ESPN host Dan Le Batard isn’t shying away from criticizing President Donald Trump, despite his own network’s “stick-to-sports” policy.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1236706
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1236706
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As a general rule, I don’t much like the sports yakkers. I might have to make an exception.
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I would not mind if ESPN talked tRump during say, a Tejas football game. Just don’t tarnish an Oklahoma game by doing this.
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I tend to think this decision was originally made in consultation with sports team owners, who are generally rich prick Plutocrat Republicans, and not the different players associations in mind.
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Good for you, Dan LeBatard. Not that he ever holds back much.
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When sports teams are made to play The National Anthem before each game, sports is already political.
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Even if the network sticks to sports, there’re already enough controversies stirred up by Trump.
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Thanks Dan. Ordinary citizen speaking truth to power. More please!
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Some of the best reporters and columnists got their start covering sports.
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Most civilized places, that’s reserved for special occasions, like when the national team has a game. The rest of the time, nope.
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The guy makes a point. Sports have been at the leading edge of the integration of this country. Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, Mohamed Ali and their contemporaries were on the front lines. You would think we would be further down the path. Trump’s obvious appeal to millions of white male racists among us argues otherwise.
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“There’s a racial division in this country that’s being instigated by the president,” Le Batard said. “And we here at ESPN haven’t had the stomach for that fight.”
“Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson later issued statements agreeing with him.”
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ESPN does not do politics because they want to keep it out of sports dialogue, but that does not stop our political dialogue from interjecting itself into sports.
ESPN does its viewers a disservice for that reason.
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ESPN ultimately chased Jemele Hill off their network when she called Trump a white nationalist on her twitter page. The editor said something to the effect ‘we don’t have evidence of that’. Oh really?!! They had Curt Schilling on their network for years while he spouted all sorts of anti-Obama/pro-GOP nonsense. Lebatard should speak out. These aren’t normal times and this POTUS has done everything possible to politicize sports and drive racial divisions through sports.
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Well, they don’t have to. (winkwink)
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That’s weird. Why can’t she call out Trump on twitter (I assume she used her own account and not in her working hours)? I think that policy applies to the network only, not to its employees’ private behavior.
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Or when they’re paid millions to “honor the troops,” etc.
Fun Fact: In the aftermath of a discovery that Kate Smith recorded at least two songs with racist content in the 1930s, two major American sports teams, baseball’s New York Yankees and ice hockey’s Philadelphia Flyers, have announced that they will stop playing Smith’s rendition of the Irving Berlin patriotic classic “God Bless America.” On Sunday, the Flyers also took down a statue of Smith that had stood in front of their stadium since 1987.
This happened in April 2019.
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I’m starting to wonder if Trump finally went to far with this, but then I remember that he’s been going too far every day for the past three years. In the end, will anything finally matter? We can only hope.
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This is a tough one. If he launched into this without tying it to sports at all, it was a mistake. He should have been more cagey, IMHO. He mentioned Russell Wilson’s Twitter comments being sports-related–that’s how he should have approached it. Find a way to segue into the women’s soccer team victory, then go at it about how Trump treats women, then segue into what he said here. Then it makes some sense in regards to sports-relatedness–at least it gives that general appearance. All in all, though, I’m glad someone with a bullhorn said this. Many more sports/entertainment figures should be doing the same. Let it rip!
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That deserves a standing ovation.
Sports IS and always has been one of the catalysts of the changes that the white Christian nationalists are reacting to as an existential threat to their supposedly rightful and god-ordained, Manifest Destiny dominion over this country. That’s precisely why Kaepernick had to be vilified, demonized, ostracized and run out of the NFL as quickly and rabidly as possible. The change he was demanding is anathema to them and they knew, they KNEW, that the prominence the NFL afforded him could help make inroads. But enough was enough…threatening to take away their ability to remind the minority community of their “place” and keep them there through abusive criminal laws, racist law enforcement practices and judicial malfeasance was something they are under no circumstances prepared to accept. And yet, for all their efforts, they just made him and his message stronger.
ESPN’s dereliction of duty is unacceptable. In fact, I’m going to say it: ESPN is a racist network. They exploit the largely black athlete community for profit and consider it their due. They’ve shown no solidarity, support or compassion and have utterly failed to defend the communities responsible for their enrichment and that’s because they consider them nothing but labor chattel…a commodity to be used or discarded as convenient. BOYCOTT.
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