But this can’t be. I thought hipster slackers, liberal snobs, and militant blacks would make up the new audience?
Communism was appealing to European elites because they regarded it as insurance against social mobility. If one can ignore its dictatorial blood-soaked history, that is why it still has appeal to the elites.
What is mystifying is how and why so many of the poor have been suckered by Marxism’s obviously fatuous selling points. They gladly, eagerly cede their freedoms and individual sovereignty for a vague promise of being paid off someday, somehow under the rubric of social/economic justice (read: forcible taking). They don’t seem to notice or care that these rewards usually never come or if they do they are as meager as the settlements in class action lawsuits in which corporations pay out billions and so called class members get a few dollars if they get anything at all. The elites (lawyers in this instance) clean up and declare victory and the gullible applaud and demand more pantomime.
The point of all this is that ESPN’s production and operations staff are now mostly young recent college grads who are gung ho for communist delusions. They are no different to workers in a communist regime eg Apple component manufacturers: they are housed, bused, clothed, and fed by the company who pay them a pittance.
They cheerlead this bifurcation of society even as they live and work on the poor side of the line of demarcation. Except for the high tech whiz bang graphics it’s run like the DIY basement studio in ‘Wayne’s World.’ The writers and broadcasters (they usually have to do double duty) in the Charlotte college football production facility regularly discuss the shoestring budget and salaries therein.
Short version: ESPN is being devoured slowly and painfully by its own rabid SJW animal but has chosen to lock itself in the cage with it rather than commit leftist heresy.