Imagine a group called, say, Let’s Cure Cancer, was found to have nothing to do with curing cancer but with giving tips to arsonists. Think our sports would fully and publicly endorse Let’s Cure Cancer?
Thursday, about an hour before this season’s opener began with the Yankees and Nationals taking knees along the foul lines and the center field scoreboard in D.C. chanting “Black Lives Matter,” Ch. 4 News broadcast the surveillance video of a 12-year-old black kid in Brooklyn having the hell beaten and kicked out of him by five black teens.
The kid’s mother was beside herself with grief. A black neighbor, identified as Ken Garner, told Ch. 4, “We always talk about Black Lives Matter, but what are we doing to ourselves?”
Similar is now regularly asked by the families of victims of violent black-on-black crime, especially murder, including infants and children, by gun-wielding young men who daily escalate the record death counts within our cities. And all of it occurs to the conspicuous absence and silence of Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter is a sweet-sounding con. The Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd has served less as a cause than an excuse, a welcomed starter’s pistol to foment radical, violent destruction of anything that strikes BLM “protestors” as a target for vandalism, arson and revolution to feed extreme left-wing fascism.
The founders of BLM are admitted, proud “trained Marxists.” Black Lives Matter has almost nothing to do with black lives. Its goal is to destroy American historic symbols and institutions, not to demonstrate concern for the continuing and growing slaughter of blacks in our cities.
To small surprise, our pro sports, stuck in frightened pandering mode, chose not to know or to ignore this. Thus, no NBA, NFL or MLB game will appear on TV without the presumption of every white viewer being a racist or in immediate need of racial recalibration. Having not oppressed a minority since breakfast, that’s sickening.
None of these commissioners is asked, “Now that you’ve thoroughly endorsed it, what do you really know about Black Lives Matter?”
The NBA, NFL and MLB have declared for all of us that this is the group that deserves our unconditional respect and support. Taking a knee is now a visual, take-names referendum on whether one is a racist, courtesy of commissioners who couldn’t foresee the large can of lockstep political goose-stepping they invited.
For those few to have done their homework to find that BLM is antithetical to democracy can they risk the perils of refusing to kneel to BLM servitude? After all, BLM has inspired the destruction of anything and everything, including statues honoring the bravery of pre-Civil War abolitionists. That means more to BLM than any latest count of dead-in-the-streets black lives.
But Black Lives Matter, like Let’s Cure Cancer, has a nice ring to it. Ever see a BLM urban protest of blacks daily murdering blacks? Same here. But BLM is too busy advocating indiscriminate rioting, looting, vandalizing and destruction of churches, museums, municipal buildings, parks, public transportation and destruction of businesses — some black-owned
Look at the sides our sports have chosen. Last week Gerrit Cole said he has no problem wearing a BLM patch on his Yankees uniform because “it’s freedom of speech. It’s the Bill of Rights. It’s what the country is founded on, to be able to express yourself freely.”
Cool. But would that include the freedom to eliminate the conspicuously large Nike swoosh on the front of his uniform? Nike is financially married to totalitarian, enslaving Communist Red China. Red China-partnered Nike millions call many shots in U.S. sports.
What of the pro-democracy freedom movement in Hong Kong desperate to be free from Red China? Maybe they can all take a knee.
And now the Yankees have traded Irving Berlin and Kate Smith for Nike dough.
Our sports, including rights activists LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick, have chosen Nike money over democracy. And now Black Lives Matter, a movement that has never cared about black lives unless their deaths can be exploited for chaos, has gamed the MLB, the NBA and NFL.
Thursday, before the Yanks-Nats began, actor Morgan Freeman was heard on the PA system: “Today, as every day, we come together as equals.”
That’s odd. When the NBA Kings’ TV voice of 32 years, Grant Napear, tweeted much the same — “All Lives Matter — every one of them!” — he was forced to resign as a racist, and also fired from his radio program.
But in the name of progress and equality, we keep sprinting backward, our eyes closed, capitulating to those who keep laying us lower.
MLB opener shows familiar bad trends
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln. … Thursday’s MLB opener in D.C. on ESPN began with the public address man introducing the Nationals as if the stadium was packed, slowly and excitedly shouting to no one the names of the starters. Or did he think fans at home stood and applauded?
The game had that last-year feel to it: In 5 ¹/₃ innings, five runs, three on two home runs, and 16 strikeouts. And Gary Sanchez, still trying to hit homers on every swing, whiffing all three at-bats.
One thing that appeared out of place was Yankee Tyler Wade’s bunt single. He’ll never make one of those MLB Network tutorials on how kids should pose at the plate.
Play-by-player Matt Vasgersian had a good night because he didn’t try to be a slick wise guy. He noted that Tyler’s bunt allowed the Yanks “to scratch out a run” — the perfect way to describe it. And two in the booth — Vasgersian and Alex Rodriguez, sans Jessica Mendoza explaining baseball to us — made for some breathing room.
Throughout the game, ESPN’s scroll reported that the MLS Vancouver team won, 2-0, despite a 4 percent chance of something or other.
Buying new playoff spots
If you don’t think MLB’s just-invented expanded playoffs for this season has anything to do with anything except TV money — especially ESPN’s — see me after class.
The Toronto Blue Jays have become America’s Team.
Though he’ll still be available for his self-coronations, Mike Francesa’s latest “Stop the presses!” farewell Thursday naturally included reminders that he’s rich, with a second home in Florida and thoroughbred racehorses. He might also own, as Ed Norton said, “a string of poloponies.”
Reader Alex Burton: “Mike Tyson, 54, will fight Roy Jones, Jr., 51, at the Dignity Health Sports Park in California. I guess the Embarrassing Cash-Grab Sports Park was booked.”
Perhaps the Mets would sell more cardboard cutout fans if they offered a cash prize to the first beheaded by a foul ball.
