As a lifelong sports fan, I'm upset by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred's decision to pull the annual All-Star game out of Atlanta because of an allegedly racist state voting law. The politically correct police have come to Major League Baseball, and it's a damn shame because when you mix politics and sports, it's a toxic mix for the fans and the country.
President Biden, who is being pushed to the far left by "progressive" Democrats and socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, publicly lobbied Manfred to move the game out of Atlanta, calling Georgia's new voting law "an atrocity" and comparing it to the Old South's racist Jim Crow laws. The liberal Washington Post gave Biden "four Pinocchios" for his dishonest description of the Georgia voting law and the conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized as follows:
"Mr. Biden objects to Georgia's new voting law as an 'atrocity,' though it offers more avenues to vote than New York or Delaware (Biden's home state)," the Journal commented. "We can't wait to see what the U.S. president is going to say about China's voting rules. There are no lines at polling places in (China) because there are no polling places …"
The Journal went on to suggest that Biden could send Manfred as a special emissary to China "since the MLB commissioner is trying to expand his league's business in China even as it boycotts an American state," the very definition of PC hypocrisy. Former Commissioner Fay Vincent said Manfred "has politicized baseball over a law he likely hasn't examined," adding that "Major League Baseball can't become a weapon in the culture wars." Amen!
The Journal's former editor-in-chief, Gerard Baker, asserted that Georgia's voting law "is in no way a return to Jim Crow, but rather an honest effort to improve election integrity," after many complaints about the state's voting procedures in last November's presidential election. Baker blasted companies that have signed-on to Manfred's Georgia boycott, including Atlanta-based Coca Cola and Delta Airlines.
"Coca Cola, Delta and other companies my family supports all but called the legislation racist implying that those, like me (and your favorite Appeal columnist), who support it are bigots," Baker wrote. I suppose that I'm now a bigot for endorsing the Georgia voting law and opposing a statue of former Wolf Pack quarterback and famous (or infamous) "social justice warrior" Colin Kaepernick on the UNR campus in Reno. "Kap" has dishonored his alma mater.
Please forgive me, but I don't want to hear social justice lectures from wealthy young multi-millionaires who re-invent themselves as victims of "systemic racism." Like ex-President Obama, Kaepernick was raised by middle-class white people who championed traditional American family values. But don't tell that to the "woke" cancel culture people who want to re-write history to make America a racist country founded on slavery. "We are witnessing a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), adding that "nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation."
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) asked Manfred whether "you intend to maintain your membership in the Augusta National Golf Club … an exclusive members-only club located in the state of Georgia." Rubio pointed out that Manfred's decision "will have a bigger impact on countless small and minority-owned businesses in and around Atlanta, than the new election law ever will."
So why does Biden punish Georgia, a state that voted for him last year, while giving authoritarian China a free pass?
Guy W. Farmer is a lifelong baseball fan.
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