The Gunslinger Throws It Into Triple Coverage…Again
“He throws it into triple coverage-amazing, Freeman has it! Touchdown, Packers!”
“Well, six interceptions in one game….can’t get much lower, er…higher than that.”
Watching Brett Favre play quarterback for the Packers was a battle of such extremes. You never knew exactly where or to whom he’d throw the ball. On almost every play I was kept on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t ask for a more entertaining QB growing up.
However, I don’t feel as excited about his political commentary, He sometimes forces his opinions…and much like his many interceptions and fumbles, they’re not always elegant.
This week, the Gunslinger appeared on The Andrew Klavan Show, “blasting woke sports.” Basically, he repeated what a lot of right-wingers have been saying and continue to say about protests such as kneeling and the recent move of the MLB All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.
The notion that sports be divorced from politics is understandable, if impossible.
Let’s see…if you have to choose between COVID, another mass shooting, or an amazing, last second half-court buzzer beater, what would you rather deal with?
Many of us strongly prefer to watch some mindless sports instead of reveling in more division, tragedy and hate.
It’s simply not possible with so many societal issues.
In regards to the national anthem controversy, the song itself has quite a political history. Why should it be played at recreational sports games which aren’t government functions?
Furthermore, we must note that the right-wing ‘politicized’ sports before the left did. Several years ago, sports commentator Stephen A. Smith pointed out NFL athletes generally stayed in the locker room for the anthem until 2009. Then, they began taking the field during the song because the Department of Defense paid the NFL to do so, “as part of a marketing strategy to make the athletes look more patriotic.”
Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake investigated the Pentagon’s monetary donations to the NFL, MLB, NHL and MLS, calling the dealings “paid patriotism” in a 2015 report.
Mr. Favre was still playing in 2009. I don’t remember him making any comment at the time or since about the government’s obvious injection of politics into sports. He wants the politics he disagrees with out and the politics he agrees with in.
For a deeper discussion on the whole ‘should athletes/sports be political’ question and police reform, check out some earlier pieces:
NFL Anthem Protests: To Protest Or Not To Protest? (September 2017)
A Way Forward After Minneapolis (May 2020)
Defunding+Streamlining The Police? (June 2020)
The Bucks’ Historic Boycott (August 2020)
NBA Strike: What’s next? (September 2020)
Yet, there are some new nuggets to be found in the Gunslinger’s blunt talk. Mr. Favre claimed that there was no locker room tension between African-Americans and Whites during his career from 1991–2011.
Huh. Does Brett’s experience reflects broader society? The Gallup polling outfit began asking “Would you say relations between Whites and Blacks are very good, somewhat good, somewhat bad or very bad?” in 2002. 70% of Black adults thought relations were either somewhat or very good then, as opposed to 62% for whites. By 2021, 36% of Black adults and 46% of White adults believed the same.
So, multiple racial groups believe race relations have declined. How come?
A lot has happened in the last twenty years. The election of Barack Obama, multiple high profile police shootings of African-Americans, the rise of social media, etc.
Perhaps relations weren’t as good as the numbers made it seem 20 years ago. Without tools such as smartphones and Facebook, how could a racist or out of line cop-or anyone else, for that matter- be held accountable? Part of me thinks many minorities say relations were somewhat or very good because they didn’t see the possibility of anything changing anytime soon.
On the other side of the coin, there’s no question media, whether right-wing or left-wing, often meddles and pushes a narrative it wants. On his Thursday podcast, ‘traditionalist’ (rational right-winger I like to call him) Bill O’Reilly cited a study made by Professor Eric Kaufmann, who summarized his findings on Newsweek. I encourage you to read the entire piece, but I’ll quote one of his most intriguing conclusions here:
“I asked some Black survey respondents to read a passage from the critical race theory-inspired writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, a passage from Coates’ writing about how “the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body.” To others I gave nothing to read, or a mild paragraph.
What I found was staggering: Reading even a single paragraph from Coates had a significant impact on Black respondents’ ability to believe in their own agency.
Just 68 percent of Black respondents who read Coates’ paragraph agreed with the statement, “When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work” — compared to 83 percent of those who did not, a statistically-significant effect.”
One paragraph got 15% of black respondents in this example to believe less in their own agency. One paragraph! Imagine reading, hearing and consuming similar messages for almost your entire life. If you’re told that every cop is racist and whites hate you over and over, it’s going to shape how you view the world, to a drastic degree.
The point here is not to say Mr. Coates’s writing is all the same. Rather, having consuming material with this tone and perspective-and all parts of the media like to pick and choose, creating a hodgepodge of sources-will make respondents believe whatever the media source wants them to believe. In this case, minorities having lower agency and that America is a racist society.
So, what are the takeaways?
1. Unfortunately, not possible to separate politics from sports. They never were separate. Anyone who says they want politics out of sports is really saying “I want the politics I disagree with” out of them.
2. According to multiple groups, race relations have declined as high profile shootings and the technology to capture them developed. It’s possible blacks and other groups bit their tongues, believing things were as good as they could get or didn’t see any brightness on the horizon.
3. Media narratives (from any political persuasion) shape how people think in concrete, statistically significant ways. Professor Kaufmann’s research suggests some of this racial turmoil is pushed by actors who stand to financially or otherwise benefit.
Per the usual, race relations, sports and activism cannot be reduced to small soundbites or talking points. Ignore the ones who try to boil them down in this way.
Even if they are a legendary figure such as the Gunslinger.