NBA Totally In The Tank For Democracy, Wingnuts Outraged

Encouraging people to vote? Talk about an insane woke agenda!

The National Baskets-Balls Association announced yesterday that it would arrange its fall schedule so that no games will take place on Election Day, November 8. Further, all 30 of the league's teams will play on November 7, the night before the election, so teams can "use that night as an opportunity to encourage fans to get out and vote, plus amplify the need for civic engagement."

In its announcement, the NBA said the decision "came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections." Apart from that "family" silliness, that's pretty dang cool! Teams are also being encouraged, the news release says, to let fans know about other election information like voter registration deadlines and the like.

In 2020, about 20 NBA arenas opened up as early and/or regular voting sites, to give people a chance to vote in large, socially distanced spaces during the COVID pandemic. Criminy, there weren't even vaccines available then. That move was considered scary and dangerous by some of America's more excitable rightwingers, since many players and teams also encouraged voting in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people. How dare sportsball players go and politicize voting like that!

Not surprisingly, the NBA's move is being condemned by similarly tender folks on the Right, because didn't the NBA also outrageously insult America by saying mass shootings are bad? The day after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the Miami Heat held a moment of silence for the 19 children and two teachers killed in that massacre, but then ruined the solemn moment by encouraging fans to call their elected representatives to demand common sense gun reforms, and even to vote!

That upset Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Performative Outrage), who could not believe that the NBA would "politicize" the shooting, particularly because China.

“The @NBA doesn’t like to talk about the billions they make from a China that enslaves Uyghur Muslims and harvests their organs But they have no problem politicizing a horrific tragedy in America https: //t.co/VUXpOBbw7j”

— Marco Rubio (@Marco Rubio) 1653534927 

Gosh, you'll instantly guess how the Right reacted to the news that the NBA is encouraging basketball fans to go and vote this fall, won't you?

Fox News started the wailing with an article about Turkish-American NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom , who changed his last name in 2021 when he became an American citizen. Mr. Freedom has lately been a darling of the Right for his recent claim on Twitter that an assistant coach he knows was hounded out of his job for being a Republican, because that's just how vicious the Left has become.

In yesterday's story, Mr. Freedom went straight to the Marco Rubio playbook, accusing the league of the grossest possible hypocrisy for encouraging Americans to vote, because whatabout all the money the NBA makes in China?

The NBA's biggest backer is China — so when they promote Civic Engagement here, do they care to comment about a dictatorship they are profiting off of? The NBA constantly told me 'we don't want to get involved in politics'… I guess what they meant to say was 'we don't want to upset China."

We haven't actually run the numbers, but we have a feeling the NBA just might make more money at home, although sure, the league's coziness with the very profitable China market is concerning.

It also has pretty much nothing to do with encouraging voting in US elections, does it? If Apple, let's say, were to encourage Americans to vote, would it get similar pushback from Fox News and the Right? We have a feeling maybe not, unless perhaps Apple products were suddenly very popular with Black people, just guessing.

Also, Mr. Freedom, who as we mention is doing the rounds of rightwing media this week, told Fox News that he thinks Election Day should be a holiday — which is a good thing! — but that despite the NBA's talk of this being about nonpartisan civil engagement,

The issue though is, that the NBA subliminally encourages players to vote a certain party. I have had coaches lose jobs who expressed conservative values — that's an issue.

Hmm. Does he mean "subliminally" because the only party that believes in voting is the Democrats?

Also, the Fox News piece points out, without a trace of irony, that while the NBA has "taken positions on social justice issues such as abortion, gay rights and the Black Lives Matter movement," it hasn't criticized Chinese human rights abuses, including, horror of horrors, "Just last month the NBA failed to condemn China's crackdown on the LGBTQ community."

Yes, this is from the network that's done so much to spread panic in the US that the LGBTQ community and public schools are "grooming" your children.

Also too, Fox this morning gave time to "Clay Travis," the nice Fox Sporps person who a few years ago said the two things he cares about the most are "the First Amendment and boobs." Mr. Boobs Amendment explained exactly how horrible it is that the NBA is encouraging Americans — and probably the wrong Americans, at that! — to vote, because everyone knows that's just more of the "left-wing ideology" that has caused everyone in America named Clay Travis to forsake watching basketball.

“The NBA’s Election Day decision will further alienate their audience with their left-wing ideology. @ClayTravis dunks on the woke NBA. Watch the full video here: https://t.co/EObafa7UwU”

— The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show (@The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show) 1660750281 

It's not only that they're not going to play games on Election Day, it's that the day before Election Day, all 30 teams are going to play, and they're going to lecture us on leftwing politics. It just is such an awful decision by the NBA, which has alienated a massive amount of their otherwise audience that loves watching basketball and just doesn't want to be marinated in this woke culture, which as Enes Kantor [ he forgot Freedom! — Dok ] pointed out, is incredibly hypocritical because they will rip American institutions and values to the high heavens, but then they'll hop on jets and go play in the UAE, for instance, where if you're gay you can be beheaded.

Whereas in the USA, you'll only be called a pedophile, a groomer, and a corrupter of sacred American institutions, which also include police departments that should never be questioned, and the makers and sellers of the firearms that keep us free, at the low low price of 30,000 deaths a year.

Travis had a suggestion for the NBA: Maybe it could win back all the real Americans it's alienated by using Election Day

to talk about American Exceptionalism and how America is the greatest country in the history of the world, the most welcoming, the least racist, let's all celebrate our privilege and good fortune to live here, I think the vast majority of Americans would say "OK!"

Or at least the vast majority of Fox viewers would love that, if only the Black basketball players would recognize that racism is over and America is the best possible country anywhere. And then, in the immortal words of Laura Ingraham, they could shut up and dribble.

You never heard old-timey basketball players like the recently departed Bill Russell talk about politics, except for the part where Russell was a huge civil rights activist. 

In conclusion, shame on the NBA for saying the wrong Americans should vote, those woke commie America-haters.

[ NBA / Fox News / ESPN ]

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