I love this idea. link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/y...d=trending_now_opn_1

Sherman’s burning of Atlanta wasn’t enough punishment. To clean out any traces of racism 157 years later, Gen. Rob Manfred of Major League Baseball decided the North had to sack Atlanta one more time.

Still, count it as progress that instead of the indiscriminate looting and burning of stores as happened last summer, Gen. Manfred merely ordered the destruction of an estimated $100 million of commerce for Atlanta’s post-pandemic businesses as he moved the All-Star Game to the presumably less morally offensive, if overwhelmingly white, city of Denver.



The CEOs of Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines—headquartered in Atlanta—chirped in their 2 cents of moral condescension. Frankly, Georgia, they don’t give a damn about you.

At issue, one is obliged to insert, is the voting-procedure law passed by Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp. It is not “racist,” as explained in detail by at least three editorials in this newspaper.



As with the routine battles over gerrymandering House districts, this dispute about election law is a political fight between the two major parties. But alongside Georgia, we have the simultaneous trial in Minneapolis of Derek Chauvin, accused of murdering George Floyd during an arrest May 25.

Since that happened, progressives repeatedly have deployed the race card against their opposition, notably over post-pandemic voting legislation. Their goal, again, is partisan and political: to enact H.R.1, which would nationalize federal elections, effectively eliminating a traditional role for elected legislators and other officials in all 50 states.

Yes, politics is hardball. But today we are living through a flood tide of efforts to reduce politics to a permanent confessional on racism. To clear a path for passage of H.R.1, Barack Obama called the Senate filibuster a “Jim Crow relic,” a volatile charge to make in 2021 against so many Americans. Joe Biden, the president of the United States, repeated that lovely thought last week: “This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states.”

In the interests of tit-for-tat, note that in 2016, President Obama sat next to Raúl Castro watching a baseball game, supported by the major leagues, in communist Cuba, whose liberalization since that state visit has been zero.

Though he’s been absent from this column for weeks, it’s time to put Donald Trump back in play. He’s right: Boycott baseball—and the rest of the progressives’ new corporate cancel-culture all-star team, including Patagonia, H&M, Uber, Tripadvisor, Levi’s, Blue Apron, Nordstrom and SoFi.



Why boycott them? Because their leaders assume that most of their customers are compliant saps. Mr. Manfred knows that he can get away with smearing half a Southern state as racist (still), because fans everywhere will yet again choke down the political and personal insult and trudge forward to watch the “home team” play. So they win and you lose in the large-stakes political game being played daily by progressives across America.

It’s worth considering why so many corporate and institutional leaders have rolled over for any wild charge the left lobs at its enemies. There are two reasons—one commercial, the other historically deeper and more important.

Most of commercial life today revolves around one idea—promoting a company’s “brand.” No dopes, the left saw that if they could generate 500 hostile social-media posts against a corporate brand over some made-up woke offense, the CEO, having bet his career with millions in marketing costs, will think his brand is about to be destroyed by groupthink millennials who all at once will stop drinking Coke or refuse to stream baseball on MLB.TV.

Corporate cowardice is worse than ever, but by itself insufficient reason for conservatives to organize commercial boycotts, say, a mass Coke dump-a-thon. A better reason is to save once-rational liberals from destroying themselves and pulling the rest of us down in the woke vortex.

As a song once asked: How did it ever get this crazy? Don’t look to rationality for answers. We knew that was gone when the New York Times’s “1619 Project” gained ground.

Liberal guilt is so common that bookshelves bend beneath volumes explaining it. But after Minneapolis, liberal guilt passed into a new dimension. Liberals surrendered themselves to wokeness. They are wallowing in it.

I suspect the left’s professional activists were as taken aback as anyone at how the middle-aged liberals running big companies and cultural institutions swooned for wokeness. Why so easy?

Up to now, feeling guilty about life’s differences, which are real and complex, has suggested some ambivalence about the causes. Not anymore. Rather than wrestle with the rampant illogic and contradictions inside claims about identity or systemic racism, liberals have given in completely to the narcotic pleasure of total guilt. Finally, they’re free.

Alas, their acts of addictive self-release, such as mindlessly canceling Atlanta, will keep disrupting everyone else’s lives. The time has come for an intervention. Boycott baseball.


THE OPINION PIECE SHOWS OBAMA AND RAUL CASTRO CATCHING A GAME IN WONDERFUL CUBA!!

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Why boycott [MLB]? Because their leaders assume that most of their customers are compliant saps.

The evidence would suggest their assumption is not entirely without merit. Same for fans of the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Yes, a lot of fans have abandoned each of them over their "woke" bullshit. But the majority of them have not.

Well, that would probably be a lot more effective than McConnell mumbling something and then taking it back!

Huh. For the first time in my life, I'm ahead of the curve!

I've been boycotting baseball (and feetsball and basset-ball and guff-ball and...) for years and years.

Since 10/21/1950 actually.

MLB has it right - most of its viewers are compliant SAPS and will continue to watch, unfortunately.

I stopped watching baseball when they went on strike.

I officially stopped watching any “professional” sports, or even collegiate sports after players in both started kneeling or otherwise espousing the BLM lie. My kids have no interest in them either. Couldn’t care less about them.

I cannot understand why any conservative leaning American is still watching any pro or collegiate sports. The organizations and players are pissing on the country and people still support "their" team. To hell with them all I say.

Indeed!

I stopped watching baseball and football years ago. I was already growing tired of their BS years ago but once I discovered a suitable replacement dropping their asses was incredibly easy. It’s all about finding a replacement. Those fux think they are irreplaceable. Show them they are wrong.

MotoGP > all the other pro sports combined. It’s a true gladiator sport and right now it’s the best and most unpredictable it’s ever been.

Too many people seem to let their sense of personal or civic worth be controlled by the local team's fortunes. There's something to be said for the thrill of the crowd so I guess there's that. Fine, love your team, just don't tell me I have to also.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
I stopped watching baseball when they went on strike.

Same for me, along with Football, Basketball, Hockey, etc...

You know, I wonder of those who complain the most about the sports leagues being racist, how many of those are actual paying customers?

It's like construction workers bitching about Subaru when few of them actually buy Subaru but Subaru caves in to whatever their call for action is.

This (boycotting MLB) would be a good start. Too bad Charlie Daniels isn't still around, he could have organized an 'I Stand With Georgia' concert and gotten some network to broadcast it at a time to conflict with the All-Star Game.

If business is now being conducted to avoid the risk of offending the loudest contingent, then the time for being quiet and patient would seem to be over.

The companies that are only listening to the Boycott/Picket/Demonstrate/Doxx/Threaten groups, are going to find they will have wound up incenting their the good, quiet, loyal customer base to get trained up in the new realities.

One hopes that a bloody nose to MLB might educate other businesses to stick to making products and services, and keep out of politics. If this crap gets a pass, however, companies will take away the lesson that pandering to one political side has no downside, but steering to the middle does.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:

I stopped watching baseball when they went on strike.

Professional baseball died for me when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. I have not watched a single game since that ill-advised move.

I love Baseball. There is something American about it. Sports in general. I do hate that everything these days is about making a political statement by those who think they have some say so in such affairs.

But again, you cannot have your cake and eat it too all the time.


We "all" know that we "all" engage and support companies who do much worse than major league baseball. Lets not kid ourselves. Virtually every place you go, everything you do, everything you buy is tainted by this.
I mean really. Don't eat or drink anything, Don't drive anything. Don't get on the internet. Don't use any pharmaceuticals. Where does it end?

I know it makes you feel better to jump on sports and chime in how you quite watching, yada, yada, yada But unless you live in a cave and never go outside you are constantly supporting companies that are opposed to your belief system and spout off about it endlessly these days.

So do not watch any sports. We got it. Emkay.

And I am not even going to go into all things virus, vaxx and saps

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Professional baseball died for me when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. I have not watched a single game since that ill-advised move.

Wow, that's a serious grudge Not sure the move was "ill-advised" either.

That being said, I grew up with baseball. Lived for playing it. Great memories of my father taking me to Dodger games as a kid, and me taking him a year or so before he passed. The strikes were painful for me, and I quit watching for awhile, but I always came back. Like an addict. This latest move by MLB has me professing my disdain for "woke" businesses pissing off half their customers, so I'm again avoiding MLB. This latest kerfluffle is WAY more serious than arguing about money.

MLB, Manafort in particular, can fuck off.

I turned away from baseball after the last player strike.

I have totally boycotted all professional sports. I read 80 good books last year and began carving little people as a new hobby.

I got smarter - not dumber.

I'm all set with NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB, don't watch and don't care what they think, do or think I should do, trained monkeys for entertainment, if I wanted an opinion from one of them I'd ask.