Another Outrageous Use of Celebrity Status!

[JPhillips]

Battin 1000

When will this show up on conservative radio? How dare some baseball players use their status to force their beliefs on the rest of us. Don't they know that we don't want to hear from them? Don't they know that using their special access to the media for political beliefs is wrong and quite possibly un American? Don't they know that we just want to see these guys throw, hit and catch a ball, not preach at us?



Seriously, without debating their views, how is this any different than anti-war celebrities? Both groups are using their ability to gather media attention to promote their political views. I'm sure that some of the hypocrits biatching about the celebs will have nothing to say about this. If its wrong for the left it should be wrong for the right.

Personally, I don't have a problem with what these guys are doing, but I also didn't mind celebs airing their opinions. That's the great thing about democracy and free speech. I saw Sal Bando on ESPN this morning and he summed up his argument by saying that just because these guys are athletes doesn't mean they don't have brains, and if you feel strongly about an issue you can give in to pc or make a stand. Shouldn't that also apply to the Hollywood celebs?

Now tell me, how come the celebs get bashed by the right and the athletes don't? I guess its different if you agree with what they are saying?

[Craptacular]

Well, if when Carmello Anthony got the MOP at the Final 4, and he started going on a rant about some political topic, he would have gotten shit too.

[daedalus]

Time and place.

As Crappie said, if Anthony goes on a pro-/anti-war rant in the postgame interview, then, yeah, it'd be asinine too. It'd be idiotic like, I don't know, say, receiving an award and using it as your stupid platform to express your view. Time and place.

Entirely off topic of course, these dumbass simplistic groupings of people - "left"/"right" or "liberal"/"conservative" - is so amazingly retarded. If you agree or disagree with someone, peachy. Why not agree or disagree with their views or opinions? What is the point of making some dumbass grouping? Because their "kind" of people can't possibly be reasoned with? Yeesh!

Edit: Oh. That wasn't so much directed at you, JP. Sorry about that. It just gets old and irritating. Your point was certainly good and I'll enjoy the discussions to come from it.

[astralhaze]

I always loved the South Park episode they had Whoopi Goldberg on. Her entire routine consisted of...

"republicans are so stupid...

republicans are so stupid..."

[Killebrew]

Originally posted by daedalus
Entirely off topic of course, these dumbass simplistic groupings of people - "left"/"right" or "liberal"/"conservative" - is so amazingly retarded. If you agree or disagree with someone, peachy. Why not agree or disagree with their views or opinions? What is the point of making some dumbass grouping? Because their "kind" of people can't possibly be reasoned with? Yeesh!

Yes, yes. This simplification of issues and sides of issues is like a "dumbed down" Hollywood movie. The villains tend to be purely evil while the good guys are unrealistically pure. I guess we like to think in terms of us versus them as that enables us to argue without doing a lot of study about the issues we argue about, or taking chances on (gasp) actual independent thought. I once got a PM here saying something like "You Dems always ...." and I had absolutely no idea what that meant (I am not from the US), though I figured out that the writer thought I was a Democrat based on the way I responded to a forum post. Maybe it is the love of sports that makes us simplify complex issues, as favored political parties are often spoke of as if they were the local sports team.

[JPhillips]

Crap: But weren't the conservative radio folks bashing the celebs before the Moore incident? They were upset originally about the Artists United Against the War press conference. There were a lot of shots taken at Garofalo and Farrell and Sheen well before the Oscars. The original outrage came from a press conference and public statements very similar to what the Battin 1000 folks did.