The Patriot Post® · At the NCAA, Intimidation Is the Name of the Game
In case companies hadn’t noticed, now isn’t exactly a good time to drop a bombshell about radical politics. Either the NCAA hasn’t been paying attention to the massive uproar in Georgia, or they don’t seem to grasp the intensity of the pushback. Either way, most Americans (including the moderate ones), are fired up about the abuse Republicans are taking over election reform — and this time, they don’t mind saying so. That’s bad news for a woke collegiate sports association who’s used to dangling a few championship games in front of states and getting their way.
When the NCAA first tried this stunt — way back in 2016 — it was meddling in the North Carolina privacy bill. Now, five years later, they’re upping their extremism by joining the fight against girls’ sports. In a statement Monday, the association reminded everyone that their loyalty isn’t to women’s rights but to “transgender student-athletes,” the smallest fringe group of competitors in America. This commitment, they claim, is “grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition.” What it’s not grounded in, normal people will argue, is science, morality, common sense, or true equity.
In what are meant to be ominous tones, the NCAA warns that it is “monitoring” the states that are taking a stand against this wildly unpopular agenda and vowing to only host events in the places that share their absurd views on gender. To their surprise (and thanks, in large part, to the awakening that’s happened after Georgia), most legislators have had one response: good riddance. Whatever power the NCAA thinks it holds over these elected officials has been dramatically diminished the more entitled and radical Left’s policy demands become.
To ordinary Americans, it’s illogical to force girls to compete against biological men. Once you step outside of the Washington, D.C. bubble and talk to people in both parties, they’ll agree. As polling across the spectrum shows, it’s one of the strongest areas of bipartisan consensus in the nation. Some surveys, like Scott Rasmussen’s Just the News Daily Poll, show Democrats agreeing with Republicans by a 50-25 percent margin. On the Right, it’s no contest, almost everyone (81 percent) wants their daughters to be able to compete on a level playing field for titles, scholarships, and opportunities.
Even more liberal outlets, like Politico in its Morning Consult Poll, pointed out that this is a culture debate that isn’t really a debate. Across gender, party, and generational lines, protecting women’s rights makes sense in most people’s minds “So let’s dispense with the notion that transgenderism as pushed by corporate media, Big Tech, Hollywood, and corporate America is somehow ‘mainstream,’” the Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson insisted. “It’s not even close to mainstream.”
Of course, if the NCAA had been paying attention to the sweeping condemnation of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) for vetoing her state’s sports bill, they might understand why leaders didn’t take too kindly to the association’s warning. “The NCAA likes to threaten Florida and other states. Well, here’s a threat to the NCAA,” Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) thundered back. “The American people are not going to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports. It’s not going to happen. If you keep threatening the public with your woke elitist psychobabble, the NCAA will not last much longer. Florida cannot be replaced, but you can be replaced.”
Other leaders in places like Kansas, where bills are racing through the legislature to protect girls, Republicans are putting the NCAA in its place. State Senator Ty Masterton (R) fired back, “Republicans in the Kansas Senate will not cower in the face of such intimidation and inflammatory rhetoric. We will not back down in defense of fairness in women’s sports. We will not sell out decades of progress by women for a few days of a basketball tournament. We will continue to engage in this debate with scientific facts, civility, and respect.”
No one, Texas’s Valoree Swanson (R) said, is going to fall for these intimidation tactics anymore. “This is about fairness and common sense,” the Lone Star rep insisted. “I am proud to stand with our female athletes in Texas, and I refuse to abandon them. Biological males are free to compete in sports in Texas, but not in sports exclusively for girls.” One Florida legislator turned the tables on the NCAA, calling out their horrible treatment of girls in the latest collegiate tournament. Maybe they should learn to treat their own athletes with “dignity and respect,” state Rep. Chris Latvala (R) argued. “The women’s basketball tourney had subpar facilities and COVID testing and volleyball tournaments wasn’t even going to have announcers for the first two rounds.”
But hypocrisy from these Big Business hostage-takers is exactly what Americans have come to expect, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) pointed out on “Washington Watch.” Just look at how these same sports leagues and CEOs act in China, she argued. They’re boycotting Georgia for making democracy safer and happily operating in countries that don’t have democracy or human rights. “The MLB, the PGA, the NFL, the NBA, all of your sporting leagues should do what they’re there to do: play ball… The activism like this is just astounding.” And frankly, she said, “It’s not good corporate governance.” No one — least of all an America sports association — should willingly put female athletes at a disadvantage. “We should all [be able] to say this is not right,” she insisted. Girls deserve “the right to compete and excel.”
Originally published here.
CNN’s Anti-Truth Bias Exposed
You’d think by now Leftists would know better than to capture their candid comments on-camera. But the investigative geniuses at Project Veritas, in their ongoing marathon round of Liberal Scandal Whack-a-Mole, have squarely hit on another doozy. The latest victim, to no one’s surprise, is CNN, once again.
The undercover video recorded CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester, who recited, “I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out.” Way to be humble, Charlie. Of course, there’s two ways for cable news to drive a politician out of office. One is to fairly report on a corrupt politician’s egregious abuses of the responsibility voters have placed in them. For example, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo could have asked his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, why he was forcing elderly people with COVID into nursing homes.
The other method is to twist the facts and craft a misleading narrative — as Chester put it, “propaganda.” For instance, the network consciously tried to portray Joe Biden as young and healthy, and Donald Trump as old and ill. In reality, Biden is four years older than Trump. Chester explained, “[Trump’s] hand was shaking or whatever, I think” — that, by the way, demonstrates the network’s attitude toward facts — “We brought in so many medical people to tell a story that was all speculation, that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to, you know, whatever. We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. That’s what, I think that’s propaganda.” Compare that with their Biden coverage: “We would always show shots of him jogging and that [he’s] healthy, you know, and him in aviator shades,” said Chester.
It’s common knowledge that CNN wasn’t friendly towards Trump. Over the last four years, it invested countless hours to non-stop coverage of the latest anti-Trump talking point. CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta earned notoriety for his abusive, confrontational manner during press briefings. What’s news here is how frankly they are willing to admit it. After this, CNN viewers must know they’re allowing themselves to be hoodwinked. Or perhaps CNN viewers were never under any illusion that the network reported the straight facts. Perhaps they simply tuned in because they heard what they wanted to hear.
The media’s bias problem affects more than just CNN, and many Americans have caught on. According to a new Gallup study, 86 percent of Americans believe media outlets are politically biased, with 56 percent of Americans saying their own go-to news source has “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of bias. Maybe this helps explain why a record 33 percent of Americans in 2020 put no trust at all in mass media to report the news fairly and accurately — up from 28 percent only the year before.
It’s tempting to be discouraged by the media’s transparent hypocrisy. But that’s exactly the wrong takeaway, and here’s why: God isn’t surprised or alarmed. He predicted through Paul, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). So he exhorts Timothy, “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). Now is the time to stand, to boldly proclaim the truth, to not be intimidated or silenced by the world’s constant barrage of falsehood. Will you stand with me for the truth?
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.