Cam Newton posted a video on Twitter Thursday night in which he apologized for his “degrading and disrespectful” comments to a female reporter.
The Carolina Panthers quarterback came under fire Wednesday after laughing at the thought of a female reporter asking him a serious football question about a wide receiver running routes.
Cam Newton: “It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes.”
Uh, that’s a really, really bad way to answer a legitimate question. (video via https://t.co/NOdIiKyJCb) pic.twitter.com/MaS4KVjuSV
— Max Marcilla (@MMarcilla98) October 4, 2017
The sexist attitude displayed by Newton led to severe backlash, and even resulted in him losing a sponsor.
More than 24 hours after his comments went viral, Newton finally apologized. His apology was thoughtful, sincere, and covered a lot of ground.
— Cameron Newton (@CameronNewton) October 6, 2017
“After careful thought, I understand that my word choice was extremely degrading and disrespectful to women. To be honest, that was not my attentions. If you’re a person that took offense to what I said, I sincerely apologize to you,” Newton said.
“I’m a man who tries to be a positive role model in my community and tries to use my platform to inspire others. I take ownership to everything that comes with that.
“What I did was extremely unacceptable. I’m a father to two beautiful daughters, and at their age I try to instill to them that they can do and be anything that they want to be.
“During this whole process, I’ve already lost sponsors and countless fans and realize that the joke is really on me. I’ve learned a valuable lesson from this. To the young people who see this: I hope that you learn something from this as well. Don’t be like me; be better than me.
“To the reporters, to the journalists, to the moms, supermoms, to the daughters, the sisters, and the women all around the world, I sincerely apologize and hope you can find the kindness in your heart to forgive me.”
That’s about as complete of an apology as one can make. The only thing you can say bad about it is it would have been nicer to come more quickly, but at least Newton came across as incredibly remorseful.
The story took an interesting turn on Thursday after some Twitter users scoured through the reporter’s Twitter account and dug up examples of her being racist in the past.
