ESPN is a tanker for many years. Good.
The programming allows and encourages left-leaning opinions and views. Guests and hosts are free to speak out with a leftist doggerel and host no consequences. A suspension will be issued to anyone who offers a different view. Sage Steele was, by example, reprimanded for not aligning with leftist ideology and taken from programming. She thought that people should have a choice about vaccines — that they shouldn’t be mandated. Jamele Hill, Keith Olbermann and other nuts vilified her for this.
“Around The Horn” is a daytime program hosted by Tony Raili. Sports journalists are often asked questions. Opinions are ‘graded’ good or bad by the host, with good ones being rewarded with plus points. Bad takes are ‘down’ graded. Winner is whoever has more points. It’s generally mediocre programing, but interesting on occasion. While I was doing sports cartooning, LA TimesIt was fun and interesting to me. I regarded it as “research.”
On Friday’s “Around the Horn,” J.A. Adande was a guest. Adande was a former employee of the LA TimesThen, ESPN. He’s now a professor at Northwestern, and teaches Sports Journalism.
Adande was interviewed about human rights abuser host hosting, and in particular the hostage-like circus of CCP slavers making a Uyghur bear an Olympic torch at the Opening Ceremony.
The host asked for Adande’s opinion. Adande said: (emphasis mine)
“I think it’s standard in sports right now, you have to have a cognitive dissonance…We can criticize who? China’s human rights record when we have ongoing attacks by agents of the state against unarmed citizens, and we have assaults on the voting rights of our people of color of various states in this countries (sic)”
The host was perhaps slightly stunned at his answer and asked for more:
“I appreciate what you just said there… we’re talking about China here, we are talking about human rights, we are talking about genocide, and the ICO chose China, we will go there, all while maintaining they are for human rights and things of that nature and sports can conquer that – how do you view it.”
Adande’s response:
“Well again where can you choose [a country] that, that is free… it’s very hard to find a country that isn’t problematic, when it comes to human right, including here (USA)”
The host, perhaps sensing that he was being pulled into a rabbit hole, didn’t award Adande any “points” but he did offer some support with his “Appreciate all that you’re saying” line.
.@jadandeDiscussions on reconciling the Beijing Winter Olympics in light of China’s ongoing human rights crisis pic.twitter.com/mqkOygjBXV
— Around The Horn (@AroundtheHorn) February 4, 2022
I don’t appreciate anyone comparing a genocidal authoritarian communist state that enslave people, brutally murders and “disappears” dissidents, and disappears athletes, with the United States. CCP Olympics are only a day away, but Chinese goons have already beaten journalists covering CCP abuses at Olympics.
What Adande said isn’t just absurd on its face and ignorant; it’s an affront to common sense and objective fact. ESPN should be ashamed, but it’s not. That’s how do you know? The clip of Adande’s absurd comments was posted to Twitter. Apparently it’s something ESPN thinks worthy of highlighting.
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