I hope part 2 drops today. Cause I gotta say, part 1 falls flat. Trying to see both sides when Jackie Robinson is the center piece? Nah. Nick Wright had an excellent monologue on why Jackie is a perfect example of a DEI hire and while I agreed with him I still find discussions of Mr. Robinson and DEI to be noxious. What the government is doing when when they take down videos of the Tuskegee airmen or a site to Jackie Robinson or other minority groups is erasure. Full stop. There shouldn’t be a “they’re right but sheesh can you present this in a way that I like?” How exactly does one accomplish that goal?
I don't know what piece you read if you came away with the idea there is supposed to be both sidesism on every issue. It's about the totality of sports discourse and I thought it was clear that Ethan found the censure of Jackie Robinson to be a ridiculous thing to do...and a PR disaster!
You're right. I don't think there is both-sideism on every issue. I happen to think taking down sites or photos of great Americans (who in this case just happen to all be minorities) from government websites is an issue everyone both left and right should agree is wrong.
There can be ideological differrences around trans-athletes in sports, kneeling during the anthem, or whether athletes should engage in political activism be it left or right. My point of contention with the piece is Jackie Robinson cannot and should not be used as the spring board to talk about how heavy handed liberal sports writers can be on these issues. In my previous comment I even used the word "noxious" to describe Nick Wright's monologue on this topic and I agreed with what he said.
To me, the far more interesting topic is why are right wing people going crazy over what Mina said? This is deeper than simply "liberal sports talking head being a liberal sports talking head." She was not condescending, she was not preachy, her tone wasn't "bad racist white man! Bad!" She simply stated a fact that wasn't up for debate. We DO NOT want the default answer to that question to be "racism & white supremacy." So if we don't want to start nor end with that being the conclusion, can someone make sense of that response? That type of writing is is one of the things that I find that Ethan does incredibly well, even when I may not agree with his conclusions. Let's talk about that.
The point is: as a society, we would be more open to hearing from Mina Kimes, if she called balls and strikes all of the time.
Instead she only has thoughts in one particular direction, so now even when she’s correct about something, the other side has already permanently muted her.
Touche. Ethan has an article on this site and I'm paraprashing the title but it's something like:" "the worst person you know just made a good point." This piece talks about how when someone you dislike or you're ideologically opposed to makes a good point, it wouldn't kill you to acknowledge it. Her statement was factually correct. You should be able to look beyond past commentary to acknowledge that. Instead, you have Outkick with a headline on this titled "Criticism By Mina Kimes Of Trump DOD Over DEI Is Exactly Why ESPN Needed To Cancel 'Around the Horn".
A lot of what you're saying I agree with except I don't particularly give AF about dissecting why right-wingers care here. Jackie Robinson is an 80/20 issue and I think that is why Ethan picked this particular issue for being such an attractive jumping off spot. I think it is very clear Ethan agrees with a lot of what Mina Kimes says about Jackie Robinson being subject to racism and it is crazy DOD took down an article on him that has hardly any bearing on DEI. A total self-own by the DOD and the right. But look at all of the other large issues that someone like Mina just simply ignores. As the other person responding to this points out, Mina isn't calling balls and strikes she's only speaking on one side and that's the big issue.
I'm the stick to sports person that Ethan refers to. They do exist. I do not want to hear right or left political stances when I'm trying to use sports as escapism. If I did want commentary on DOD fucking up the poorly written and implemented DEI EO, then I am *not* going to Around The Horn for that shit. I'll go somewhere else where I know the person has put in a decent amount of work understanding all the issues going on. I'm not asking Steve Kornacki to break down Cover 0, so I'm not looking for Mina Kimes or Clay Travis to lecture me on some societal issue.
To Ethan's point though, there's is a time where those two worlds collide and as a sports fan, we have to reckon with that no matter how we feel about the view point. In my opinion, the problem in and of itself isn't her comments. The problem exists when folk on both sides of the aisle pick and choose to create controversy where none exists. Mina's comments aren't controversial and if the other side doesn't make a big deal about it, you'd never hear about it unless you watched ATH or followed her on twitter. Nick Bosa wearing a MAGA hat last year is non-story given we already knew he rocked with Trump. Caitlin Clark acknowledging other great black players and saying they need to be protected isn't controversial. People create the controversy, and like suckas we fall for it.
I anticipate part 2 will address more of the literal Jackie Robinson issue that hopefully whets your appetite. But as to this particular article, I view the Robinson topic as just a convenient starting point for Ethan's thesis around the sports media having too many one sided conversations that don't appeal to their readership.
I probably disagree with you on how frequent sports and politics *do* collide, but honest people can disagree and it certainly does happen sometimes. And oddly enough I think the arena they do collide in has more to do with stadium subsidies than societal issues.
The US Military is honoring veterans on websites that are no longer separated by race. Everything Jackie Robinson still exists, just not on a special race page.
I'll say this, I actually appreciate that, even as I point out my contention in this moment. While I am moderate, my social media setup aligns me with more left leaning types. I pay to be here in part because I don't think Ethan engages in content grifting. He's not scrutinizing for the sake of scrutiny imo. There would be less of this 80/20 dynamic if more right leaning people followed his lead. I find so much of right wing sports commentary to be outrage about what this liberal said or outrageous take to own the libs. The sports space NEEDS more Ethan's imo. But I also think sometimes, there has to be room to say, "y'all trippin" to right leaning sports types.
Minka conveniently forgot to include it was an all-white officer panel that unanimously aquitted JR.
JR's stories and accomplishments weren't erased anywhere for any reason. The websites are being redone to REMOVE the color of people's skin from determining where your story is told. Drrr
If you want to get down to the brass tax it is white Americans who love military veterans most. Despite what pigeon brained Minka assumes white people love black military vets all the same cuz they're badasses.
I'm going to let you in on a secret on how the government works. The people who took down the article are the same people who originally posted the article.
There is no army of red hats who came in and started running the content management systems for federal agencies.
There are a bunch of GG-11s who never got attention from anyone in their 20 years of doing this who suddenly had to work on an urgent deadline with senior executives (also career employees, not red hats) are pinging them for status updates every 30 minutes.
They removed thousands of web pages. They missed some that that should have removed and the removed some that they should have kept. This is exactly what happened.
This is true and points to the other problem which is that we don’t seem to understand how government is supposed to work period. Seems like Congress has been on a 30 year vacation.
Agree, it feels like the goal of this White House and some of its supporters is to deny that racism (except against white people) exists and bury any evidence that it ever did exist. Look at Moms For Liberty, whose main goals include censoring any material that makes “white children feel bad.” That includes the Civil War and slavery, not Ibram Kendi’s book.
If Ethan is going to write about this stuff, he should acknowledge that there’s a full-on campaign on the right to cover up the country’s history of civil rights, and if Jackie Robinson’s legacy is now part of the culture war, the Right is just as insane as the Left was in 2021. He’s good at (and right to) calling out the excesses of the Left, but seems tentative to do so to the Right as to not appear shrill or “biased.”
I think this is spot on - if you just take what Ethan writes (and ignore his dislaimer that he is 'actually liberal' on many issues), I believe his is in alignment with right wing identity politics. Eager to criticize the woke left (that's really his entire business model, right?), never acknowledging the racism and anti-LGBTQ actions that very much exist on the right.
I disagreed with the piece because I think most folks actually agree with Kimes, even those on the right. But the left needs intense analysis and critique from its own side if it’s going to get out of this mess. I’m not sure how anyone could look at the data that came out this week from the 2024 election and continue to think the left should hammer away with identity politics.
I read Ethan as also agreeing with Kimes, but trying to make the point that continually scolding in only one direction makes you less credible or effective when you have a legitimate complaint.
Come to think of it, a simpler answer is that of HoS is focused on cultural / political critiques of the sports media, and sports media culture and politics is left-wing. It's a little like asking why he didn't criticize the Bulls or Pistons when he was a Warriors reporter.
What sports media content that delves into politics is not progressive or "woke"? He's usually writing about that because that's the content out there. You're kind of asking why there's no black people in Scandinavia.
Yes, to an extent, and I think you're seeing that critique expressed today.
That said, although I've never watched Kimes and don't really know who he/she is, if I had to guess, Ethan is probably much better at presenting a balanced view that includes critiques of the Right. That especially comes though if you listed to the PodCast form of HoS.
So I wouldn't use the word exclusively. And consequently his credibility problem isn't as bad as the one he's critiquing.
my point is people like ethan have made it their life's work with critiqueing the left while dancing around or never calling a spade a spade when people like the president and elon say and do actual things that are far crueler.
It's actually lgbtqia+, or do you not acknowledge the intersex and asexual minorities? What about the + which represent two-spirits, non binary, pansexual, demisexual, aromantic, genderfluid, and agenders?
That's hundreds if not thousands of identities you are disrespecting if not dead naming with your lazy lgbtq usage.
Jackie Robinson isn’t an example of a DEI hire because DEI is explicitly a 21st century programmatic ideology that itself is a product of decades and generations of post-segregation politics and culture.
Robinson should be celebrated for his courage in facing down segregation and racism, but to construe that with DEI is to willfully misunderstand Robinson’s fight and victory. And that the previous administration thought Robinson should be tagged as DEI is a great example of how toxic and dumb DEI really is here.
For me whenever Ethan wades into politics, I just want to have an idea of what perspective he's coming from.
Conservatives ABSOLUTELY think liberals are evil. Maybe 10 years ago this wasn't the case, but ever since COVID, that's 100% no longer true.
Also, are Jeff Passan (a baseball journalist) and Mina (a minority) hypocrites because they got authentically mad about this Jackie Robinson thing but DIDN'T get mad about basketball player Donovan Clingan's opinion of Joe Biden during a photo op?
One instance is nakedly political and opinion based, the other is straight-up dumbfuckery. I don't really understand why Jeff and Mina can't speak up about this issue. Is Ethan even sure they would have nice things to say about Joe Biden?
Jackie Robinson was the opposite of a "DEI hire." The pejorative term "DEI hire" means that someone gets a job despite not being good at it. Jackie Robinson was very very good at baseball!
This was Nick’s point. You don’t argue the redefinition. Under the actual definition, Mr. Robinson is a perfect example of a DEI hire. I personally don’t like talking about him in that manner because it doesn’t do justice to the circumstances he faced imo. If you want to be real, calling stuff DEI when centered around race is a way to slur minorities and not be called racist.
There's a big difference between erasure and shifting focus.
I don't think any one is trying to pull off an erasure. Erasure would be claiming Jackie's struggles were all made up. It would be like something from the USSR era when they completely erased ex-regime figures from ALL records (not just government records) and it became a crime to even talk about them.
Shifting focus is entirely different because there's never a right or wrong answer. There's 250 years of American history to draw from (and you also need some world history for any hope of context) and thousands upon thousands of people, issues, etc.. to draw from. What should we focus on is never going to have a single right or wrong answer
Seems pretty obvious so I guess you want me to spell it out for some reason?
It seems like (assuming this was the intent, and it wasn't some version of "malicious compliance") the idea was to talk less about historic civil rights struggles. I don't really know what the context of the website is so I don't have an opinion on it, but obviously there are places and times where that would be appropriate and places that it wouldn't.
In terms of focus, it is interesting to me in how some periods and struggles in history are fairly well-remembered and some aren't. For example, the period from 1880-1940 saw a huge amount of strife between labor and capital, with frequent strikes sometimes put down by mass violence. Coal mine owners used WW1 chemical weapons dropped from fighter planes to put down one strike, and the head of the United Auto Workers Union survived two assassination attempts.
You can find wikipedia lists of hundreds of murders and shootings of strikers, and many of them were immigrants, which brings me to another forgotten era - the mass surge of immigration from about 1870-1920, which was only brought to an end by bipartisan bills from congress that all but shutoff immigration.
Anyway, I find these two eras very relevant and wish they were taught or remembered. Maybe some would argue there should be something about them on a DoD website somewhere? But if you said that was wrong, I wouldn't call you ghoulish or accuse you of erasure.
I mean this truly; thank you for the clarification. I don't want to assume anything as I myself am not a fan of being miss-represented. So I wanted to make sure I understood you. My question (not to you directly) would be why do you want to shift focus from or talk less about civil rights struggles? Try as some might, you can't tell the story of this country without talking about race. The same way you couldn't or shouldn't be able to talk about the history of labor relations in this country without mentioning the period you spoke of. The recounting of eras in history isn't good or bad, nor should there ever be a need to "shift" from remembering it. If one feels any discomfort from a moment in our history, the work should be on the individual to do some introspection on why that is, not remove it. Last I checked, that was called creating a "safe space", and from my memory, right wing types see that as weakness.
"why do you want to shift focus from or talk less about civil rights struggles"
It would depend on the particulars of any given conversation or piece of media, and I have no take on the DoD fiasco. But hypothetically, I can think of 3 reasons:
1) If it's "not the time or place". There are many important things I strongly believe in, but like Ethan wrote, it doesn't mean each one of them needs to be brought up in every sports broadcast (again, I have no idea if this applies to the DoD fiasco).
2) To make room for other issues. History, and struggle, are both really big topics. I can imagine good-faith arguments that class struggle, or immigration issues, are more relevant to today than race-based civil rights struggles, and therefore those deserve more attention. Or maybe somebody thinks gender issues are being left out, or perhaps the history of political compromise and conflict should be better remembered. There's not unlimited time or attention, so you always have to prioritize.
3) When it comes to civil rights issues, there's a *potential* for such things to be taught or acknowledged in a way that creates divineness, or a view of history where white people are permanent villains in some intrinsic way and black people or other groups are always the helpless oppressed. I don't usually see it approached that way, and I doubt a Jackie Robinson DoD website would push that POB, but there's a commentator here today (cornwallace) who seems to have learned that somewhere.
Anyways I don't think any of this means you don't do basic things like teach about the history of civil rights in history class. But I tend to think the racial dimension of American culture is fading in importance every year, while divisions based on nativity, class and politics are growing, so I wish we paid more attention to those aspects of our history.
Deleting articles is erasure, by definition. Shifting focus would be doing less articles like this, or none at all, which everyone would expect from Pete “Jerusalem Cross” Hegseth’s Pentagon
No, it's really not; that's what you're missing. It's only erasure by a superficial definition that would include far too many actions to be useful. Completely hypothetically, if the DoD had a webpage about the War of 1812 and now they don't, it's not "erasure" because there's no intent to wipe it from memory. They were just refocusing on whatever it was replaced with.
Yea I feel like if the core argument is “can u blame conservatives for erasing sports/american history because liberals were pretty mean back in 2020” then I can’t get with that.
“At the same time, the admin quickly restored the site, and it would be a straw man to suggest that anyone with status on the right literally considers the 1949 N.L. MVP to be a “DEI hire.” Nobody died. We’re not forgetting about Jackie Robinson due to fear of Trump Gulag. I’m not sure we need theoretically non partisan sports media people to belabor the point like it’s still 2020 when they never hold their own side to any scrutiny. “
This is giving the administration a crazy amount of grace. A plane hits a helicopter and the literal first thing from Trump is blaming DEI. It was 100% done on purpose and they wanted to double down on it until the firestorm was too intense. This administration is using “DEI” as a substitute for slurs.
“Yes, I know, conservatives are disgusted by liberals too, but there’s a raft of social science demonstrating that liberals are far more likely to end friendships over political disagreement. Another writer once explained this difference like so: Conservatives think liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are evil. A conservative sees a liberal’s societal improvement plan as destructively impractical, and a liberal sees the conservative’s opposition as rooted in hating the beneficiaries. I’m generalizing of course.”
It’s pretty simple why this rift exists. There is not major talking point / policy position from liberals that has no regard for the humanity of conservatives. The conservative side has many that do. It’s not hard at all to see why one side considers to the see the other as evil. Part 1 was a crazy attempt of whataboutism when this current administration is doing whatever the fuck they want with no regard.
How do you write this article without mentioning “malicious compliance”? Seriously?
Some leftist gov employee wipes Jackie Robinsons site , along with wiping tuskegee airmen info and navajo code talkers and then lefty reporters report on the lefty gov workers trying to make trump gov look bad.
This is all fake- congrats on writing a article about a manufactured controversy. Ethan this article is embarrassing.
So you can look it up and educate yourself. This is a bs tactic that is commonly taught in marxist/commie circles. There is even a wikipedia article. Happy reading!
How did Mina Kimes become alerted and why did she report incorrect information?
Seriously, try to answer that without assumptions.
It is crystal clear what the military is doing: content of character > color of skin. Some famous guy said that in a speech. (I forget cuz I'm a racist who acknowledges only white accomplishments)
There's is no more black brown or white wing of military. There's the military, as it should be.
From Ethan’s very story that you are commenting on right at this moment: “Every word of Kimes’ monologue happens to be true”
This is a different conversation. You are trying to do the “woke is bad” thing, when this isn’t about that. It’s about acknowledging that Jackie Robinson’s place in history and in our culture is based almost exclusively on his race and the part he played in knocking down barriers to entry in our society because of his race.
It seems like you want to talk about Derek from accounting who you think only got his job because of some DEI initiative. That’s fine. You and I may even agree on that truth be told. But what I can do that it seems you can’t do is acknowledge the past.
Yeah, the most important thing to note about Jackie Robinson is definitely that he was a 6-time All Star with a good blend of power and speed, and nothing else. We remember Jackie because he was Frankie Fritsch with a shorter career (but let's not explore those reasons), end of story.
I’m not sure you are approaching this with an open mind. None of what you said can be defined as a “fact”. They are all assumptions based on your own ideological biases.
Another banger from Ethan, as they pretty much always are. I'm surprised at the push back in the other comments. I have a comparison to this situation that's completely removed from hot button political debate, but the principle remains the same...
My mom is as much of a paranoid worry-wart as a person can be. Growing up with her, the message was clear: the worst case outcome might happen no matter what you do: riding your bike, watching a certain show, eating food that I could choke on, etc. etc. Eventually I learned to tune her out and just assign anything she said to be the ramblings of an insane person. Even if she was rarely correct about something, I'd already discounted it because it came from her.
My dad is much more rational and level-headed. He would let me do normal things that a kid should do, without assuming death was imminent. But every once in a while, he would look me in the eyes and say, "you can do this thing, but I need you to be careful, okay?" My dad saved his warnings for only the more serious situations, and I knew that when he spoke up like that, I needed to listen and take his advice.
If Mina Kimes used her pulpit to condemn the insanity of allowing men to compete in women's sports, she would gain so much credibility. But she's captured, which means no one is listening when she does make a good point.
Oh man I feel like I’m just gonna start disagreeing with you a lot. I hope not, but there’s been a bit of a pendulum shift now that the new folks in charge have become the aggressive people who are taking themselves too seriously. This pushback by Passan and Kimes was passive in contrast. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me the discourse has been shifting pretty quickly since Trump’s inauguration
They're too busy gloating about the first vibe shift to notice the next vibe shift. But it's normal, every time one side is in power in the US, it overplays its hand, gloats far too much, and helps the other side find footing in doing so. This is our eternal vicious cycle .
Same, at least in this particular case. I was watching March Madness all throughout yesterday (took off work for it). Didn't even know this was going on.
I think the key point here really is that "the admin quickly restored the site". This was a *gaffe*, not an intentional action or policy. And dunking on gaffes really is the realm of *partisan politics*, which does not belong anywhere near sports talk shows.
Exactly. They probably took down 5-10k pages/documents across DOD. And they did it fast. There are going to be mistakes.
The people doing this are career mid-level government employees, whose typical weeks usually consist of posting or updating a few pieces of content per day. Now they are taking hundreds of action per day and they made some mistakes. This is all that happened
White dudes have ran shit for decade upon decade. Men dominated politics, sports, movies (and more) for a long, long time.
Now that they've had to share for a short time, or as you put it "They’ve had about a decade or so of near hegemonic partisan scolding" you can "empathize and understand".
Oh no. 10 years! Oh jeez! Poor wittle guys.
200 years of racism/sexism should be met with nuance, but 10 years of being told about it, and it's a-ok to be fed up?
See, that's all this is. A bunch a big babies crying because they can't get their own way. They had to share, and they find sharing "annoying". So they want to go back to the days where they didn't have to share.
Trump and Elon are remodeling a glass house with a chain saw, and you are on this "try to be more balanced please" approach when it comes to repainting the mailbox?!
Russia is remaking us in their image, and conservatives can't take one second to check their pride/ego and admit maybe things have gone too far. Instead it's on blue "millennials" to be the balanced ones?
Nobody but yourself looks back at the last 10 years as "the decade when white guys had to share"
Ethan's writing about politics, which for as much as it sometimes seems is about race or gender, really isn't as each side of the aisle has plenty of people from every identity.
Yes, because white dudes are in denial about what this is really about.
The social shifts began in the sixties, once conservatives realized they couldn't win on policy, they pivoted to social issues. Using fear and anger as the main motivators.
They hate having to share and they hate acknowledging history.
But most of all, they hate being told they're wrong, on anything, now matter how blatantly wrong they are.
"scrubbing of history" - does this include American history taught in public schools today?
2025 American History: Despite white men dying to build the most safe, productive, creative, and powerful society in world history, white men are inherently racist evil and dishonest. This is why race quotas and dei. The end.
The whole point is that DEI has proven to be utterly toothless when it comes to actually fighting racism or other bigotries. Do you really think a workshop can fight racism?
I hear what you are saying, but after a decade of this, the only thing it has resulted in is everyone but white people shifting to the right. If what you say is true, why are Latinos and Asians breaking sharply right? Even black voters are moving right.
Jfc wake up. Because MAGA is using a constant deluge of fear and lies to manipulate voters.
There's the emotional brain and the logical brain. Your emotions always take precedent, thanks to evolution, aka a survival trait.
Its the exact same as when you've been in an argument and said something cruel or whatever. Minutes, hours, or days later... your logic tells you "that was fucked up, I should apologize".
Only for MAGA, they don't WANT you slowing down and using logic. Hence why they bombard you with texts, memes, and videos of lie upon lie, stoking your emotions.
And this is the result. People thinking, "Yeah, I wanna be on team Russia-Belarus-North Korea. Fuck Ukriane. Fuck Zelensky. Fuck equality. Fuck equity."
And OBJECTIVELY that's fucking the worst team to be on.
They make it impossible to win, because it only take a minute to lie, but an hour to refute it.
And since Americans are a prideful bunch, they'd rather watch their country get chopped up and sold off than admit maybe things went too far and they voted for the wrong guy.
Thanks Jesse. Your comment is one more grain of sand on the beach of hypocrisy and denial.
You don't give a shiz about boldface lies by our leaders, or them chopping up and selling off our country like its one big business, but my comment is somehow "unhinged".
Ethan is fundamentally and spiritually left wing, but the party demands you believe in trans sex ideology, white oppression, and social value being tied directly to skin color and biological sex.
What is anyone supposed to do when faced with those demands? Join a weird cult or be accused of supporting the other team's colors. Fun decision!
Fun fact: an all-white officer panel dismissed Jackie's court martial from the bus incident with a unanimous vote. I guess Minka's minute ran out before this could be read off her phone 🤷
Yeah I don’t think you can apply a “whataboutism”here. And I say that as someone that agrees with much of your analysis on the political imbalance in sports media.
There’s been a lot of talk about 80/20 issues. Jackie Robinson is very much an 80/20 issue. The only people I saw push back against Kimes and Passan yesterday were Trump cultists and culture warriors on the right. Even Barstool guys that voted for Trump expressed their bewilderment at what the White House was doing.
God this is all so boring. And the king of referencing “audience capture” is really pouring the trough for his audience at this point. The idea of putting “millennial military brat, Yale grad, former financial journalist, Asian” on the board as this unrelenting lib is also funny. I’m not even sure what the liberal talking points are that can be ascribed to Mina’s espn work before now? Trans women in sports? The thing that affects dozens of citizens in the sample of 10s of millions of youth athletes?
What a strange focus that’s become for people who love to assert their rationality. The actually rational don’t tend to hyper-fixate and over index on small sample happenings.
I guess what's annoying is that the feedback for it has been until the last year or so, been overwhelmingly positive, but it's really a waste of everyone's time.
There is no chance the DoD wasn't going to restore Jackie Robinson's page, regardless of what these commentators said. None. All this commentary did was give these commentators a chance to pat themselves and each other on the back for how "courageous" they are. But it really doesn't do anything for anybody.
It's indulgent, and it's rude to the audience. If there was a cause that they were aware of that they could bring attention to, it might be worthwhile. But "Jackie Robinson was good and shouldn't be erased from the DoD website" isn't it. They may as well have given a monologue about how ice cream tastes good.
The possible end might have been to associate Trump with this Bad Thing, if they sincerely thought there were people who liked or were indifferent to Trump but would be persuaded by this. But we all know that's not the case.
I also have another thought about this situation...
I think it's quite possible that the initial removal of this article was due to a large sweep that it happened to get caught up in, rather than some evil governmental employee singling it out for deletion.
And that the response from the DOD was mostly just a generic copy/paste without someone taking the time to individually analyze what was happening here.
The reason I think this is because: A) It was quickly restored and B) The Story of Jackie Robinson rises far above the hot-button racial debates of 2025. This is more than an 80/20 issue – it's a 99/1 issue.
Whatever you think about this regime, if your position is that they truly envision America's utopia to be a modern day nazi haven, you're no better than the Q-anon people who think the liberal ideal is a communist america where the elites have their own pizza gate comunes.
I get how annoying the Millennial sports scolds are. I quit watching Around the Horn primarily because of this. But they're correct about the Jackie Robinson stuff, so credit where credit's due.
FWIW, a similar thing happened in the world of movie criticism. Movie critics/bloggers are even more scoldy from the left than sports reporters are. I was right there in the trenches of the late 2010s/early 2020s. It was awful. So it naturally gave rise to right-wing, YouTube-based folks who cover the entertainment industry, and they draw huge amounts of views, whatever you may think of them.
With respect to all the comments here about "malicious compliance", it would be easier to believe that it's at least possible if Trump/Elon Maga nation hadn't made "owning the libs" such a key charter to everything they're doing and have done and have run on the past 9 years. You can't brag non stop about how much you love owning the libs as you drink from your liberal tears coffee mug, then blame malicious compliance for doing the actual owning the libs part.
I hope part 2 drops today. Cause I gotta say, part 1 falls flat. Trying to see both sides when Jackie Robinson is the center piece? Nah. Nick Wright had an excellent monologue on why Jackie is a perfect example of a DEI hire and while I agreed with him I still find discussions of Mr. Robinson and DEI to be noxious. What the government is doing when when they take down videos of the Tuskegee airmen or a site to Jackie Robinson or other minority groups is erasure. Full stop. There shouldn’t be a “they’re right but sheesh can you present this in a way that I like?” How exactly does one accomplish that goal?
I don't know what piece you read if you came away with the idea there is supposed to be both sidesism on every issue. It's about the totality of sports discourse and I thought it was clear that Ethan found the censure of Jackie Robinson to be a ridiculous thing to do...and a PR disaster!
You're right. I don't think there is both-sideism on every issue. I happen to think taking down sites or photos of great Americans (who in this case just happen to all be minorities) from government websites is an issue everyone both left and right should agree is wrong.
There can be ideological differrences around trans-athletes in sports, kneeling during the anthem, or whether athletes should engage in political activism be it left or right. My point of contention with the piece is Jackie Robinson cannot and should not be used as the spring board to talk about how heavy handed liberal sports writers can be on these issues. In my previous comment I even used the word "noxious" to describe Nick Wright's monologue on this topic and I agreed with what he said.
To me, the far more interesting topic is why are right wing people going crazy over what Mina said? This is deeper than simply "liberal sports talking head being a liberal sports talking head." She was not condescending, she was not preachy, her tone wasn't "bad racist white man! Bad!" She simply stated a fact that wasn't up for debate. We DO NOT want the default answer to that question to be "racism & white supremacy." So if we don't want to start nor end with that being the conclusion, can someone make sense of that response? That type of writing is is one of the things that I find that Ethan does incredibly well, even when I may not agree with his conclusions. Let's talk about that.
The point is: as a society, we would be more open to hearing from Mina Kimes, if she called balls and strikes all of the time.
Instead she only has thoughts in one particular direction, so now even when she’s correct about something, the other side has already permanently muted her.
Touche. Ethan has an article on this site and I'm paraprashing the title but it's something like:" "the worst person you know just made a good point." This piece talks about how when someone you dislike or you're ideologically opposed to makes a good point, it wouldn't kill you to acknowledge it. Her statement was factually correct. You should be able to look beyond past commentary to acknowledge that. Instead, you have Outkick with a headline on this titled "Criticism By Mina Kimes Of Trump DOD Over DEI Is Exactly Why ESPN Needed To Cancel 'Around the Horn".
Oh, I agree. The real issue here is that the entire political commentary ecosystem is awful and pointless.
A lot of what you're saying I agree with except I don't particularly give AF about dissecting why right-wingers care here. Jackie Robinson is an 80/20 issue and I think that is why Ethan picked this particular issue for being such an attractive jumping off spot. I think it is very clear Ethan agrees with a lot of what Mina Kimes says about Jackie Robinson being subject to racism and it is crazy DOD took down an article on him that has hardly any bearing on DEI. A total self-own by the DOD and the right. But look at all of the other large issues that someone like Mina just simply ignores. As the other person responding to this points out, Mina isn't calling balls and strikes she's only speaking on one side and that's the big issue.
I'm the stick to sports person that Ethan refers to. They do exist. I do not want to hear right or left political stances when I'm trying to use sports as escapism. If I did want commentary on DOD fucking up the poorly written and implemented DEI EO, then I am *not* going to Around The Horn for that shit. I'll go somewhere else where I know the person has put in a decent amount of work understanding all the issues going on. I'm not asking Steve Kornacki to break down Cover 0, so I'm not looking for Mina Kimes or Clay Travis to lecture me on some societal issue.
To Ethan's point though, there's is a time where those two worlds collide and as a sports fan, we have to reckon with that no matter how we feel about the view point. In my opinion, the problem in and of itself isn't her comments. The problem exists when folk on both sides of the aisle pick and choose to create controversy where none exists. Mina's comments aren't controversial and if the other side doesn't make a big deal about it, you'd never hear about it unless you watched ATH or followed her on twitter. Nick Bosa wearing a MAGA hat last year is non-story given we already knew he rocked with Trump. Caitlin Clark acknowledging other great black players and saying they need to be protected isn't controversial. People create the controversy, and like suckas we fall for it.
I anticipate part 2 will address more of the literal Jackie Robinson issue that hopefully whets your appetite. But as to this particular article, I view the Robinson topic as just a convenient starting point for Ethan's thesis around the sports media having too many one sided conversations that don't appeal to their readership.
I probably disagree with you on how frequent sports and politics *do* collide, but honest people can disagree and it certainly does happen sometimes. And oddly enough I think the arena they do collide in has more to do with stadium subsidies than societal issues.
The US Military is honoring veterans on websites that are no longer separated by race. Everything Jackie Robinson still exists, just not on a special race page.
The End.
JMH
I'd say Jackie Robinson is more than 80/20. Do you think 20 percent of Americans are on the "actually, baseball should have stayed segregated" train?
Ethan won't interrogate this: 'the far more interesting topic is why are right wing people going crazy over what Mina said?'
He is inclined, and/or is financially incentivized, to always interrogate and scrutinize the 'woke/progressive sports media' angle first and foremost.
I'll say this, I actually appreciate that, even as I point out my contention in this moment. While I am moderate, my social media setup aligns me with more left leaning types. I pay to be here in part because I don't think Ethan engages in content grifting. He's not scrutinizing for the sake of scrutiny imo. There would be less of this 80/20 dynamic if more right leaning people followed his lead. I find so much of right wing sports commentary to be outrage about what this liberal said or outrageous take to own the libs. The sports space NEEDS more Ethan's imo. But I also think sometimes, there has to be room to say, "y'all trippin" to right leaning sports types.
She lies often. You're welcome. Lol
Can you cite an example of her lies about Jackie Robinson?
Minka conveniently forgot to include it was an all-white officer panel that unanimously aquitted JR.
JR's stories and accomplishments weren't erased anywhere for any reason. The websites are being redone to REMOVE the color of people's skin from determining where your story is told. Drrr
If you want to get down to the brass tax it is white Americans who love military veterans most. Despite what pigeon brained Minka assumes white people love black military vets all the same cuz they're badasses.
I'm going to let you in on a secret on how the government works. The people who took down the article are the same people who originally posted the article.
There is no army of red hats who came in and started running the content management systems for federal agencies.
There are a bunch of GG-11s who never got attention from anyone in their 20 years of doing this who suddenly had to work on an urgent deadline with senior executives (also career employees, not red hats) are pinging them for status updates every 30 minutes.
They removed thousands of web pages. They missed some that that should have removed and the removed some that they should have kept. This is exactly what happened.
This is true and points to the other problem which is that we don’t seem to understand how government is supposed to work period. Seems like Congress has been on a 30 year vacation.
Agree, it feels like the goal of this White House and some of its supporters is to deny that racism (except against white people) exists and bury any evidence that it ever did exist. Look at Moms For Liberty, whose main goals include censoring any material that makes “white children feel bad.” That includes the Civil War and slavery, not Ibram Kendi’s book.
If Ethan is going to write about this stuff, he should acknowledge that there’s a full-on campaign on the right to cover up the country’s history of civil rights, and if Jackie Robinson’s legacy is now part of the culture war, the Right is just as insane as the Left was in 2021. He’s good at (and right to) calling out the excesses of the Left, but seems tentative to do so to the Right as to not appear shrill or “biased.”
I think this is spot on - if you just take what Ethan writes (and ignore his dislaimer that he is 'actually liberal' on many issues), I believe his is in alignment with right wing identity politics. Eager to criticize the woke left (that's really his entire business model, right?), never acknowledging the racism and anti-LGBTQ actions that very much exist on the right.
I disagreed with the piece because I think most folks actually agree with Kimes, even those on the right. But the left needs intense analysis and critique from its own side if it’s going to get out of this mess. I’m not sure how anyone could look at the data that came out this week from the 2024 election and continue to think the left should hammer away with identity politics.
I read Ethan as also agreeing with Kimes, but trying to make the point that continually scolding in only one direction makes you less credible or effective when you have a legitimate complaint.
ethan almost exclusively scolds 'woke' or progressive messaging, so isn't he guilty of the same thing?
Come to think of it, a simpler answer is that of HoS is focused on cultural / political critiques of the sports media, and sports media culture and politics is left-wing. It's a little like asking why he didn't criticize the Bulls or Pistons when he was a Warriors reporter.
What sports media content that delves into politics is not progressive or "woke"? He's usually writing about that because that's the content out there. You're kind of asking why there's no black people in Scandinavia.
And if you want to say he doesn't criticize Outkick then that's just not true https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/i-dont-think-espn-fired-sam-ponder
Yes, to an extent, and I think you're seeing that critique expressed today.
That said, although I've never watched Kimes and don't really know who he/she is, if I had to guess, Ethan is probably much better at presenting a balanced view that includes critiques of the Right. That especially comes though if you listed to the PodCast form of HoS.
So I wouldn't use the word exclusively. And consequently his credibility problem isn't as bad as the one he's critiquing.
my point is people like ethan have made it their life's work with critiqueing the left while dancing around or never calling a spade a spade when people like the president and elon say and do actual things that are far crueler.
Want me to show you how easy is it to be a lefty?
It's actually lgbtqia+, or do you not acknowledge the intersex and asexual minorities? What about the + which represent two-spirits, non binary, pansexual, demisexual, aromantic, genderfluid, and agenders?
That's hundreds if not thousands of identities you are disrespecting if not dead naming with your lazy lgbtq usage.
You're childish.
You're an incredibly boring, tedious person in a place that's usually got pretty smart debate.
Is this how you talk about politics and culture with the actual humans in your life?
“…Jackie is a perfect example of a DEI hire…”
Jackie Robinson isn’t an example of a DEI hire because DEI is explicitly a 21st century programmatic ideology that itself is a product of decades and generations of post-segregation politics and culture.
Robinson should be celebrated for his courage in facing down segregation and racism, but to construe that with DEI is to willfully misunderstand Robinson’s fight and victory. And that the previous administration thought Robinson should be tagged as DEI is a great example of how toxic and dumb DEI really is here.
For me whenever Ethan wades into politics, I just want to have an idea of what perspective he's coming from.
Conservatives ABSOLUTELY think liberals are evil. Maybe 10 years ago this wasn't the case, but ever since COVID, that's 100% no longer true.
Also, are Jeff Passan (a baseball journalist) and Mina (a minority) hypocrites because they got authentically mad about this Jackie Robinson thing but DIDN'T get mad about basketball player Donovan Clingan's opinion of Joe Biden during a photo op?
One instance is nakedly political and opinion based, the other is straight-up dumbfuckery. I don't really understand why Jeff and Mina can't speak up about this issue. Is Ethan even sure they would have nice things to say about Joe Biden?
Jackie Robinson was the opposite of a "DEI hire." The pejorative term "DEI hire" means that someone gets a job despite not being good at it. Jackie Robinson was very very good at baseball!
This was Nick’s point. You don’t argue the redefinition. Under the actual definition, Mr. Robinson is a perfect example of a DEI hire. I personally don’t like talking about him in that manner because it doesn’t do justice to the circumstances he faced imo. If you want to be real, calling stuff DEI when centered around race is a way to slur minorities and not be called racist.
There's a big difference between erasure and shifting focus.
I don't think any one is trying to pull off an erasure. Erasure would be claiming Jackie's struggles were all made up. It would be like something from the USSR era when they completely erased ex-regime figures from ALL records (not just government records) and it became a crime to even talk about them.
Shifting focus is entirely different because there's never a right or wrong answer. There's 250 years of American history to draw from (and you also need some world history for any hope of context) and thousands upon thousands of people, issues, etc.. to draw from. What should we focus on is never going to have a single right or wrong answer
Question: Shifting focus from what?
Seems pretty obvious so I guess you want me to spell it out for some reason?
It seems like (assuming this was the intent, and it wasn't some version of "malicious compliance") the idea was to talk less about historic civil rights struggles. I don't really know what the context of the website is so I don't have an opinion on it, but obviously there are places and times where that would be appropriate and places that it wouldn't.
In terms of focus, it is interesting to me in how some periods and struggles in history are fairly well-remembered and some aren't. For example, the period from 1880-1940 saw a huge amount of strife between labor and capital, with frequent strikes sometimes put down by mass violence. Coal mine owners used WW1 chemical weapons dropped from fighter planes to put down one strike, and the head of the United Auto Workers Union survived two assassination attempts.
You can find wikipedia lists of hundreds of murders and shootings of strikers, and many of them were immigrants, which brings me to another forgotten era - the mass surge of immigration from about 1870-1920, which was only brought to an end by bipartisan bills from congress that all but shutoff immigration.
Anyway, I find these two eras very relevant and wish they were taught or remembered. Maybe some would argue there should be something about them on a DoD website somewhere? But if you said that was wrong, I wouldn't call you ghoulish or accuse you of erasure.
I mean this truly; thank you for the clarification. I don't want to assume anything as I myself am not a fan of being miss-represented. So I wanted to make sure I understood you. My question (not to you directly) would be why do you want to shift focus from or talk less about civil rights struggles? Try as some might, you can't tell the story of this country without talking about race. The same way you couldn't or shouldn't be able to talk about the history of labor relations in this country without mentioning the period you spoke of. The recounting of eras in history isn't good or bad, nor should there ever be a need to "shift" from remembering it. If one feels any discomfort from a moment in our history, the work should be on the individual to do some introspection on why that is, not remove it. Last I checked, that was called creating a "safe space", and from my memory, right wing types see that as weakness.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
"why do you want to shift focus from or talk less about civil rights struggles"
It would depend on the particulars of any given conversation or piece of media, and I have no take on the DoD fiasco. But hypothetically, I can think of 3 reasons:
1) If it's "not the time or place". There are many important things I strongly believe in, but like Ethan wrote, it doesn't mean each one of them needs to be brought up in every sports broadcast (again, I have no idea if this applies to the DoD fiasco).
2) To make room for other issues. History, and struggle, are both really big topics. I can imagine good-faith arguments that class struggle, or immigration issues, are more relevant to today than race-based civil rights struggles, and therefore those deserve more attention. Or maybe somebody thinks gender issues are being left out, or perhaps the history of political compromise and conflict should be better remembered. There's not unlimited time or attention, so you always have to prioritize.
3) When it comes to civil rights issues, there's a *potential* for such things to be taught or acknowledged in a way that creates divineness, or a view of history where white people are permanent villains in some intrinsic way and black people or other groups are always the helpless oppressed. I don't usually see it approached that way, and I doubt a Jackie Robinson DoD website would push that POB, but there's a commentator here today (cornwallace) who seems to have learned that somewhere.
Anyways I don't think any of this means you don't do basic things like teach about the history of civil rights in history class. But I tend to think the racial dimension of American culture is fading in importance every year, while divisions based on nativity, class and politics are growing, so I wish we paid more attention to those aspects of our history.
Deleting articles is erasure, by definition. Shifting focus would be doing less articles like this, or none at all, which everyone would expect from Pete “Jerusalem Cross” Hegseth’s Pentagon
"Deleting articles is erasure, by definition."
No, it's really not; that's what you're missing. It's only erasure by a superficial definition that would include far too many actions to be useful. Completely hypothetically, if the DoD had a webpage about the War of 1812 and now they don't, it's not "erasure" because there's no intent to wipe it from memory. They were just refocusing on whatever it was replaced with.
"We need to move on from slavery and Jim Crow and segregation by pretending they never happened (fingers in my ears) lalalalalalalalalalalalala"
Yea I feel like if the core argument is “can u blame conservatives for erasing sports/american history because liberals were pretty mean back in 2020” then I can’t get with that.
“At the same time, the admin quickly restored the site, and it would be a straw man to suggest that anyone with status on the right literally considers the 1949 N.L. MVP to be a “DEI hire.” Nobody died. We’re not forgetting about Jackie Robinson due to fear of Trump Gulag. I’m not sure we need theoretically non partisan sports media people to belabor the point like it’s still 2020 when they never hold their own side to any scrutiny. “
This is giving the administration a crazy amount of grace. A plane hits a helicopter and the literal first thing from Trump is blaming DEI. It was 100% done on purpose and they wanted to double down on it until the firestorm was too intense. This administration is using “DEI” as a substitute for slurs.
“Yes, I know, conservatives are disgusted by liberals too, but there’s a raft of social science demonstrating that liberals are far more likely to end friendships over political disagreement. Another writer once explained this difference like so: Conservatives think liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are evil. A conservative sees a liberal’s societal improvement plan as destructively impractical, and a liberal sees the conservative’s opposition as rooted in hating the beneficiaries. I’m generalizing of course.”
It’s pretty simple why this rift exists. There is not major talking point / policy position from liberals that has no regard for the humanity of conservatives. The conservative side has many that do. It’s not hard at all to see why one side considers to the see the other as evil. Part 1 was a crazy attempt of whataboutism when this current administration is doing whatever the fuck they want with no regard.
Please include *wildly bias* at the top next time.
How do you write this article without mentioning “malicious compliance”? Seriously?
Some leftist gov employee wipes Jackie Robinsons site , along with wiping tuskegee airmen info and navajo code talkers and then lefty reporters report on the lefty gov workers trying to make trump gov look bad.
This is all fake- congrats on writing a article about a manufactured controversy. Ethan this article is embarrassing.
Except part of the story that generated this was the DoD's PR reply, which doesn't fit the “malicious compliance” narrative.
Also - why are you putting “malicious compliance” in quotes?
So you can look it up and educate yourself. This is a bs tactic that is commonly taught in marxist/commie circles. There is even a wikipedia article. Happy reading!
Now that’s a take
How did Mina Kimes become alerted and why did she report incorrect information?
Seriously, try to answer that without assumptions.
It is crystal clear what the military is doing: content of character > color of skin. Some famous guy said that in a speech. (I forget cuz I'm a racist who acknowledges only white accomplishments)
There's is no more black brown or white wing of military. There's the military, as it should be.
How did she become alerted?
Probably when Passan reported it.
Why did she report incorrect information?
From Ethan’s very story that you are commenting on right at this moment: “Every word of Kimes’ monologue happens to be true”
This is a different conversation. You are trying to do the “woke is bad” thing, when this isn’t about that. It’s about acknowledging that Jackie Robinson’s place in history and in our culture is based almost exclusively on his race and the part he played in knocking down barriers to entry in our society because of his race.
It seems like you want to talk about Derek from accounting who you think only got his job because of some DEI initiative. That’s fine. You and I may even agree on that truth be told. But what I can do that it seems you can’t do is acknowledge the past.
"It’s about acknowledging that Jackie Robinson’s place in history and in our culture is based almost exclusively on his race"
I can't think of a single sentence that sums up the Awokenment Era more and I can't think of a more disrespectful way to describe Jackie Robinson.
Haha astonishing, really
Yeah, the most important thing to note about Jackie Robinson is definitely that he was a 6-time All Star with a good blend of power and speed, and nothing else. We remember Jackie because he was Frankie Fritsch with a shorter career (but let's not explore those reasons), end of story.
He was a great basketball player as well.
Or just the truth? Sorry to mess with your enjoyment of the kayfabe.
I find little to no enjoyment in indulging narrative-fitting conspiracy theories thank you very much
These are just facts.
You indulge in willful ignorance. Thats cool.
I’m not sure you are approaching this with an open mind. None of what you said can be defined as a “fact”. They are all assumptions based on your own ideological biases.
Another banger from Ethan, as they pretty much always are. I'm surprised at the push back in the other comments. I have a comparison to this situation that's completely removed from hot button political debate, but the principle remains the same...
My mom is as much of a paranoid worry-wart as a person can be. Growing up with her, the message was clear: the worst case outcome might happen no matter what you do: riding your bike, watching a certain show, eating food that I could choke on, etc. etc. Eventually I learned to tune her out and just assign anything she said to be the ramblings of an insane person. Even if she was rarely correct about something, I'd already discounted it because it came from her.
My dad is much more rational and level-headed. He would let me do normal things that a kid should do, without assuming death was imminent. But every once in a while, he would look me in the eyes and say, "you can do this thing, but I need you to be careful, okay?" My dad saved his warnings for only the more serious situations, and I knew that when he spoke up like that, I needed to listen and take his advice.
If Mina Kimes used her pulpit to condemn the insanity of allowing men to compete in women's sports, she would gain so much credibility. But she's captured, which means no one is listening when she does make a good point.
Oh man I feel like I’m just gonna start disagreeing with you a lot. I hope not, but there’s been a bit of a pendulum shift now that the new folks in charge have become the aggressive people who are taking themselves too seriously. This pushback by Passan and Kimes was passive in contrast. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me the discourse has been shifting pretty quickly since Trump’s inauguration
They're too busy gloating about the first vibe shift to notice the next vibe shift. But it's normal, every time one side is in power in the US, it overplays its hand, gloats far too much, and helps the other side find footing in doing so. This is our eternal vicious cycle .
I never hear about this stuff until I read your site so maybe I really do stick to sports, not sports-politics
Same, at least in this particular case. I was watching March Madness all throughout yesterday (took off work for it). Didn't even know this was going on.
Def didn’t know Stephen a smith was “running for president” or whatever until Ethan & Ryan said it
I think the key point here really is that "the admin quickly restored the site". This was a *gaffe*, not an intentional action or policy. And dunking on gaffes really is the realm of *partisan politics*, which does not belong anywhere near sports talk shows.
Exactly. They probably took down 5-10k pages/documents across DOD. And they did it fast. There are going to be mistakes.
The people doing this are career mid-level government employees, whose typical weeks usually consist of posting or updating a few pieces of content per day. Now they are taking hundreds of action per day and they made some mistakes. This is all that happened
Ethan,
White dudes have ran shit for decade upon decade. Men dominated politics, sports, movies (and more) for a long, long time.
Now that they've had to share for a short time, or as you put it "They’ve had about a decade or so of near hegemonic partisan scolding" you can "empathize and understand".
Oh no. 10 years! Oh jeez! Poor wittle guys.
200 years of racism/sexism should be met with nuance, but 10 years of being told about it, and it's a-ok to be fed up?
See, that's all this is. A bunch a big babies crying because they can't get their own way. They had to share, and they find sharing "annoying". So they want to go back to the days where they didn't have to share.
Trump and Elon are remodeling a glass house with a chain saw, and you are on this "try to be more balanced please" approach when it comes to repainting the mailbox?!
Russia is remaking us in their image, and conservatives can't take one second to check their pride/ego and admit maybe things have gone too far. Instead it's on blue "millennials" to be the balanced ones?
Maybe just stick to sports, Ethan.
Nobody but yourself looks back at the last 10 years as "the decade when white guys had to share"
Ethan's writing about politics, which for as much as it sometimes seems is about race or gender, really isn't as each side of the aisle has plenty of people from every identity.
Yes, because white dudes are in denial about what this is really about.
The social shifts began in the sixties, once conservatives realized they couldn't win on policy, they pivoted to social issues. Using fear and anger as the main motivators.
They hate having to share and they hate acknowledging history.
But most of all, they hate being told they're wrong, on anything, now matter how blatantly wrong they are.
I'm so glad my dad taught me who to trust when I was younger. He told me the smartest most honest people in the world use "they" all the time
"They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats!"
Are you a false flag operation from the Right?
The banning of books and scrubbing of history IS denial.
If you won't admit this fact, we have nothing left to discuss.
"scrubbing of history" - does this include American history taught in public schools today?
2025 American History: Despite white men dying to build the most safe, productive, creative, and powerful society in world history, white men are inherently racist evil and dishonest. This is why race quotas and dei. The end.
You'll suck any dick they dangle infront of you. It's pathetic.
You wanna be like Russia, fine. At least have the spine to admit it.
The whole point is that DEI has proven to be utterly toothless when it comes to actually fighting racism or other bigotries. Do you really think a workshop can fight racism?
I hear what you are saying, but after a decade of this, the only thing it has resulted in is everyone but white people shifting to the right. If what you say is true, why are Latinos and Asians breaking sharply right? Even black voters are moving right.
Jfc wake up. Because MAGA is using a constant deluge of fear and lies to manipulate voters.
There's the emotional brain and the logical brain. Your emotions always take precedent, thanks to evolution, aka a survival trait.
Its the exact same as when you've been in an argument and said something cruel or whatever. Minutes, hours, or days later... your logic tells you "that was fucked up, I should apologize".
Only for MAGA, they don't WANT you slowing down and using logic. Hence why they bombard you with texts, memes, and videos of lie upon lie, stoking your emotions.
And this is the result. People thinking, "Yeah, I wanna be on team Russia-Belarus-North Korea. Fuck Ukriane. Fuck Zelensky. Fuck equality. Fuck equity."
And OBJECTIVELY that's fucking the worst team to be on.
They make it impossible to win, because it only take a minute to lie, but an hour to refute it.
And since Americans are a prideful bunch, they'd rather watch their country get chopped up and sold off than admit maybe things went too far and they voted for the wrong guy.
What percentage of American citizens do you believe are racist?
Double whammy, stop! Unhinged and unintelligent 🤭
Got a few more assumptions to share pal? I've got room left.
Honest question Jesse, did you find the whole "They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats!" rant by Trump and his cult, unhinged?
I didn't give 2 💩 as I followed local stories and watched footage of council meetings before Trump spoke on it.
Far more unhinged is how easily the left calls me a Nazi because I believe in things like individual rights, merit, and women not having a penis.
Thanks Jesse. Your comment is one more grain of sand on the beach of hypocrisy and denial.
You don't give a shiz about boldface lies by our leaders, or them chopping up and selling off our country like its one big business, but my comment is somehow "unhinged".
Got it.
Well you’re just proving his point.
His point is garbage. I don't think all DEI legislation is a good thing. But it's not as dangerous or outright threatening as the shit I project 2025.
Denial is a powerful thing. People would rather drown in a sea lies then face on island of harsh truths.
I love Ethan's content and the HOS rules.
Ethan is fundamentally and spiritually left wing, but the party demands you believe in trans sex ideology, white oppression, and social value being tied directly to skin color and biological sex.
What is anyone supposed to do when faced with those demands? Join a weird cult or be accused of supporting the other team's colors. Fun decision!
Fun fact: an all-white officer panel dismissed Jackie's court martial from the bus incident with a unanimous vote. I guess Minka's minute ran out before this could be read off her phone 🤷
Yeah I don’t think you can apply a “whataboutism”here. And I say that as someone that agrees with much of your analysis on the political imbalance in sports media.
There’s been a lot of talk about 80/20 issues. Jackie Robinson is very much an 80/20 issue. The only people I saw push back against Kimes and Passan yesterday were Trump cultists and culture warriors on the right. Even Barstool guys that voted for Trump expressed their bewilderment at what the White House was doing.
What's the 80/20 Jackie issue?
I'd love to hear this explained.
God this is all so boring. And the king of referencing “audience capture” is really pouring the trough for his audience at this point. The idea of putting “millennial military brat, Yale grad, former financial journalist, Asian” on the board as this unrelenting lib is also funny. I’m not even sure what the liberal talking points are that can be ascribed to Mina’s espn work before now? Trans women in sports? The thing that affects dozens of citizens in the sample of 10s of millions of youth athletes?
What a strange focus that’s become for people who love to assert their rationality. The actually rational don’t tend to hyper-fixate and over index on small sample happenings.
I guess what's annoying is that the feedback for it has been until the last year or so, been overwhelmingly positive, but it's really a waste of everyone's time.
There is no chance the DoD wasn't going to restore Jackie Robinson's page, regardless of what these commentators said. None. All this commentary did was give these commentators a chance to pat themselves and each other on the back for how "courageous" they are. But it really doesn't do anything for anybody.
It's indulgent, and it's rude to the audience. If there was a cause that they were aware of that they could bring attention to, it might be worthwhile. But "Jackie Robinson was good and shouldn't be erased from the DoD website" isn't it. They may as well have given a monologue about how ice cream tastes good.
The possible end might have been to associate Trump with this Bad Thing, if they sincerely thought there were people who liked or were indifferent to Trump but would be persuaded by this. But we all know that's not the case.
I also have another thought about this situation...
I think it's quite possible that the initial removal of this article was due to a large sweep that it happened to get caught up in, rather than some evil governmental employee singling it out for deletion.
And that the response from the DOD was mostly just a generic copy/paste without someone taking the time to individually analyze what was happening here.
The reason I think this is because: A) It was quickly restored and B) The Story of Jackie Robinson rises far above the hot-button racial debates of 2025. This is more than an 80/20 issue – it's a 99/1 issue.
Whatever you think about this regime, if your position is that they truly envision America's utopia to be a modern day nazi haven, you're no better than the Q-anon people who think the liberal ideal is a communist america where the elites have their own pizza gate comunes.
I agree, I think 'embarrassing screw up' is the Occam's razor explanation for what happened here
I get how annoying the Millennial sports scolds are. I quit watching Around the Horn primarily because of this. But they're correct about the Jackie Robinson stuff, so credit where credit's due.
FWIW, a similar thing happened in the world of movie criticism. Movie critics/bloggers are even more scoldy from the left than sports reporters are. I was right there in the trenches of the late 2010s/early 2020s. It was awful. So it naturally gave rise to right-wing, YouTube-based folks who cover the entertainment industry, and they draw huge amounts of views, whatever you may think of them.
With respect to all the comments here about "malicious compliance", it would be easier to believe that it's at least possible if Trump/Elon Maga nation hadn't made "owning the libs" such a key charter to everything they're doing and have done and have run on the past 9 years. You can't brag non stop about how much you love owning the libs as you drink from your liberal tears coffee mug, then blame malicious compliance for doing the actual owning the libs part.
Exactly. The bull in the china shop doesn’t get the right to complain when someone else in the shop smashes a plate.
This is a complete miss for me. Spinning the Jackie Robinson DoD story to why Around the Horn failed feels off.