Free Republic

I used to be naive enough to believe that the most important leaders in the country were surrounded by the best and brightest to serve them, and, by hopeful extension, us. But if they can’t get simple, right-from-wrong matters correct … In 1990 the first President Bush appointed Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose fame and fortune were predicated on steroids to win international bodybuilding glory, Chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. This was an absurd choice, antithetical to both physical fitness and sports. Surely there would be an outcry, widespread ridicule to reverse this misguided decision. But nothing....

“My purpose and my mission is bigger than sports,” Berry explained. “I’m here to represent those … who died due to systemic racism. That’s the important part.” Specifically? She offered no specifics. But would she include the 650,000 Civil War dead in response to systemic racism? How about the hundreds of urban blacks annually murdered by urban blacks, murders met with silence by those otherwise decrying unspecified systemic racism? And a disproportionate number of attacks on American urban Asians and ultra-orthodox Jews are being committed by whom, white supremacists? Or a larger than normal percentage of those crimes committed by...

Given that I’m assigned to cover sports as delivered by TV, two recent developments have become dominant, repetitive themes: 1) If you don’t have a bet or bets on the games, you’re out of touch with sports, especially how they plan to sustain viewership and TV billions by suckering the young and vulnerable. How would MLB now welcome Pete Rose to the Hall of Fame? “Come on in, Pete! Gambling on baseball is good!”

“Free the Slaves in Nigeria and the Congo” would be good. Both African countries still enslave blacks, but the BLM movement and its affiliates aren’t interested. They’re working on freeing American slaves, though that freedom was won in a war that cost 650,000 mostly white lives 157 years ago. OK. Then how about this: “Stop the Slaughter! — B.H.”

These days you never know when you’re a goner. You never know if your career and deeds — good deeds, well-intended deeds and honest work — will be hijacked by fringe lunatics or the merely wishful to publicly paint you as what they want you to be, hope you are or read online that you definitely are. Thus you become a racist, because that’s a quick, effective substitute for reasonable, civil dialogue and for dealing with certain clear, present and often unpopular truths.

Let’s give David Stern the benefit of his clout. This week, when he and Commissioner-in-waiting Adam Silver, in a released statement, provided Jason Collins their support and approval as an “exemplary member of the NBA family,” they might have come at it through a different door. They might have instead released the following: “You’re kidding, right? How could we possibly have the audacity to pass judgment on Collins’ decision to reveal that he’s gay — to offer our official position and blessings on his lifestyle — when the league indulges, suffers and excuses just about every act in The Big...

I'm not one of those TV watchers (or newspaper columnists) who anticipates and then identifies political bias in every report from Iraq. All wars are hell, thus a report on the number of American combat deaths, wounded and traumatized doesn't necessarily strike me as establishing or lending itself to a network's anti-war political agenda, real or imagined. And an upbeat report about the capture or destruction of enemy forces responsible for indiscriminate terror and carnage - the eradication of an IED operation along Iraqi roads, for example - doesn't necessarily provide me evidence of a network's political support for the...

<p>May 2, 2004 -- CURT Smith, author of "Voices of the Game" and chronicler of all that binds baseball to broadcasting, had a frightening thought. "What if the next Vin Scully is out there and no one will hire him? What if he can't find work because his audition tape isn't loaded with screaming and shtick and hyperbole? Look at it this way: When's the last time 'SportsCenter' chose to replay a classy, dignified call of a team announcer's call?"</p>