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Like academia, entertainment, and most of corporate America, the head offices of the four major sports leagues in our nation seem to have gone “woke” in a very big way.
In a nation and a world which is becoming more politicized and polarized by the day, tens of millions of sports fans were hoping major league sports would stay out of the “identity politics” business and continue to deliver them a product which helped their minds to decompress from the daily exponentially escalating anger-filled rhetoric now seeping into every single thing they see, read, and hear.
Not so much. The liberal to far-left executives who now make up much of the head offices of major league sports were not about to give the fans of their respective leagues a break from the woke tsunami. All the opposite. They have become desperate to get virtual hugs from the various far-left factions by virtue-signaling their “wokeness” every chance they get.
As but a few examples, first, cast your mind back to when Major League Baseball decided to punish the city and citizens of Atlanta in the summer of 2021 by pulling the All Star game out of the city. Why? Because they were brow-beaten by the woke mob into at least pretending Georgia’s excellent voter integrity law would somehow suppress votes. Most especially those of minority citizens. A fabrication that has since been thoroughly repudiated by the facts on the ground.
By genuflecting to the woke mob, the executives of Major League Baseball cost the Atlanta area an estimated $70 million or more in revenue. Seeing as how metro Atlanta is majority non-white, who did the virtue-signaling boycott by the entitled MLB executives really hurt?
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Next, we have the “NFL Votes initiative” which was created two months before the highly contentious 2020 presidential election as a joint effort between the league and the NFL Players Association to register as many citizens as possible at NFL stadiums.
As one NFL source called it: “…voter education, registration, activism.” Activism being the key word.
A former NFL player I spoke with said, “While the league was spinning it as a ‘nonpartisan initiative,’ a number of players and former players believe it was created solely as a platform to help the Democratic Party to defeat Trump and the Republicans.”
After that, we have the NBA. Or, as some people have come to refer to the league: “An owned and operated entity of The People’s Republic of China.”
Last, we have two stories involving the head office of the National Hockey League. The first being when the NHL went out of its way to interject via tweet: “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real.”
Tucker Carlson was one of many who objected to more identity politics being forced upon sports fans. Said Carlson in part: “So clearly political forces hijack professional sports as a way to brainwash the young men who watch professional sports. That’s, of course, the entire point of it. It’s strategic. But why does nobody push back?”
Well, in another controversy involving the National Hockey League, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did push back. In a very big and successful way.
The NHL was openly pushing discrimination – in a pathetic attempt to appear against discrimination – when they sent out another tweet about the “Pathway to Hockey Summit” taking place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 2nd: Said the tweet in part about the job fair: “Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability…”
A security guard peers out from behind NHL-branded fencing at the entrance where players arrive at Toronto’s Royal York hotel, which is acting as the “bubble” ahead of the return of the league’s season following disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sunday, July 26, 2020. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
Whoops. That sure sounds like the NHL was deliberately shutting out certain other demographics. AKA: Discrimination.
The office of Governor Ron DeSantis also seemed to see it that way and retorted in part: “Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity.”
After the forceful and correct pushback from the governor’s office the NHL caved and backtracked by not only deleting the original tweet, but by announcing the job fair was suddenly open to anyone over 18 years of age.
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For me, I don’t care if someone is straight, gay, trans, black, white, brown, or green. If he or she is the best person for the job, they should get it. Period. Watering down qualifications or wontedly discriminating against other communities to redress past real or perceived grievances is not the answer.
Unless of course, you happen to be “woke.”
While the professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB most certainly do represent every political persuasion, a large number of them are conservative and are faith-based. As is much of their collective fan base.
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And yet, the head offices of those leagues no longer seem to care about those two particular demographics. With each passing day, they are going more “woke” in a seeming effort to please but one audience: far-left activists and the organizations they front.
Oh, for the days when fans could have a hot dog and a cold-one while enjoying political- and hate-free sports.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DOUG MACKINNON
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