Not to mention the flybys.
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So will LeBatard have same fate as Hill?
…stay tuned…
What I am curious about is how the channel handled the Rapinoe v Trump dust-up. Did they simply not report it?
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Eventually they’re just going to have to raze all trump properties, call in the top folks from all the major religions to perform exorcisms on the grounds… Think the Manson Ranch is a better investment opportunity these days.
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I think that’s going too far: BUT if they just have somebody else singing that song (which I love, it’s the only “American” song which is not tricky to sing – well, and This Land Is Your Land is ok too but considered too political being a Woody Guthrie anthem) it’s ok by me.
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Le Batard is not the hill that I would choose to die on. He often plays the troll.
Nor is it attributable to a right wing or corporatist bias in major sports, consider:
ESPN fired Curt Schilling (who was actually a very good on baseball analyst) for being a RWNJ of the first order.
ESPN fired Rush Limbaugh from the Monday Night Football pregame show in 2003. The NFL barred Rush from bidding on an NFL team in 2009.
Dennis Miller lasted 2 years in the Monday Night Football booth, but to be honest that was a combination of rightwing nuttery and he was not funny.
One of Boston’s sports stations has finally purged all the RWNJ’s from their station but only as their ratings fell. I remain convinced that their support of Scott Brown in 2010 helped him win.
Pro sports (owners and athletes) are, for the most part, pro-$ and anti-controversy, not pro-Trump.
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I have listened to Le Batard frequently over the past few years, and I applaud his honesty about issues that do not lie solely within the sports domain. Too often, national radio hosts of sports shows are afraid of listener or corporate backlash, and I am glad to see someone be true to his morality and ethical convictions. It makes me far more likely to listen to his show, since it isn’t confined to minutiae and banal sports-only observations.
They did, in fact, replace it with another version.
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Like Sarah Palin?
I didn’t say “politicians”.
Wasn’t she a junior sports score reader in some station in Montana or some such place?
Edit: Nope, it was Alaska.
Scratch the word “male”. I see plenty of women chanting racist s*** at televised Trump rallies.
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That was my initial reaction, too. Then I read more about her history. She basically doubled down on the patently racist, jim crow songs she was famous for, songs that were the target of much controversy over blatant racism at that time. Hiding her behind the shield of “everyone did it back then” is rejecting her actual history.
From “That’s Why Darkies were Born”:
Someone had to pick the cotton,
Someone had to plant the corn,
Someone had to slave and be able to sing,
That’s why darkies were born
There’s a case that in some instances that song was sung satirically (though almost certainly not her renditions). But, then there’s also “Pickininny Heaven” - which is just as awful and stereotype-stuffed as the title leads you to suspect it might be.
So, fine. The majority of her work was not like that, she was under contract and didn’t write or pick the songs, etc etc. Let her later work speak for itself. But - putting a statue of a person whose early work was so tied to hurtful racial imagery in front of a sporting stadium? Good riddance to that memory.
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While I agree with his sentiments, I think he should have brought in some athletes of color, especially athletes from other countries whose performance lines the pockets of Trump supporting owners, to make this point for him.
For instance, there are lots of black players on the Patriots roster – maybe interview one of them, and then make a point about how Robert Kraft supports Trump…
ETA: at the very least, I think he should have talked about the impact Trump’s racism has on athletes of color, especially those from other nations…
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ESPN fired Schilling for repeatedly violating their policy regarding what types of comments can be made on social media. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a blatantly anti-transgender post that characterized trans people as freaks and perverts.
ESPN should never have hired Limbaugh. He knows nothing about football. Schilling at least knows baseball at a very high level. Limbaugh was a glorified fan. And surprisingly poor at color commentary, even given his limits.
Dennis Miller also doesn’t know much about football.
Sports fans skew right-of-center (at least the white sports fans do). OTOH, most of the highly successful players in the NBA and NFL are black. Makes for an interesting conundrum for ESPN. Do they offend the demographic of their viewers or that of the players?
Le Batard is sometimes right, but he’s often an ass. I like sports talk radio sometimes, but find his show impossible to listen to. He’s a classic “shock jock”. I would be reluctant to rally behind him.
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I’m very suspicious of people mining archives and “discovering” that figures from the 1930s didn’t live up to modern standards of wokeness. I just wonder what the purpose is. We could pretty much stipulate that political correctness didn’t exist in the 1930s, and nobody from that time would live up to those standards.
Sometimes this archive-mining completely misses the point, as when people “discovered” that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” tolerated drugging women, a fact that nobody had “noticed” in the several decades since it had been released. So people got to pretend they were “woke” by misinterpreting a classic song.
And it’s not “hiding behind the history.” It’s a question of “what’s the point?” Yes, there was a lot more racism back in the 1930s. But discovering racism in the 1930s isn’t like discovering racism in Florida. We can’t go there and do something about it.
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It’s no different from what those same people do about figures from the Civil War.
And it’s wrong—and not very smart----in both cases.
Historical context matters a great deal.
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And Hank Williams Jr. lost his Monday night football theme song gig for dissing Obama. As a business matter the networks and team owners know who their fan base is and “going political” is not good for business. I would probably make the same business decision were I in their shoes. Flags, flyovers and honoring the military are apolitical, or should be.
Excellent points. Post-suspension he posted this on Twitter. Cue the song “True Colors”
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