Posted on 12/12/2014 7:28:25 AM PST by relictele
The Michael Brown & Eric Garner circus has demonstrated (again) that the media are happy to fill the air with 'X reacts to Y' and 'Y reacts to Z' and 'Z reacts to X' - conveniently arriving back at X to start another cycle - without ever engaging in actual journalistic due diligence.
Despite billions in state of the art satellite trucks, audio/video gear and an army of reporters, the media (apparently) cannot bring themselves to break out of the mode of providing a megaphone to those who are already screaming unintelligibly.
In the 90s, before the truth about his addiction was known fully, Darryl Strawberry wrote an autobiography in which he moaned that certain powers treated him like 'Dred Scott in Johannesburg.' (Apartheid was still in force in South Africa at the time).
Like 99% of sports autobiographies, Strawberry's was ghost-written but at some point the phrase had to be read or discussed by Strawberry himself. The Age of Clinton had not yet dawned so the press, bless them, still occasionally flirted with doing their jobs. One intrepid reporter had the temerity to ask Strawberry some basic questions about the racially hyperbolic phrases. It went like this:
Reporter: “Who`s Dred Scott?”
“Dred who?” Strawberry replied.
“Where`s Johannesburg?” Noble asked.
“Um...um...Africa,” Strawberry is said to have answered.
http://goo.gl/Azy6r8
It’s a fairly innocuous exchange in the long list of athlete/media interactions but a very revealing one. Athletes tell us they are there to win ballgames and choose, consciously or unconsciously, not to concentrate on other things. In most cases, they are telling the absolute truth which is why sports stories are uniformly banal. But, as we know all too well, the sports media are still the media, and 'causes' far outweigh the outcome of a game in their minds.
Whatever his skills as a boxer, Muhammad Ali was and is catnip to them for his anti-Vietnam stance. They are happy to trumpet his sacrifice of prime competition years but less vocal when it comes to his involvement with the very same branch of Islam that has produced the kind of mindless - though verbose - rhetoric that preys on those weak in mind and lacking in character and keeps them on a knife edge looking for any excuse to riot. To hear the media tell it, Ali merely switched churches and changed his ‘slave’ name. As you do.
Multiple generations have been told that John Carlos and Tommie Smith were courageous, pioneers, visionaries, etc. etc. The contrasting - and entirely valid - viewpoint is that they were petulant, narcissistic ingrates who failed to acknowledge that an 'institutionally racist' nation had magically abandoned its heretofore unyielding stance and sent them to represent that nation in the most visible sporting contest in the world (team slots they were entirely free to decline, by the way). Moreover, athletes on the podium receive their medals, wreaths and flowers and THEN salute their flag out of gratitude and patriotism, not the other way round. But leftist mythology is built on the flimsiest of foundations so it must manufacture its heroes and portray antisocial, short-sighted behavior as pregnant with deep meaning and righteous purpose.
Fast-forward to the present day. Athletes are entitled to every cent in their contracts but they are not entitled to acting on falsehoods, incomplete information and/or mindless slogans. T-shirts and hashtags are a poor substitute for thought and discourse. Whatever one may think of Ali, it is undeniable that he stated and defended his position many times. Those who know the NFL 'hands up' players will confirm that at least two of them were, to be charitable, categorically unqualified to set foot on a university campus except for their football abilities.
Why not ask the players who Michael Brown or Eric Garner was? Ask them where they lived and/or died. Ask the names of the ‘racist’ police officers against whom they protest. Ask them about the particulars of each case. Put them on the spot and ask them if they categorically declare the police – i.e. the same ones patrolling the sidelines and the tunnels at their games, many of them African-American – racist. Gauge their comprehension of simple economics i.e. salaries are tied to ticket sales and television ratings which are tied to public demand.
The media are happy to spend hours on (intentionally) fruitless debates along the lines of 'Should the athletes protest?' or 'Should protests be permitted?' while invoking the First Amendment rights of the players. It’s all a load of clever noisemaking because the same media refuse to ask the most basic questions that might expose these players’ ignorance of the facts of the case(s) just as the lone reporter quite easily – almost unintentionally - exposed Strawberry’s fatuous comments. Mind you, the same media that will go to the wall for players’ First Amendment rights will invoke one of their pet –isms to condemn at length the mildest remark from a player, executive, broadcaster, etc. with which they disagree. First Amendment Avenue is a one-way thoroughfare, apparently.
In the wider world, we have seen that in rare instances of similar questions posed to protesters, the protesters resort to mindless shouting, attacking the reporter verbally or physically, grabbing microphones and cameras (i.e. damaging property), or simply fleeing to seek the comfort and anonymity of a mob.
It may seem futile, especially when an ostensibly responsible elected official declares, in the unguarded candor born of hysteria, that she is uninterested in facts. It may seem futile when race hustlers posing as clergymen attempt to deflect the most unambiguous statistics or change the subject but the left’s artifice of ignorance and propaganda has been built built brick by brick and it must be dismantled in the same manner by challenging the left’s own bricklayers on points of fact. If anger must persist let it be genuine anger resulting from public scrutiny as opposed to the ersatz anger of this or that orchestrated ‘movement.’
The quickest way to confound and derail liberals, almost every liberal, is simply to ask questions, and then ask further questions based on the responses received.
It never seems to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG2yELLZgB8
I’ve thought about making small pamphlets with the contact information of local groups that need volunteers and support disadvantaged teens and highlight the ones that have great programming for young men. I would pass these out to the protesters. I bet I would get crickets or some weird answer in response.
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