Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton gave men a free lesson last week: Don’t tell jokes about women. They are off limits. In fact, just about everything is off limits these days. Racial jokes. Ethnic jokes. Sexual jokes. Female jokes. Religious jokes. History jokes.

Nothing is funny.

Many comedians now refuse to visit college campuses for the fear their acts might offend the sensitive Millennial generation. Everybody seemingly is walking around with a chip on his shoulder.

Newton may be able to pass a football with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle, but he’s not so good as a late night comedian. Neither his timing nor his subject matter connected with the audience.

At a press conference, a female reporter for the Charlotte Observer asked him a convoluted question about passing routes. Rather than answering, Newton laughed at the idea of a woman asking about routes.

Oh, brother. Nobody laughed.

Suddenly, Cam Newton’s indiscretion was the top story in the world of sports.

The Observer devoted most of the front page of its sports section the next day to Newton’s mistreatment of its reporter. All the TV sports shows trashed him. One of Newton’s sponsors, Dannon, quickly dropped him as its yogurt spokesman.

For a day, Newton was impaled by the feminists and sports journalism.

Almost immediately, some internet troll discovered that the same sports writer had related a racial joke five or six years ago on Twitter while still in college, using a verboten racial word. Her Twitter pages were scrubbed, and the Observer printed her apology the next day.

Newton’s defenders mentioned something about “glass houses.”

He did more than apologize. The quarterback wore a pro-feminist badge on his natty hat before Sunday’s game. His passes carved up the Detroit Lions, and the Panthers added to an early season string of victories.

The victory quickly overshadowed his bad joke. Cam Newton’s indiscretion is now yesterday’s news.

We can still joke about stupid dads. They are fair game. A TV pizza commercial running now shows an snotty kid scolding his humiliated, sweating father for buying the wrong pizza. The kid needs a spanking, not a pepperoni pizza.

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Here at mid-October the leaves are supposed to be pretty, at their peak fall colors. So far, what I’m seeing are exhausted leaves falling off the trees without benefit of much change. The maples are not yellow or red. The poplars are about half yellow where I live. The oak leaves are turning brown and falling.

Did the late summer drought hurt the colors? Has it been too warm?

Temperatures have stayed relatively high so far.

What is certain is that the leaves will eventually fall, and I will have plenty to do to rake them up.

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Gasoline prices can fluctuate wildly. Locally, most stations are now charging in the range of $2.40 per gallon. Last week in South Carolina, one station charged $2.04. Unfortunately, we had a full tank.

– Dwight Sparks