The horrible horrible world of sports

[DrZoidberg]

Having said all this, I MIGHT agree with Dr. Z in some specific cases. (I like specifics, but this thread deals only with generalities.) All sentient Americans know that the N_____ word is verboten (except between two blacks). But what about mentioning that a young woman is pretty? Such an ordinary remark is verboten among the Super-PC set, yet still seems natural and relatively innocent to many ordinary people.

You are missing the point. It's SPORTS. Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything?

You mean other than advertisers and the people advertised to?

I know you have a penchant for defending thought crime. I don't.

Just because the corporate world joins in on the intolerance doesn't make it a good thing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You mean other than advertisers and the people advertised to?

I know you have a penchant for defending thought crime. I don't.

Dude, you asked a question.

Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything?

I answered it. Clearly companies and advertisers and those advertised to care what athletes think due to the amount of money athletes are paid to promote a product. They've been paying them a lot for a long while.

You tried to negate the importance of what athletes think by pretending no one cares what they think. That was pretty easily debunked. So if you don't like having a question you asked being answered, you should stop asking questions.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Dude, you asked a question.

Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything?

I answered it. Clearly companies and advertisers and those advertised to care what athletes think due to the amount of money athletes are paid to promote a product. They've been paying them a lot for a long while.

You tried to negate the importance of what athletes think by pretending no one cares what they think. That was pretty easily debunked. So if you don't like having a question you asked being answered, you should stop asking questions.

If nothing else, the way an athlete loses endorsements after he or she starts spouting sexist or racist crap, indicates that at least the advertisers think lots and lots of people care.
No one seems to think, "Okay, he's an ass, but our target demographic is smart enough to know that his opinion on women's voting rights has nothing to do with his ability to differentiate between the smooth smoke of our cigars and the burning rat's nest taste of our competitor's product. We'll keep him on the 60-second spot."

The Good Doctor would insist that HE is not subject to manipulation by advertising, and would assume that no one else is or wants to be, thus 'sportsmen' can be ignored for low-brow behavior down in the manual-labor levels of society.

 

[thebeave]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

It's so obvious how there's parallel worlds now. There's the media world of pretend speech where nobody says what they really are thinking. And the real world.

With the advent of the Internet normal people are training themselves to express themselves freely (like we're doing here). When normal people get catapulted into the world of fame and power they aren't always aware that now they need to stop talking like they normally talk.

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master. These are working class people who worked their way up in life. They're not academics. I think it's cruel and stupid to wreck their careers just because they make the mistake of just talking like normal people talk.

Whether or not the people who make these remarks are sexist or racist is anyone's guess. But I highly doubt working class people who use colorful language are literal at all times. Perhaps it's attempt at humour that fails. Or any other non-nefarious explanation. Or they really are racists and sexists? Is that so bad? It's just sports. If you are good at sports you do well. The racism of the organisers of competitions doesn't really matter. Does it? The Nazis failed to stop Jesse Owens from scoring big in 1936.

I think our insistence of ideologically perfect and pure speech is intellectual snobbery and contempt for the working class.

I don't like it. I don't think it's a good thing. I also don't think it will do much to stop racism or sexism. Can't sports be the one place in the world where we let people just be themselves in all their horrible glory? Just so we have one little zone where we get to hear what normal people really think.

What inspired this post? Is there a particular incident that you are thinking of?

I'm not really a sports fan myself, so what happens there is not of much consequence to me. But from what little I've seen, there doesn't seem to be much racism going on within a team or between teams. I see players of different races and backgrounds generally getting along, high fiving, hugging, patting each other on the back, celebrating victories together, consoling each other, etc. To me, sports seems to be more a positve example of how different people can get along. There are the occassional scuffles and fights, but those don't seem to be racially motivated. It used to be that being gay was something you had to hide (at least in male sports), but that seems to have gone by the wayside these days.

What pisses me off is woke shit getting interjected into sports (like it does with everything else). The woke media seems to be scrutinizing every little action to find something to be offended about, and then subsequently punish with reckless abandon. A good example is what happened to tennis commentator Doug Adler:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/25/espn-tennis-analyst-doug-adler-still-paying-for-absurd-racist-accusation/

You likely recall Adler, now 61, an ESPN tennis analyst, a walk-on All-American at USC, as the victim of ESPN’s and the New York Times’ preposterous prosecution of him as an unrestrained, on-air racist that led to his firing as he called the 2017 Australian Open.

That was the episode in which Adler complimented Venus Williams for her successful “guerilla” tactics in poaching the net. Guerilla-style tennis had become such a regularly spoken term that Nike starred Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in a commercial playing “guerilla tennis.”

Just after Adler praised Williams’ guerilla tactics, Ben Rothenberg, a freelancer covering for the New York Times, recklessly tweeted that Adler had just racially slurred her as “a gorilla,” adding, “It’s horrifying that the Williams sisters have to be subjected to this in 2017.”

Its' one thing to basically upend someone's career, or life, because of a racist slur or a sexist comment... it's a punishment that doesn't fit the "crime". But it's a whole new level of absurdity and depravity when its done and the accuser is 100% in the wrong. And no one seems to care. Because social justice.

 

[funinspace]

You mean other than advertisers and the people advertised to?

I know you have a penchant for defending thought crime. I don't.

Just because the corporate world joins in on the intolerance doesn't make it a good thing.

But it is not just sports. Endorsements and advertising is about image, idolization, and wanting to be like that star athlete. Up to a point athletes can still be assholes, they just won't be able to milk the endorsement gravy train...

 

[Swammerdami]

Having said all this, I MIGHT agree with Dr. Z in some specific cases. (I like specifics, but this thread deals only with generalities.) All sentient Americans know that the N_____ word is verboten (except between two blacks). But what about mentioning that a young woman is pretty? Such an ordinary remark is verboten among the Super-PC set, yet still seems natural and relatively innocent to many ordinary people.

You are missing the point. It's SPORTS. Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything? Who gives a rats ass if the guy who wins at long jump is a member of KKK? Or if the bronze medalist pole vaulter is a member of the Taleban? Or if the gold winner of badminton is open about their pedophilia? Or if the guy who does the schedules for the tennis tournament thinks beating your wife is morally ok because it says in the Bible?

How would any of that take away from their athletic performance or ability to organize a sports competition?...

I guess I did "miss the point." I adopted the  Principle of charity and assumed you were speaking of what conservatives call "excessive wokeness." I don't have a problem with porn, but I do draw the line before you do, evidently. If the best badminton player in the world is a child rapist, I'd prefer the second-best player to get the gold medal while the best player is sent to prison, or at least ostracized.

The Taliban is a murderous group with disgusting "ideology"; if the third-best pole vaulter is a member of the Taliban I don't want him competing: It would send a bad message to children.

I try to be tolerant, but I don't tolerate rape, injustice, and various other crimes.

I admit this is the first I've heard that some people treat pedophilia as just another ideology to be tolerated. I invoked the Principle of charity to partially agree with you. Now that you've clarified, I hereby retract that partial agreement.

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Dude, you asked a question.

Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything?

I answered it. Clearly companies and advertisers and those advertised to care what athletes think due to the amount of money athletes are paid to promote a product. They've been paying them a lot for a long while.

You tried to negate the importance of what athletes think by pretending no one cares what they think. That was pretty easily debunked. So if you don't like having a question you asked being answered, you should stop asking questions.

It was a rhetorical question. Why would anyone care what an athlete thinks about anything? It's retarded.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You mean other than advertisers and the people advertised to?

I know you have a penchant for defending thought crime. I don't.

Just because the corporate world joins in on the intolerance doesn't make it a good thing.

But it is not just sports. Endorsements and advertising is about image, idolization, and wanting to be like that star athlete. Up to a point athletes can still be assholes, they just won't be able to milk the endorsement gravy train...

No, it's just sports. Even if you idolise an athlete, it's not their brain or their thoughts you idolise

 

[Toni]

Dude, you asked a question.

Who gives a shit what an athlete thinks about anything?

I answered it. Clearly companies and advertisers and those advertised to care what athletes think due to the amount of money athletes are paid to promote a product. They've been paying them a lot for a long while.

You tried to negate the importance of what athletes think by pretending no one cares what they think. That was pretty easily debunked. So if you don't like having a question you asked being answered, you should stop asking questions.

It was a rhetorical question. Why would anyone care what an athlete thinks about anything? It's retarded.

Well, no one will ever call you woke.

 

[Toni]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

It's so obvious how there's parallel worlds now. There's the media world of pretend speech where nobody says what they really are thinking. And the real world.

With the advent of the Internet normal people are training themselves to express themselves freely (like we're doing here). When normal people get catapulted into the world of fame and power they aren't always aware that now they need to stop talking like they normally talk.

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master. These are working class people who worked their way up in life. They're not academics. I think it's cruel and stupid to wreck their careers just because they make the mistake of just talking like normal people talk.

Whether or not the people who make these remarks are sexist or racist is anyone's guess. But I highly doubt working class people who use colorful language are literal at all times. Perhaps it's attempt at humour that fails. Or any other non-nefarious explanation. Or they really are racists and sexists? Is that so bad? It's just sports. If you are good at sports you do well. The racism of the organisers of competitions doesn't really matter. Does it? The Nazis failed to stop Jesse Owens from scoring big in 1936.

I think our insistence of ideologically perfect and pure speech is intellectual snobbery and contempt for the working class.

I don't like it. I don't think it's a good thing. I also don't think it will do much to stop racism or sexism. Can't sports be the one place in the world where we let people just be themselves in all their horrible glory? Just so we have one little zone where we get to hear what normal people really think.

What inspired this post? Is there a particular incident that you are thinking of?

I'm not really a sports fan myself, so what happens there is not of much consequence to me. But from what little I've seen, there doesn't seem to be much racism going on within a team or between teams. I see players of different races and backgrounds generally getting along, high fiving, hugging, patting each other on the back, celebrating victories together, consoling each other, etc. To me, sports seems to be more a positve example of how different people can get along. There are the occassional scuffles and fights, but those don't seem to be racially motivated. It used to be that being gay was something you had to hide (at least in male sports), but that seems to have gone by the wayside these days.

What pisses me off is woke shit getting interjected into sports (like it does with everything else). The woke media seems to be scrutinizing every little action to find something to be offended about, and then subsequently punish with reckless abandon. A good example is what happened to tennis commentator Doug Adler:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/25/espn-tennis-analyst-doug-adler-still-paying-for-absurd-racist-accusation/

You likely recall Adler, now 61, an ESPN tennis analyst, a walk-on All-American at USC, as the victim of ESPN’s and the New York Times’ preposterous prosecution of him as an unrestrained, on-air racist that led to his firing as he called the 2017 Australian Open.

That was the episode in which Adler complimented Venus Williams for her successful “guerilla” tactics in poaching the net. Guerilla-style tennis had become such a regularly spoken term that Nike starred Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in a commercial playing “guerilla tennis.”

Just after Adler praised Williams’ guerilla tactics, Ben Rothenberg, a freelancer covering for the New York Times, recklessly tweeted that Adler had just racially slurred her as “a gorilla,” adding, “It’s horrifying that the Williams sisters have to be subjected to this in 2017.”

Its' one thing to basically upend someone's career, or life, because of a racist slur or a sexist comment... it's a punishment that doesn't fit the "crime". But it's a whole new level of absurdity and depravity when its done and the accuser is 100% in the wrong. And no one seems to care. Because social justice.

I see that you are extremely upset about unfairness and unfair accusations directed at a newscaster by an ignorant person who apparently does not understand the difference between guerrilla and gorilla. I do find such ignorance appalling as well and worse when it is taken up by others.

That is miniscule, trivial compared to the harm that is done to people every day by a society that tolerates them being referred to in terms that describe them as less than human, less than intelligent, unintelligent, demeaning, denigrating, dehumanizing, demoralizing. Words racial slurs, sexist slurs, anti- LGBTQ slurs, the R word that the Good Doctor used upthread--and others. All of those are also based upon ignorance--and a need and desire to relegate certain persons to a less than position. Which make it so much easier to structure society so that it treats certain persons as less worthy than others.

Like you, I'm not much of a sports fan but my husband and some of my sons are so sometimes I see/hear/hear about about matches. Rarely, if ever, is there any racially motivated animus between players on teams that I've observed or hear about. But it is not at all uncommon---and thoroughly disgusting that in some places (Europe) some 'fans' like to do things like throw bananas and banana peels at black soccer players.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It was a rhetorical question.

Oh, you are talking about goalposts.

Why would anyone care what an athlete thinks about anything? It's retarded.

Whether you think it is "retarded" or not, clearly people care what athletes think. Some of them even went as far as shitting their pants when a number of athletes kneeled.

 

[Politesse]

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master.

Why would it take a Master's Degree to remember not to use sexist and racial slurs at work? You want professional pay, learn to be a fucking professional. There's no reason a person in a position of well-copmpensated authority should need to go around insulting colleagues and employees in the first place, let alone using profanity and ethnic slurs to do so. I do have a Master's degree, but I don't recall ever taking a class on "not calling people names"; that was always taken as a given. If someone can't handle that most obvious of rules, I've no problem at all with their position being opened up for someone with a lick of common sense.

Are you honestly claiming that when you call someone "retarded" as you did earlier in this thread, that you have no idea this is a slur since you never got a Master's Degree in psychology? Is that, concretely, what you are claiming about your own IQ, that you are too witless to understand when you are insulting someone unless it has been slowly spelled out to you by a professor somewhere? I am not insulting your actual intelligence, merely questioning the wisdom what I believe to be a purely rhetorical tactic of feigning stupidity. I think that you are, in fact, smart enough to know that calling someone a retard while the cameras are rolling is a bad idea, and not because of the contents of your bank account of any degree you might hold. So no, I do not think it would be "elitist" to fire you for something any adult should have the common sense not to do.

 

[funinspace]

But it is not just sports. Endorsements and advertising is about image, idolization, and wanting to be like that star athlete. Up to a point athletes can still be assholes, they just won't be able to milk the endorsement gravy train...

No, it's just sports. Even if you idolise an athlete, it's not their brain or their thoughts you idolise

Yeah, it's more than just sports. Otherwise endorsements wouldn't exist. Personally I don't care about watching organized sports. Maybe all YOU get out of sports is 'the best of the best', but clearly the EWE are enamored by image and general idolizing.

 

[TSwizzle]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

I don’t know how often this actually happens, doesn’t seem very often. I can’t recall anything recent but may have missed it. Is there something specific you have in mind ? But in general, public figures, even sports figures need to mind their language. They can’t be dropping “n” bombs left and right. But I somewhat agree that the reaction can be over the top when someone says something off color and the Twitterati mob get mobilized to get them canceled.

I did see a headline about a German coach trying to motivate the German Olympic cycling team to “catch up with the camel herders” when referring to the Algerian cyclists in front. He probably got into a bit of bother for that.

 

[Toni]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

I don’t know how often this actually happens, doesn’t seem very often. I can’t recall anything recent but may have missed it. Is there something specific you have in mind ? But in general, public figures, even sports figures need to mind their language. They can’t be dropping “n” bombs left and right. But I somewhat agree that the reaction can be over the top when someone says something off color and the Twitterati mob get mobilized to get them canceled.

I did see a headline about a German coach trying to motivate the German Olympic cycling team to “catch up with the camel herders” when referring to the Algerian cyclists in front. He probably got into a bit of bother for that.

One would hope that he would get into a bit of bother.

Seriously. I've worked a lot of different jobs, including ones that all one needed to do is to be able to tell which part of a corn plant was the tassel and yank it off, along with a bunch of kids, all white, in a pretty non-PC area and time and nowhere was it EVER ok to use racial epithets. Not EVER. FFS, my dad was a class A bigot; my father's stepfather was in the KKK and definitely not above using the N word but woe would have been to me if I ever did. As a little child, I knew it wasn't acceptable even though I heard it from adults in my life occaisonally. In the rural mid-West. In the 60's. Even more so when we traveled down south. It just ain't that hard.

 

[TSwizzle]

Here’s an old example (2012) of how over the top the reaction can be when a sportsman makes a flippant remark ;

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand has been found guilty of improper conduct and fined £45,000 by the Football Association for comments on Twitter. An independent commission concluded Ferdinand's response to a tweet describing Chelsea's Ashley Cole as a "choc ice" did not make him a racist.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/18847477

 

[Toni]

Here’s an old example (2012) of how over the top the reaction can be when a sportsman makes a flippant remark ;

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand has been found guilty of improper conduct and fined £45,000 by the Football Association for comments on Twitter. An independent commission concluded Ferdinand's response to a tweet describing Chelsea's Ashley Cole as a "choc ice" did not make him a racist.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/18847477

Sure. Non racist people can say racist things.

I don't think it's a crime to be a racist nor do I think that being a racist should be a crime.

I don't think that thinking, writing or saying (or tweeting) racist things should be illegal.

I don't have a problem with people writing or saying or tweeting racist things facing consequences.

 

[Toni]

Here’s an old example (2012) of how over the top the reaction can be when a sportsman makes a flippant remark ;

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand has been found guilty of improper conduct and fined £45,000 by the Football Association for comments on Twitter. An independent commission concluded Ferdinand's response to a tweet describing Chelsea's Ashley Cole as a "choc ice" did not make him a racist.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/18847477

Also from the article you linked:

But it was ruled the centre-half had brought the game into disrepute.

"The commission found that the breach included a reference to ethnic origin, colour or race," read an FA statement.

Ferdinand was also warned as to his future conduct. Manchester United have decided not to appeal against the decision.

The United defender tweeted: "I hear you fella! Choc ice is classic hahahahahaha!!" in response to a message from @carltonEbanks which stated: "Looks like Ashley Cole's going to be their choc ice. Then again he's always been a sell out. Shame on him."

The term relates to the black and white nature of a choc ice and can imply someone is being black on the outside and white on the inside.

The tweet appeared on Ferdinand's timeline after Chelsea and England left-back Cole appeared in court as a defence witness for team-mate John Terry, who was cleared of racially abusing Ferdinand's younger brother, Anton, in a game against QPR on 23 October last year.

 

[TSwizzle]

Sure. Non racist people can say racist things.

I don't think it's a crime to be a racist nor do I think that being a racist should be a crime.

I don't think that thinking, writing or saying (or tweeting) racist things should be illegal.

I don't have a problem with people writing or saying or tweeting racist things facing consequences.

Of course you don’t.

 

[bigfield]

This thread: "I wish people weren't so touchy about racism and sexism."