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On 7/19/19 1:01 PM, Michael Meeropol wrote:
Hi Louis -- last few items behind a WAPO paywall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/07/19/espns-dan-le-batard-rips-president-trump-derides-networks-no-politics-policy/
Sorry about that. I even took out a Washington Post sub just as a
workaround.
President Donald Trump greets supporters during a rally in Greenville,
N.C., on Wednesday. (Gerry Broome/AP)
By Des Bieler July 19 at 12:23 PM
“There’s a racial division in this country that’s being instigated by
the president, and we here at ESPN haven’t had the stomach for that fight.”
With those words, Dan Le Batard launched into an impassioned monologue
Thursday. The host of popular ESPN TV and radio shows ripped into both
President Trump in the wake of “Send her back!” chants at a rally the
night before, and his own network, which has been advising its on-air
personalities to refrain from political commentary.
Le Batard, 50, was speaking on his radio show when he noted that he was
the son of Cuban immigrants and said, “What happened last night, this
felt un-American.”
At the rally Wednesday in Greenville, N.C., Trump was criticizing Rep.
Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali refugee who became a naturalized American
citizen, when the “Send her back!” chants rang out. Trump, who tweeted
on Sunday that “ ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” such as Omar
should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested
places from which they came,” said Thursday that he “felt a little bit
badly” about the chanting and tried to quickly end it, but he let it go
on for 13 seconds at the rally before resuming his remarks.
ADVERTISING
[At rally, crowd responds to Trump’s criticism of Somali-born
congresswoman Ilhan Omar with chants of ‘Send her back!’]
On his show, Le Batard read a tweet posted Wednesday evening by Fox
Sports 1′s Nick Wright, who wrote, “I don’t talk politics on here but
this isn’t political, this is obvious: This is abhorrent, obviously
racist, dangerous rhetoric and not calling it out makes you complicit.
The ‘send her back’ chant + the ‘go back to where you came from’ are so
antithetical to what we should be.”
“It is so right, what he is saying there,” Le Batard said of Wright. “It
is so wrong, what the president of our country is doing, trying to get
reelected by dividing the masses, at a time when the old white man, the
old rich white man, feels oppressed, being attacked, by minorities.”
“This isn’t about politics; it’s about race,” said Le Batard, who noted
that ESPN personalities “only talk about it” when outspoken sports
figures such NBA coaches Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich offer opinions on
the subject.
“We don’t talk about what is happening,” he told listeners, “unless
there is some sort of weak, cowardly sports angle that we can run it
through.”
An ESPN source told The Post on Friday that the company is “making it
clear to everyone internally” that the policy on avoiding political
commentary “hasn’t changed.” It was not clear if Le Batard, who appeared
on his regularly scheduled radio show Friday morning, will be disciplined.
Erick Fernandez
✔
@ErickFernandez
Stop what you're doing and watch this.@LeBatardShow responds to the
racist "Send her back" and "Go back to your country" attacks against
Ilhan Omar and other congresswomen.
"If you're not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous
rhetoric, you're complicit."
Embedded video
52.7K
3:53 PM - Jul 18, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
24.4K people are talking about this
In discussing ESPN’s no-politics policy, emphasized when Jimmy Pitaro
took over last year as the company’s president, Le Batard mentioned
Jemele Hill. The former “SportsCenter” anchor became embroiled in
September 2017 in a much-noted conflict with Trump that began after she
tweeted that he was “a white supremacist.” She eventually moved to a
writer position at the Undefeated, an ESPN vertical, before leaving the
network in September 2018.
When Pitaro became ESPN’s president in May of that year, he said,
“Without question our data tells us our fans do not want us to cover
politics. My job is to provide clarity. I really believe that some of
our talent was confused on what was expected of them. If you
fast-forward to today, I don’t believe they are confused.”
“You saw what happened” after Hill made national headlines for her
back-and-forth with Trump, Le Batard said Thursday. “All of a sudden,
nobody talks politics, on anything, unless we can use one these sports
figures as a meat shield, in the most cowardly possible way to discuss
these subjects.”
Trump allowed ‘Send her back!’ chants for 13 seconds
President Trump on July 18 falsely said he stopped the crowd at his July
17 rally from chanting "Send her back!" toward Rep. Ilhan Omar
(D-Minn.). (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
Le Batard, a former Miami Herald sports columnist who co-hosts the daily
ESPN program “Highly Questionable” with his Cuban-born father, has
gained success by mostly maintaining a lighthearted, irreverent tone on
his TV and radio shows. He has also become known for speaking his mind,
such as in January 2017, when he criticized the Trump administration’s
travel ban and ESPN colleague Sage Steele’s complaint about being
inconvenienced by protests at Los Angeles International Airport
On Thursday, Le Batard claimed that ESPN’s no-politics policy was all
the more misguided because “sports has always been a place where this
stuff changes.” He brought up the civil rights era efforts of star
athletes such as Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Bill Russell, saying that
“what has happened to minorities in this country” is “our greatest sin”
and something “we’re still paying for now.”
Those “old and dying” athlete-activists are “going to go to the grave
without having seen change,” Le Batard said, his voice rising. He
claimed that a successor to them, Colin Kaepernick, had been
“blackballed” by NFL team owners “because we’re taking this stuff and
making it about the flag, when it’s not about the flag, it’s about race.”
Returning to Trump’s criticism of Omar and the ensuing chants at the
rally, Le Batard said, “This is deeply offensive to me, as somebody
whose parents made all the sacrifices to get to this country. ‘Send her
back’ — how are you any more American than her? You’re more privileged,
you’re whiter, you’re richer. … You’ve had every privilege afforded to
you by America. Every privilege. And now what you do with that power is
you go after brown people and black people and minorities? And around
here we won’t talk about it?
“We won’t talk about it, unless [Seahawks quarterback] Russell Wilson is
saying something about it on his Instagram page. Then we have the power
to run with it,” Le Batard continued. “Weak-ass shield.
“It is antithetical to what we should be. And if you’re not calling it
abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric — you’re complicit.”
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