Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Athletes Right to Lecture?

September 1, 2020 By Debbie Young

First Lady Michelle Obama tapes a “Let’s Move!” public service announcement with 2013 NBA Champion Miami Heat players LeBron James, left, and Dwyane Wade, in the Map Room of the White House, Jan. 14, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

Most sports fans watch sports to be entertained, not to be lectured. Although everyone should be allowed a forum, a political one at a pro game is not necessarily a judicious venue, argues Andrew McCarthy in NRO.

Astronomically paid athletes are good at what they do. And fans – conservatives and liberals, black and white – appreciate what it is like to have such talent and the necessary dedication to compete at elite levels.

If there is a salable, unifying value of today’s athletes, it is in giving the rest of us –the fans – an escape from our personal struggles and social divisions, observes Mr. McCarthy. Pro sports are an oasis, if you will, from turmoil.

BLM’s Distorted Narrative

The smear of systemic racism – that the nation’s police force is hunting down black men – is an irrational, distorted narrative over critical thinking. Education today most often does not include or encourage critical thinking. Instead, as Mr. McCarthy notes, the focus is on tribalism, grievance mongering, and hostility to sharing ideas and viewpoints.

Who wouldn’t want everyone to stand in unison for the national anthem – a couple of minutes that invite our attention to being one national community, to forebears who sacrificed for the preservation of our free society, to the duty of preserving it for our children? Yes, you may want it, but you don’t insist on it.

My Way or the Highway

America is about pluralism not about “my way or the highway.”

Don’t expect fans to watch a ballgame if the experience is against them. Fans come together to enjoy a ballgame, to celebrate the athletic abilities of sports elites, not to air our grievances.

Entitlement to a Captive Audience?

The players have an arrogant presumption: that their free-expression right includes entitlement to a captive audience. Fans are a community coming together to express its admiration of sports and competition, and most fans don’t want to be subject to a lecturing by an athlete.

Marxist, Anti-American

With a nod and a wink, the Left is peddling Black Lives Matter, the Marxist, anti-American enterprise. In a rapturous code, we are enticed or extorted into endorsing a shrewdly crafted catchphrase at face value — Black Lives Matter! Change! Choice! Living wage! Social justice!

And we’re expected to pretend that the slogan is not the wedge for a policy menu that its advocates dare not state plainly.

Rights Are Not Cost Free

Rights, however, don’t exist in a vacuum. They compete with the rights of others, Mr. McCarthy reminds readers, and exercising those rights is not “cost free.”

When Bill de Blasio or Ilhan Omar tries to lecture me (McCarthy), I change the channel. When I arrive at something billed as a celebration only to find that it is a demonstration — especially one aimed at making me feel unwelcome — I leave. If you want an audience, you have to provide what the audience wants, not give the audience misgivings about staying.

Nobody Has to Watch Sports

There are too many aspects of life where we have to put up with the Left’s tireless badgering and its bleak portrayal of the country. But nobody has to watch sports. The NBA boycott, cheered by the media and thus trending through other sports leagues, is a bad idea. The pandemic has the players in a bubble. Each game is another chance to play before lots of empty seats. Another chance to acclimate to the future.

LeBron James, for example, is to be saluted for investing heavily in the education of at-risk children. Mr. McCarthy applauds LeBron for “giving back, for having skin in the game rather than just virtue signaling.”

Tireless Badgering and Bleak Portrayal

James has combined his “incomparable talent with a superhuman work ethic.” But, if the price of admission to see him play is to endure his pregame antics, then I’d rather not,” writes Mr. McCarthy, who admits he would rather “get a root canal than listen to LeBron bloviate about police reform.’”

(LeBron) has chosen, moreover, to make himself a politically polarizing figure, and there’s a deep popularity cost for that, too — which is not to be dismissed when you’re in pro sports, a popularity business.

Many times in life there is no escaping the Left’s tireless badgering and bleak portrayal of America. But the NBA’s boycott is not one of those times. The NBA’s boycott “cheered by the media and thus trending through other sports leagues, is a bad idea,” continues Mr. McCarthy.

The pandemic has the players in a bubble. Each game is another chance to play before lots of empty seats. Another chance to acclimate to the future.

And speaking of boycotts … aren’t boycotts about consumers not buying a product from a company that is objectionable beyond what it sells? Shouldn’t the media at least be able to get that right?

From the LA Times:

Despite James and other players referring to the actions as boycotts, the traditional definition of the term revolves around an organized effort to hurt an entity financially in order to drive change or attract attention. That doesn’t fit this situation. The players aren’t trying to damage their employers — or affiliated entities like sponsors or television networks — but instead want to draw attention to the Blake shooting and social injustice.

“From a pure legal standpoint, I would term these wildcat strikes,” said Joseph Longo, an adjunct professor who teaches sports law at Loyola Law School. Longo is also an attorney and MLB player agent.

Learn more about BLM and the Marxist agenda to transform America in 2020 and burn the place down from Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul. And read about how many Americans have been duped by the BLM movement and its terrorist leaders.

Related Posts

  • Store Wars
  • Have Republicans Lost the Culture and Establishment Wars?
  • Python Wars
  • Power Wars
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • Breaking News: Reform at New College, Sarasota, Florida - February 2, 2023
  • Oh Yes! It Can Get Worse - February 1, 2023
  • “I Will Veto Everything They Send Me” - January 31, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • V4 Stands Against North African and Middle Eastern Invasion
  • The Simple, Elegant Power of the Retirement Compounders
  • Your Survival Guy Prefers Bombardier’s Global Express 7500
  • Does Big Government Create Poverty?
  • How Can You Maximize Natural Immunity to Viruses?
  • Democracy: The Most Dangerous and Insidious Effect of Majority Rule.
  • Is It All Coming Apart in the Government’s Face?
  • BEYOND RUSSIA: America Strengthens India Ties to Counter China
  • My Key West Garden Office
  • The Butterfly Effect and Chaotic Markets

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine?
  • Warren Miller: If You Don’t Do It This Year, You’ll Be…
  • Europe Should Protect Itself
  • “I Will Veto Everything They Send Me”
  • How to Fight Wokism Idiocy
  • US Debt Now Exceeds Annual GDP?
  • The Neocon Russia-Hoaxers of Hamilton 68 Must Be Held Accountable
  • Why Don’t These Mayors Seem to Care?
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Pfizer CEO Terrified of Real Questions About His Vaccines

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Early Advice from Her Dad on Tipping at Charlie Trotter’s
  • Do You Trust This Rally?
  • Reagan’s America Remembered by Your Survival Guy and More
  • What Happens if the “Fed Put” Is Over for Good?
  • Tom Brady Retires, Again. Should You?
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Warren Miller: If You Don’t Do It This Year, You’ll Be…
  • Are the Realists Winning the Debate over the Future of EVs?
  • CATO: Global Freedom Is in Sharp Decline
  • Biden Administration Destroying Retiree Fiduciary Protections

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Early Advice from Her Dad on Tipping at Charlie Trotter’s
  • Treasury Bonds Ready to Rock and Roll
  • Survive and Thrive February 2023: 4 Life Changing Words: “You Should Try This”
  • Tom Brady Retires, Again. Should You?
  • Reagan’s America Remembered by Your Survival Guy and More
  • America’s Unprecedented Debt Problem
  • Iran’s Ballistic Missiles Could Give Russia the Edge in Ukraine
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Why Don’t These Mayors Seem to Care?
  • Tactical Laser Weapon Achieves “First Light”

Breaking News: Reform at New College, Sarasota, Florida

German Opposition Leader Denounces the Country’s “Insane Drunkenness about War”

Early Advice from Her Dad on Tipping at Charlie Trotter’s

What Is Trump’s Argument for Election in 2024?

Powell Slows Fed Funds Rate Increases

Canadian Grain Harvest Drives Railroad Income Gains

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives