Leftist Politics Has Destroyed the Unifying Power of Sports
Jun 19, 2020
RUSH: Okay, a couple of tweets here from the president. He says, “Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football. They are planning a very safe and controlled opening. However, if they don’t stand for our National Anthem and our Great American Flag, I won’t be watching!!!†Look, if they — and I know this is gonna happen.
They’re gonna kneel. The coaches are now saying they’re gonna lead the kneeling. Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks. He’s gonna kneel if the NBA starts playing. They’re all going to kneel. Everybody’s gonna be kneeling.
I don’t care what they say it’s about, there’s one thing it ain’t gonna do, and that is it ain’t gonna unify anybody about anything. And so everybody knows that. So what, then, is the actual objective of kneeling during the anthem, if unity ain’t gonna happen?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: No. No, I was just saying, I think the NFL has, whether they know it or not — and they probably don’t. I think they have signed if not a death warrant, they have done themselves a degree of damage they’re not gonna come back from. Professional sports in general in this country, what has it always been? It’s an escape. It’s an escape from what?
The rigors of life elsewhere. It’s an escape from the humdrum of the daily life that everybody has. It’s an escape from a rotten boss. It’s an escape from wishing you had more money. Whatever. It’s an escape from the things that you have to do every day in your life because of responsibility or commitment or what have you.
So an NFL game or a Sunday afternoon — or spending some time watching Major League Baseball, the NBA, college football, whatever — it’s a respite. It’s a place you go to escape all of this, including controversy, the controversy of politics, corruption, you name it. Now the sports leagues are embracing all that you use sports to escape from, and they are incorporating all of it into their daily presentation of their business — football games, baseball games, what have you.
And I just don’t think that this has a life span that anybody can see because it’s gonna totally change the way people perceive sports. Sports was, as far as everybody was concerned — and this is surface stuff. But you’re watching an NFL game on Sunday, let’s say, as an example, and you know (because you have eyes) that the majority of players are African-American, on both teams.
You know that the population of the league is 70% African-American, 30% white — and yet, in that, we all see the teams apparently all unified about one thing: Winning. If there is trouble in the locker room, we don’t know about it. There aren’t any cameras in there, and nobody was talking about it. So it appears that, “Look what sports can do! Sports can unify!
“All these things roiling the rest of society are not happening on the field during the games in the NFL or Major League Baseball.†Well, bye-bye all of that now. Indeed, not just bye-bye all of that, welcome the controversy! Welcome the fact that there isn’t unity! Welcome the fact that the diversity in these teams doesn’t mean that people can get along like we thought it meant.
We thought all this time that an NFL team made up of 70% African-Americans and 30% whites — and, of course, some others, too — can all come together and become a champion — a unified, single-entity team champion, best in the league — all the way to the Super Bowl. And we think, “See? It can be done. People can get along.â€
Now we’re learning, “No, no, and it’s never been that way,†and we’re about to have it beat up the side of our heads every Sunday, every Monday, every Thursday in the NFL. I just don’t see how this extends the life of the National Football League or professional sports in general as we’ve always known it. Now, things change. Change is a constant, and I agree with that.
But this is the kind of change that’s gonna take a while for people to adapt to, and not because people are racist. It’s because these sports, particularly football, became such gigantic businesses because they were an escape. They were a refuge. In addition to everything else they are, they’re people who are demonstrably the best at what they do doing it. You get to watch it.
You get to see the best of the best being the best. You get to see it matter. You get to marvel at it. You get to wonder what it’s like to be on a championship team — something most of us will never, ever know. So you get to live vicariously through all of this greatness, hoping and dreaming someday you might get to experience a day of it or a little bit of it.
All of that’s gonna be gone now, or a lot of it is gonna be gone, and it’s gonna be replaced (and you’re not gonna be allowed to forget it) by a constant reminder that what you’re seeing here is not the reality. I just… I don’t know how this promotes healing. I think it does the exact opposite. “But, Rush! But, Rush! What are these leagues supposed to do? They’re being threatened and they’re being…â€
Yeah, I know. It’s the age-old question. At what point do adults push back. I don’t know that it’s ever gonna happen.
