According to an old saying, "Many a man's tongue has broken his nose."
This needs to be updated to "Many a man's tongue, or keyboard, has broken his nose."
Or that secondhand posts on social media can be even deadlier than secondhand smoke.
Last Monday, Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson, who can still very likely run a 4.3 even at his age (33) and with all his injuries, proved that his mouth/keyboard can run more like a 3.4 when he shared a, to put it generously, bizarre post on Instagram, originally sent by someone with the user name of OneOfone, that combines a Black Hebrew Israelite theme with a John Birch Society theme, but in a much less appealing manner than Miller Lite combines great taste with less filling. The quote is allegedly attributable to Minister Louis Farrakhan, head honcho of the Nation of Islam — and that may even be apocryphal:
"Hitler said, because the white Jews knows [sic] that the Negroes are the real Children of Israel and to keep Americas [sic] secret (,) the Jews will blackmail America.
The [sic] will extort (from) America, their plan for world domination won't work if the Negroes know who they were.
The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they have been mistreating and discriminating (against) and lynching the Children of Israel.
They will fear God and destroy them as the [sic] destroyed Egypt for doing the same thing. So the Elite, the Illuminati keeps this a secret at all costs.
After I die, I will one day cause World War III, just like this message which will be like planting a seed in a people [sic] minds until it sprouts once they nurture that seed and seek more truth and learn Hitler was right."
Minister Farrakhan's grammar is presumably a lot better than that.
On Wednesday, former NBA star Stephen Jackson, no relation to DeSean, and not to be confused with the eponymous former running back of the then-St. Louis Rams, jumped into the fray, saying that DeSean was "speaking the truth" with his re-post — a "truth" that got DeSean "penalized" by the Eagles for the catch-all "infraction" of "conduct detrimental to the team."
The day after Stephen Jackson weighed in, Malik Jackson — no relation to either DeSean or Stephen, but DeSean's Eagles teammate (and since Malik weighs 290 pounds, can he ever weigh in) did so, effusively praising Minister Farrakhan, characterizing him as "honorable."
Mixed in among these missteps was one made by another Philly wide receiver, Marquise Goodwin, acquired to fill the team's desperate need for speed at the position in a trade with the 49ers during the draft, who proved that Godwin's Law (exquisite irony!) is spot-on when he chimed in with a convoluted post, also on Instagram, stating that first, that social media should be focused more on the issues being raised contemporaneously by Black Lives Matter than a dictator who died by his own hand in an underground bunker in Berlin three quarters of a century ago (that's a genteel synopsis of Goodwin's post anyway), and second, Goodwin's accusation that "the Jewish community" is "lashing out" at him (it's painfully obvious what Goodwin's favorite Black Sabbath song is).
Back in 1976, ABC produced a made-for-TV movie, "Smash-Up on Interstate 5," about a fictional 39-car chain-reaction accident on that highway on the nation's bicentennial, causing 14 deaths and 62 injuries serious enough to require hospitalization.
From DeSean Jackson to Stephen Jackson to Marquise Goodwin to Malik Jackson, this has been quite a chain reaction — and one that must be generating a great deal of schadenfreude in the land of America's Team.
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