Kate Smith Controversy embodies the absurdity of modern sports

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This week, the New York Yankees stopped playing an interpretation of "God Bless America" ​​by a woman who had raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help defeat Adolf Hitler's Germany. And the Philadelphia Flyers covered his statue outside their arena.

Why?

Because a disgruntled campaigner sent an email to both teams, Kate Smith, the singer of the recorded song "God Bless America", was potentially racist based on the lyrics of songs she had sung in the 1930s. The songs, which many consider to be satire – that is, they existed to ridicule racism in the 1930s and not to glorify it – were often sung by famous black and white singers in 1930s.

But that does not matter.

Smith, who has died since 1986 and to whom Ronald Reagan awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982, was a bigoted defendant unable to defend himself against this charge.

Even if, you know, according to his New York Times obituary: "No actor in the show even contacted her as a war bond seller during World War II. During an 18-hour switchover on the CBS radio network, Miss Smith sold for $ 107 million worth of war bonds, which were issued by the US government to fund the 39, war effort. His total for a series of marathon shows was over $ 600 million. "

Now, six hundred million dollars is clearly, a lot of money, no matter the time, but since we take old steps and place them in the modern context, $ 600 million Smith raised to fight Hitler during the Second World War would be equivalent to nearly $ 11 billion in cash today.

11 billion dollars!

Smith also traveled more than 520,000 kilometers to entertain US troops serving overseas and fighting Hitler.

Now, I know that it is common on social media that modern social justice warriors claim that current American politicians are Nazis, but even these people should recognize that it is better to "get them out of it." help, in fact, to defeat the real Nazis by collecting more money than any other artist of your era than to call people with whom they disagree about social media nazis. (Unfortunately, maybe not.An RT calling a politician with whom you disagree with a Nazi is the modern equivalent of storming the beaches of Normandy, there … all. is basically the same thing!)

But nothing in this story matters, because if someone emails an allegation of racism dating back nearly a hundred years in 2019, we must immediately pretend that the accused never existed and to erase them from public life.

Do not believe me?

The Philadelphia Flyers did not just ban Smith's singing,the statue of Kate Smith on the parking lot in front of their meeting place as you can see in the photo above.

Seriously, that happened in 2019.

Is it scary? Some people emailed the team's allegations by email. You know that the team then tries to suppress the existence of this person.

For those who wonder why a story like this is important, it's because of the precedent created. When you respond in this way to a social justice warrior's claim, you do not extinguish the fire of their scandal, you encourage them to continue and move on to the next target.

These perpetually aggrieved and offended people are never happy or satisfied, they simply go on to the next scandal and repeat the process over and over again.

You may find it a bit odd that Kate Smith has a statue outside the Flyers arena, but Smith's relationship with the Flyers is now part of the team's tradition. When they played Smith's "The Alliance Bless America" ​​in the arena, a tradition that began in the 1960s, their team record was exceptional. The trend has grown, eventually leading Smith to attend the big games and sing before the games start. After Smith sang before the 1974 Flyers Stanley Cup championship, she became a fan favorite and provided her own statue, part of the team's legend and tradition.

But everything changed this week with the Yankees and the Flyers when the team leaders panicked after a few emails.

I want you to think for a moment about this question: what kind of person goes through the story of the recording of a woman who has died for more than thirty years to complain about a song that has almost 100 years? Is this person a normal, healthy and representative example of modern American life or is this person a pathetic poor loser obsessed with being a victim?

I think we all know the answer.

So why do we continue to bow down to the worst members of our society?

Especially when the evidence shows that Americans of all races, ethnicities and religions are fed up with this type of people, who are contaminating their brand of cultural division.

In fact, according to a recent Pew research report – you can read the entire report here – summarized by the Atlantic if you are too lazy to read it in full:

"Among the general population, 80% think that" political correctness is a problem in our country ". Even young people are uncomfortable with this, especially with 74% of people aged 24 to 29 and 79% of people under 24. , the awakened are clearly in the minority all age.

Youth is not a good substitute for support for political correctness – and it turns out that race is not.

The whites are very slightly less likely than average to believe that politically correct is a problem in the country: 79% of them share this feeling. It is mostly Asians (82%), Hispanics (87%) and American Indians (88%) who are most likely to oppose political correctness … Three-quarters of African-Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and five percentage points less than the average, to believe that politically correct is a problem. "

Think about these data for a moment, at a time when we are told that we are practically uncomfortable, 79% of Americans think that this country is too politically correct, including a very large majority of all races.

Yet stories like these continue to emerge.

Why?

Fear.

Professional sports teams are so afraid of being labeled racist by some losers – and sports media artificially inflating such controversies and making them more valuable than they are – that they undertake radical actions based on some emails.

This is the only way to explain these team statements.

The Flyers:

"We have recently learned that several songs performed by Kate Smith contain offensive lyrics that do not reflect our values ​​as an organization. As we continue to look into this serious issue, we remove Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America" ​​from our library and recover the statue outside our arena. "

They covered his statue! The woman who raised more than $ 11 billion to help defeat Hitler!

I mean, in what world do we live?

Meanwhile, the Yankees said the following:

"We were informed of a recording that was previously unknown to us and decided to reread this new information immediately and carefully. The Yankees take social, racial and cultural insensitivities very seriously. And even if no definitive conclusion has been drawn, we are mistaken for sensitivity. "

The Yankees did not have their first black player before 1955. The Philadelphia Flyers did not have their first black hockey player until 1974. Are the Yankees and Flyers racist organizations today because they took so long to make these decisions?

Of course not.

Like every part of American society, these teams have evolved.

So why do they continue to judge the historical figures according to modern standards established after their deaths, as opposed to their own standards in the past? And why in the world do we assume that by playing a popular version of "God Bless America," the Yankees or the Flyers subscribe to all the statements ever made by the singer of the song in his life? Especially statements made nearly a hundred years ago.

I hoped that leagues and sports teams would become smarter after the NHL's response to the most recent controversy about the St. Louis Blues goaltender's old "offensive" tweets, Jordan Binnington:

"These are social media posts published five years ago by a player who was not even part of the National Hockey League at the time," the NHL said. "While we certainly do not accept public comments that may be perceived as insensitive, we have not seen anything yet that pushes us to take action in response to these publications."

This should be the answer to every controversy on social media.

In fact, I think the person trying to make controversies like this should also be questioned. Because, guess what, people who are trying to divide us with such controversies almost always have bigger skeletons in their own closets.

Do you know why?

Because they are human too! We are all imperfect.

If anyone has ever said anything about social media before using them, should not this be the standard used by all teams and leagues?

I think so.

And that's certainly what most Americans believe.

Hell, look at the state of Virginia. The Democratic governor of the state, a white man, may have posed on a racist photo of his medical school yearbook. Then, the lieutenant-governor, a black man, was accused of sexually assaulting two black women. Then the attorney general admitted that he had put Blackface to perform in a university evening.

The media was in a tumult, the three men should surely withdraw, right?

Except that nothing has happened.

And the national media have disappeared and history has been relegated to the background.

Why?

Because the people of the state of Virginia did not think a man should lose his job. A majority of Black Virginians in particular did not think the governor should resign. And a majority of Virginians also did not think that the lieutenant governor should be forced to resign because of allegations of sexual assault not accompanied by criminal charges.

This is because most of us have common sense.

We do not judge someone based on what they did – or pretended to do – decades ago, we judge them by what they do today. And when we do that, guess what, we do not judge them by a word, a sentence, an individual photo or an act, we judge them according to the totality of their actions.

Every day, every week, every month, and every year for the last fifteen years that I have earned my life as a public figure, I have received dozens (and sometimes hundreds, if not thousands) of e-mails, tweets, Facebook and radio messages. phone calls complaining about something that I said or wrote.

And do you know what I do with each one of them?

Ignore them.

Do you know why?

Because I know the vast majority of the American public – majorities of all races, religions, genders, sexual orientations and ethnicities – is tired of our culture of false scandal and even if they are not of the same opinion as me they appreciate the fact that I share my honest opinion every day.

They know that you can not let perpetual cranks and perpetually injured victims earn, you can not excuse yourself for being human.

And you can not hide the statue of a woman who collected hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Adolf Hitler, because two emails are scandalized by what she did almost a hundred years ago, her era.

Actions such as those undertaken by the Flyers and the Yankees are not intended to make America more unified, but to destroy us all and to pit us against each other.

In almost all cases, if you refuse to apologize, such stories simply disappear.

The worst thing you can do is encourage whiners.

Yet this is what this country keeps doing, many times.

It is high time that the silent majority of reasonable Americans regained control of our country and our sports and put an end to perpetual maneuvers.

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