Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I think the culture is obsessed with Unc. Shannon Sharpe is charismatic and beloved and someone almost everyone would want to have at their backyard barbeque. I gained respect for him back when he was playing for the Denver Broncos. He was a great player and an amazing trash-talker. A lot of people loved Sharpe as a player and thought that he could become a good broadcaster, but I think I know the exact moment when he turned into a man who the culture really loves.
The latest cultural headline for Sharpe arrived over the weekend. Sharpe recently released a new cognac and was on a tour of liquor stores to promote it. At the last stop, he ambled out of his chauffeured SUV wearing a dark green two-piece athleisure suit that was perhaps a bit too tight. He had accessorized it with a bright orange man purse thing that looked, to many, a bit too girly. As he got out of the SUV, his hips and his knees shifted, for a moment, in a way that many read a bit too femme for a man. The internet had a field day making fun of him — I compiled some of the funniest ones here. Were people being fair? No. Were people being homophobic? Yes. But was it unintentionally funny? For sure.
The joke was at Sharpe’s expense but there was a loving undertone to it all. It was definitely in the spirit of “We love Unc.” The moment reminded me of how quick some of us are to say a man has lost his manhood because of a lisp that’s a bit too soft or a wrist that’s a bit too limp or a hip that juts out a bit too much. Sometimes manhood is posited as something that can be easily lost like one might mistakenly lose their keys, which is bizarre and homophobic.
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I couldn’t help but see the contrast between that moment and the wild incident from just over a year ago when Sharpe was at…
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