brand of Jason Collins condoms. If he’s really lucky he’ll get his own brand of Vodka or Tequila — which will include heavy handed warnings from Jason himself about he importance of safe sex and responsible drinking.
So gay people throughout the USA can thank Jason Collins’ for unwittingly perpetuating the sickening stereotype that gay people are different from other people as far as athletic ability goes. Jason Collins has opened the door for all the loving and caring heterosexuals who think it’s cool to have gay friends and to be “gay adjacent” — but when it comes to mainstream marketing and major network air time — all interests would be better served if openly gay athletes would kindly use the rear entrance.
