Fox Sports Radio’s Clay Travis, author of Republicans Buy Sneakers Too: How the Left Is Ruining Sports with Politics, noted how sports media figures are ten times more likely to financially support Democrats than their political media counterparts. He offered his remarks in a Wednesday interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.
As a member of the sports media, I think there’s a lot more bias that exists within the sports media than has been analyzed,” Travis said. “For instance, I think the math was that members of the political media were 27 times as likely to donate to Hillary Clinton than they were to Donald Trump. I don’t think that surprises a lot of people that the media is overall liberal. I think that’s an accurate assessment. The sports media was 270 times as likely to donate to Hillary Clinton as they were to Donald Trump.”
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Travis continued, “So if you think the media overall is biased — and I think most people probably would agree that there is a bias, there — the sports media is ten times as biased in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump as the political media was if you look at dollars donated.”
Travis described sports, at their best, as an illustration of America’s ideals.
“We should be coming in and trying to make America more like sports as opposed to sports more like America,” advised Travis. “What I have seen happen is a gradual creep of politics into every aspect of modern-day American life, and I don’t think it’s good.”
Travis praised sports’ transcendence of ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual lines.
“If you’ve ever been in a stadium or an arena — and your team has a good play, or your team wins a game, or they score a touchdown, or something positive happens — it is very often that you turn around and high-five somebody in the seat near you,” observed Travis. “When that happens, you don’t think about their religion, their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, any of those conflicts. You just go ahead and live through the common humanity and uniting force of sports.”
Travis added, “In our modern-day, tribalized, identity politics universe, it’s good to have something that cuts across all race, ethnic, religion, and sexuality borders and unite us all. That’s where sports gets it right. Sports is the ultimate meritocracy.”
Referencing Colin Kaepernick, Travis invited listeners to consider the consequences of politicking in workplaces such as FedEx, McDonald’s, and Walmart.
“The idea that you should, at work, be able to advance your political positions is fundamentally ludicrous if it’s applied anywhere else,” assessed Travis. “If you went up to the cash register at McDonald’s … and the person who’s taking your order said, ‘I hope you’ll agree that abortion is murder,’ or, ‘I hope you’ll agree that every woman deserves the right to choose,’ … it would be a head-scratching moment for you, and if that person at McDonald’s continues to do it, guess what, they would be fired, and the same thing would happen at Walmart, or at FedEx, or UPS, or anywhere else.”
Travis went on: “I think the general position is that Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a right to speak out on politics in uniform at work during the national anthem. I also love this analogy, as well — imagine the reaction on the left wing if Colin Kaepernick had taken a knee to protest the legalization of gay marriage. People would’ve lost their minds, right? They would’ve said, ‘Oh my God. There’s no place for these politics during the national anthem.'”
Travis warned against viewing social media consensus as reflective of popular opinion, linking what he described as ESPN’s downfall to the sports media’s embrace of social media
“I think social media is … like a carnival funhouse mirror,” said Travis. “It artificially distorts reality. … I don’t use social media as a reflection of the universe at large [or] American popular opinion. I think [ESPN’s downfall] a great example of the dangers of listening to social media and using it as a reflection of what the national population wants.
Travis added, “I think what plays well very often on social media is sports mixed with politics, I think ESPN was in the process, and has been and continues to be in the process of losing … subscribers every year, I think they were looking for salvation, a reason to remain relevant, and they decided that what they needed to do was interject sports with politics, to replace highlights with socio-economic analysis of politics behind sports on a regular basis.”
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