The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has announced its 2023 Hall of Fame inductee class – and it features two prominent figures from the sports media industry in David Roberts and Rob Parker. The induction ceremony will take place on Friday, Aug. 4 in Birmingham, Ala. and honors legendary Black media professionals who have made contributions to the business.
“As we gather for our annual convention in a place that shines as a beacon of light in the fight for justice and equality, NABJ is excited to recognize some of the most courageous barrier breakers and history makers in the journalism and media industries,” said NABJ President Dorothy Tucker in a statement. “We will also have the honor of celebrating some of the game-changers of the future of news and communications – perfectly underscoring our 2023 theme, ‘From Revolution to Evolution.’”
Roberts is the head of event and studio production at ESPN and was recently promoted to oversee all college sports for the network, excluding baseball and football. Before rising to his current role, Roberts world as a senior coordinating producer for ESPNEWS and had oversight regarding the simulcast agreement of The Michael Kay Show on YES Network. Additionally, he served as the general manager of ESPN New York 98.7 and inked multiyear broadcast rights deals to present games for the New York Jets, New York Knicks and New York Rangers over the airwaves.
Aside from his responsibilities on broadcasts of the NBA on ESPN, Roberts leads the production of several flagship studio programs such as Get Up, Around the Horn and First Take. Throughout his media career, he has worked with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and coordinated live First Take programs from several different campuses. Roberts has also been a member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation Board of Directors since 2020, the same year he was named to the Cablefax Diversity List as one of the most influential and diverse executives in the business. Over this past weekend, Roberts was married to his fiancé, T’Erica, in a ceremony attended by various ESPN personalities and staffers in Atlanta, Ga.
Parker got his start in sports media at the Detroit Free Press in 1993 as the paper’s first Black sports columnists, and quickly began making contributions to local broadcast news as a sports reporter. He made the transition to the national airwaves in 2005 as a contributor on First Take, but was suspended from the network after making controversial comments about NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III. Shortly thereafter, Parker was dismissed from the network after giving an interview where he made assumptions about how ESPN personnel were affected by what he said.
Today, Parker works as a sports anchor for 7 Action News in Detroit, Mich. and is the co-host of The Odd Couple with Chris Broussard on FOX Sports Radio. Moreover, he has occasionally made appearances across FOX Sports 1 programming, most notably on Undisputed. Parker is also the host of the Inside the (Rob) Parker podcast and The MLBbro Show Podcast – The Mixtape, an extension of the website (MLBbro) that he founded to cover Black and brown major leaguers.
Other inductees into the NABJ Hall of Fame include Emmy Award-winning journalist Sheila Dean Brooks, Ph.D.; founder and publisher of The Birmingham Times, Dr. Jesse Lewis; and Emmy Award-winning television broadcaster and reporter for WTTG FOX5DC, Gwen Tolbart. The convention and career fair will also hand out special honors for journalists, students, educators and other media professionals, some of which will be announced on site.
CNN has announced a pair of correspondents have received promotions and new roles with the company.
David Culver has been elevated to Senior National Correspondent for the network. The Los Angeles-based reporter has done several in-depth reports from the U.S./Mexico border and has also reported extensively on relations between the U.S. and China while based in Beijing.
Prior to joining CNN in 2019, Culver worked at NBC Washington.
Eva McKend has been promoted to national political correspondent. While based in Washington D.C., McKend has already played a role in the network’s political coverage after reporting on the expanding field of potential 2024 Republican presidential nominees.
She joined CNN in 2021 after previously working for Spectrum News 1 and WCAX in Burlington, Vermont.
After announcing its new primetime lineup yesterday, Fox News has reportedly let go the entire staff of the former Tucker Carlson Tonight program.
Chadwick Moore — Carlson’s biographer — tweeted yesterday after the new lineup was announced that he was told by several sources that the network was removing all the former employees who worked on Carlson’s show.
EXCLUSIVE: Sources have told me Fox News has just terminated the rest of @TuckerCarlson's former staff. They want the nine remaining employees to continue working until mid-July.
Former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter then shared that he was told Fox News executives want a “clean slate”.
The network hasn't confirmed this ???????? but it would make sense from a cold hard biz POV: Fox has eliminated an hour of programming (by moving three later shows to earlier time slots) and thus has cause to cut Tucker's former staff. Fox execs want a "clean slate" https://t.co/r5MAt8i3OF
According to Moore, Fox News offered the departing employees an “enhanced severance” if they remained with the network through Friday, July 14th, which will be the final episode of Fox News Tonight.
The employees who were informed of the layoffs were also told they still have the opportunity to apply for open positions at Fox News.
Several former Carlson staffers have exited the network in recent weeks. Alexander McCaskill notably departed the network after being held responsible for airing a Fox News Alert that called President Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” after former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned in Miami for his handling of classified documents.
ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio reported that the New York Jets organization is bracing to be coerced by the National Football League to participate in the preseason edition of the NFL Films and HBO documentary series Hard Knocks. Star quarterback Aaron Rodgers and dynamic, young talent has propelled “Gang Green” into the mainstream conversation among NFL teams, with some experts predicting the team being a legitimate Super Bowl contender.
The conversation regarding the Jets hesitancy to willingly accept the Hard Knocks assignment though is confusing to some fans and members of the media. While the team is eligible since it does not have a first-year head coach nor has the franchise appeared on the show in the last decade, the Jets have garnered more media attention than in recent memory. Rodgers, along with sophomores Garrett Wilson and Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner will try to snap the team’s 12-year playoff drought. In fact, the team is scheduled to play prime time games for the maximum six times allowed under the league’s media rights agreement.
“There is a lot of stuff happening with the New York Jets, and it’d be great TV and great theater,” Gregg Giannotti said on WFAN’s Boomer & Gio morning show on Tuesday. “But they somehow think that these cameras coming in and documenting this stuff is going to screw up their season.”
While there is some correlation between appearing on Hard Knocks and struggling out of the gate, most people in the football landscape knew the Jets would need to be prepared to embrace heightened levels of attention and scrutiny in the media capital of the world. Appearing in the spotlight has been out of the purview of the franchise for an extended period of time, often being overshadowed by the rival New York Giants; however, the tide has turned in the New York metropolitan area with the arrival of Rodgers.
“They probably, as it sounds, would just prefer to be left out and deal with the other distractions that they’re going to have the way they have to,” said Jerry Recco on the morning program. “This is another layer to it. I get it, but at the end of the day though, they’re going to have to say, ‘Okay, the cameras are going to be in; we’re going to watch and that’ll be that.’”
Ironically enough, the Jets produce an Emmy-nominated behind-the-scenes show of its own titled One Jets Drive, the same address as the practice facility in Florham Park, N.J. Since the team is already accustomed to all-access cameras recording moments throughout the day, it is somewhat confusing as to why the team would not be able to adapt to a national crew doing similarly. Even so, the Jets are just one of four teams eligible to appear on Hard Knocks, and the storylines and narratives surrounding the other three are not nearly as compelling.
“If you’re the NFL and you’ve got to make this decision, and we talked about this – there is no other choice,” Recco said. “….It has to be the Jets. Whether they like it or not, it’s going to be them.”
If the Jets are indeed chosen to appear on Hard Knocks, Giannotti knows to expect the show to take a formulaic approach into its production, something from which it has ostensibly refrained deviating. Nonetheless, the program would engross viewers and expatiate a narrative about the team, promulgating the organization and its product around the country ahead of staunch national attention.
“Just the nature of Aaron Rodgers being on the show is going to spice it up,” Giannotti surmised. “At this point, he’s had so many cameras in his face for the last number of years; he should just welcome this. Just welcome it; it doesn’t matter. Just got out about your day; there’s nothing nefarious going on behind the scenes.”
During his Countdown podcast, Keith Olbermann shared his thoughts, indicating that he was enjoying CNN’s decision to quietly scrap former CEO Chris Licht’s promise of revamping the news presentation and abandoning plans for the new graphic rollout.
“CNN has come around to the point I made here for nearly a year about Chris Licht,” he said. “Not only did they fire him, but Puck News is reporting that the big change he promised would redefine news, a different set of on-air graphics will be eliminated starting today.”
Olbermann was a frequently vocal critic of Licht’s after he voiced his opinion that CNN had deviated significantly from its original purpose and devoted a considerable amount of his public discourse to criticizing the network’s portrayal of former President Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic and various other significant topics.
Olbermann criticized the lack of professionalism in the graphics and pointed out that the network would return to the ones Licht had previously removed.
“Now, all they have to do is unfire Don Lemon and put him back on in the evenings, erase all copies of the Trump Town Hall, put the word ‘silo’ back in Anderson Cooper’s mouth, and of course not roll out that Kaitlin Collins primetime show,” he quipped.
Olbermann pointed out that the network was supposed to launch Collins’ new show this month, but the month is ending, and there is still no branding or concrete format of the show.
“Wait a minute, this June, this is this June,” he said. “What, you guys thought we wouldn’t notice that you’ve stopped talking about the new Kaitlin Collins primetime show, and it’s postponed or canceled or something.”
Olbermann confessed that he was unaware of the show’s launch on the network until he mentioned it.
Unless you work for the Hanes Corporation or you are a devoted fan of ACC sports, you may never have been to Winston-Salem, NC. If you work in our industry though, an invite to the city is coveted. Unless you are being sent to cover a Wake Forest Demon Deacons game, it means you are about to be honored at the annual NSMA Banquet.
Monday night, stars of radio, television and sportswriting gathered inside the Benton Convention Center to celebrate one another and our industry.
The National Sports Media Association had a very interesting start. Pete DiMizio and his wife, boxing promoters and restauranteurs in nearby Salisbury, NC started giving out free meals to media members that would come to cover their fights. The town kept the event going after DiMizio’s death. The annual NSMA Banquet isn’t just important for our industry. It is an important part of the state’s history.
“I’d hope that maybe the state legislature and folks in Raleigh can help us a little bit with some of the funding it takes, said Wes Durham, who serves as the President of the NSMA Board and was Monday night’s master of ceremonies. “It’s a very much a hidden gem event in this state, that a lot of people don’t realize it goes on. But hopefully in the next few years, and I think part of our mission with younger people counts there, too,. But the people that come here have an unbelievable time. It’s amazing the hospitality that this state extends, and I’m proud of my home state for that for sure.”
On Monday, two men – baseball writer Roger Angell and former St. Louis Blues play-by-play man Dan Kelly – were inducted into the NSMA Hall of Fame posthumously. They were joined in induction by two ESPN stars.
Lee Corso was happy to pose for pictures in the hallway with admirers, and there was no shortage of them. In his speech, the Sunshine Scooter thanked ESPN for standing by him after his stroke. He thanked his family and his College Gameday colleagues for making his career possible.
Every year, many students come to Winston-Salem to attend the event. Corso, who at 88 has had an iconic career, had a very stern piece of advice for them.
“Never prostitute your integrity to get a job or keep one,” he said loudly and clearly. The line drew loud applause from the room.
Bill Plaschke’s daughter MC was a surprise star of the evening. In introducing her father, she told humorous stories of him answering the phone to speak to her in the middle of an interview with Tommy Lasorda and of how he first discovered that he could buy a pride flag to hang on his poarch in June.
When it was Plaschke’s turn at the mic, he quipped, “I’m so fortunate to be standing here in front of some of the country’s best sportswriters and sportscasters. I’m so overwhelmed at the thought of the Marriott Points. There’s a lot in here. I’m just so honored by the Southwest Airlines A-listers. There’s a lot of you in here. There’s a lot of companion passes in here.”
He would go on to talk about the power of words, why they mattered to Kobe Bryant, and how he understands the struggle of kids that want to make a career in sports media but do not have the power of a Syracuse degree behind them.
The NSMA hands out its annual awards at the event as well. Sportswriters and sportscasters of the year from all 50 states and Washington, DC were recognized. There were also national awards. ESPN’s Pete Thamel and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal shared sportswriter of the year honors. Ian Eagle was recognized as the sportscaster of the year.
“I mean, it means the most coming from your peers, because ultimately, that’s who you’re here with. They’re with you every night in the press room till after midnight,” Thamel told me after an emotional acceptance speech. “This business is great because of the people in it. I think about the honor of working with Pat Forde and Dan Wetzel at Yahoo. Craig Bishop’s, one of my best friends. I’ve worked with him three different places over the years. Jeff Passan and I went to college together. Woj, you know, he and Peter King were the ones who really sort of drove home to me just what this award means. You know, God knows who actually voted for me, but for it to come from them probably means the most.”
The awards banquet is the conclusion of an extended weekend that the NSMA fills with panels and other networking opportunities. No news is broken. Play-by-players may chat up Howie Deneroff or one of the many Learfield executives in the audience, but rarely are deals made here. People come to Winston-Salem to pay tribute to the people that inspired them. They come to see old friends and share a drink with new ones.
“People love it,” NSMA Executive Director Dave Goren says of the event and of the city. “You know, a lot of places that you don’t go, you don’t know about until you go there. They go there, we try to treat them very well. I think we do a good job of that. And they go back to wherever they’re from and say what a great time they had in Winston-Salem. That’s invaluable, I think.”
Nestled in a pocket of northern Chicago, Ill., a shrine to “America’s Pastime,” Wrigley Field, sits in grandeur and welcomes fans to its “Friendly Confines.” In center field, the iconic manual scoreboard is still hand operated to this day, displaying information about games from around the league. On its roof high above the grandstand, a mast where the team flies a flag denoting the result of the day’s game – a “W” for wins and an “L” for losses. Complete with the dulcet tones of the Lowry organ and ode to legendary broadcaster Harry Caray, it is arguably as close to baseball nirvana as it gets.
While the ballpark operates both as a historic landmark and bustling epicenter of Cubs baseball, its adherence to tradition caused it to fall behind. For the first 74 years of the ballpark’s existence, the Cubs only played day games since the stadium did not have lights. Per an ordinance by the city of Chicago, the Cubs can only host up to 43 night games per season, meaning the team plays the largest proportion of home day games in the league.
“For the first couple of years, I thought it was really challenging getting up after a night game at some ridiculous hour just so I could do my prep routine the way I’ve been doing it, and eventually you sort of have to adjust, etc.,” said Jon Sciambi, the play-by-play voice of the team on Marquee Sports Network. “It wasn’t easy. I’m not getting any younger, and you’ve got to make sure you get rest.”
Now in his third year on the job, Sciambi has come to terms with the unusual schedule and is aware of how fortunate he is to call Wrigley Field his office. Reaching this point took a persistence and ardor for the sport with an ability to imbue folklore into the future.
When he was 6 years old, Sciambi remembers asking his grandparents about what a cruise vacation was. After they described the boat and all of the activities, restaurants and amenities on board, Sciambi had only one question for his grandfather – and that was how to receive the baseball box scores. Upon finding out that it was not possible, since this took place before the evolution, let alone commoditization of the internet, he declared that he never wanted to go on a cruise.
Growing up in the New York metropolitan area, Sciambi listened to the rhapsody of Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN, and remembers it fueling his interest for sports talk radio. Following a one-year stint at The College of William & Mary as a walk-on baseball selection, Sciambi transferred to Boston College. On Monday nights, he would join then-colleagues and future media professionals Bob Wischusen, Christian Megliola and Joe Tessitore for a sports talk show on the campus radio station, where he refined his skills.
“I loved just talking sports [and] engaging with those guys,” Sciambi said. “It was awesome [and] as if we were just preparing for the future, but we all loved it so much.”
When Sciambi graduated from Boston College, he landed a job in sports radio on WESB in Bradford, PA where he worked in a variety of roles, including as a board operator for Pittsburgh Pirates games. From there, he moved south to work as a producer at 560 WQAM in Miami on a morning show with Dave LaMont and Joe Rose. One day at the station, LaMont remarked that Sciambi bore resemblance to former Baltimore Orioles slugger Boog Powell, and he saw the name ‘Boog’ taped on his mailbox. The pseudonym stuck, and is now a part of Sciambi’s identity as a media professional.
“The playbook would be different now,” Sciambi remarked as to how he went about landing a job. “I was calling sports talk radio stations and sending them tapes, and then following up.”
During Sciambi’s formative years in the industry, he lived with Wischusen and slept on his couch. When he and Wischusen’s shifts ended, they would attend sporting events as media members and sit in the press box. Whether it was for the Heat, Dolphins, Panthers or Marlins, the duo would watch the game for free and get a meal, an ideal benefit for young professionals. While Sciambi was at Marlins games, he would find an open broadcast booth and record himself calling parts of the action – and he eventually passed it along to seasoned professionals for advice, including Dave O’Brien.
“I gave him the tape to critique it and we eventually sat down,” Sciambi said. “As he handed the tape back to me on the day he went over what he thought, he said, ‘You know, I thought this was going to really stink, and it didn’t,’ which made me burst out laughing.”
Sciambi eventually succeeded O’Brien as the primary play-by-play announcer. The opportunity came following a year calling the Single-A Boise Hawks and occurred while he was hosting a radio show on 790 The Ticket. Sciambi quickly became a distinctive part of the soundtrack of South Florida sports and was afforded the chance to broadcast both at the local and national level.
“I remember calling playoff games in 2003 when the Marlins won the World Series,” Sciambi said. “You had that knot in your stomach because you wanted your team to win. Then in 2004, I got to call the playoffs nationally for the first time on ESPN Radio and it was such a shift because you could feel all of the stuff but you weren’t emotionally connected to one side or the other.”
Following the 2004 postseason, Sciambi departed the Marlins radio broadcasts and joined presentations of MLB on ESPN where he became further accustomed to national broadcasting. Radio has always been an important aspect of his career, but it was during this time when television opportunities began to come more regularly.
Less than three years later, Sciambi was named the television play-by-play voice of the Atlanta Braves, a time during which he continued hosting his Miami-based radio show. Reflecting back on the three seasons he held the job, it is indicative of an adaptation in his broadcast style and preparation process.
“I like to play, so I think that as I started to really be good with that – and I’m not saying that every person is going to love that; some people are going to want it to be more serious at times – but I trust my guide,” Sciambi said. “In the end, I think, without realizing it if you deconstruct it, all play-by-play guys trust themselves as it relates to content.”
Sciambi is the ESPN Radio play-by-play voice of Sunday Night Baseball and travels around the country to bring listeners the prime-time action. The benefit to doing games nationally, according to Sciambi, is that they often contain teams with chances to win the World Series and usually result in a bonafide battle until the end. Being an aural medium, he knows how fundamental vivid description is to the broadcast.
For a typical Sunday Night Baseball matchup, Sciambi goes from the outside in, evaluating the hitting, pitching and fielding metrics for each team. Additionally, he researches the players and compiles different interesting facts or stories to have for a broadcast.
“I think the biggest thing is that I’m interested,” Sciambi said. “In those spots where I didn’t know those teams the way I would normally know a playoff team, there’s a curiosity there and that sort of fuels the prep.”
Sciambi signed a contract to join Marquee Sports Network before the 2021 season, officially replacing Len Kasper as the television play-by-play voice of the Chicago Cubs. Kasper had been with the Cubs for 16 seasons, but decided to take the radio play-by-play job across town with the rival Chicago White Sox. The exit disconcerted Cubs fans.
“When there’s change, the fans aren’t going to love it. When there’s change and they’re not winning as much, the fans aren’t going to love it,” Sciambi explained. “Len delivered a lot of good news and he’s great, so it’s just a matter of them getting used to me. I would say I was and still am in the space of, ‘Control what you can control.’”
As many regional sports networks continue to lose money and risk ceding media rights deals for several teams due to defaulting on payments, Marquee Sports Network is unique in that it is partially owned by the team. The Chicago Cubs Baseball Club LLC has 50% ownership of the network, with the other 50% held by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the parent company of the embattled Diamond Sports Group. Despite declining revenues over the last several years, the regional sports network still drives ratings – especially when the team is competitive – and includes studio and shoulder programming throughout the rest of the day.
“Even though we are partially owned by the same group that probably half the league is entirely owned by, I would say it feels as though we kind of operate in a separate way,” Sciambi said. “I feel as though they’re open to change [and] to making it good. It’s been pretty great.”
Jim Deshaies provides color commentary during Chicago Cubs games and has been an ideal partner for Sciambi to pair with in his return to calling games regionally. As a former pitcher, largely with the Houston Astros, Deshaies brings an esoteric, yet comprehensible perspective to the broadcast.
Their effective on-air chemistry is essential in keeping select viewers enthralled. The storytelling is enhanced by field reporter Taylor McGregor, who Sciambi says has exponentially learned more about baseball since joining the network from its inception.
“It still nourishes me,” Sciambi said. “I get to use my brain every night, and I’m just genuinely still interested in it. That, in and of itself – I’m so damn lucky that I come about that authentically.”
While Sciambi was growing up on Roosevelt Island in New York City, he became friendly with Tim Sheehy and played baseball through high school. In 2005, Sheehy was diagnosed with ALS. Before he passed away two years later, Sheehy dedicated his time to build Project Main St., a nonprofit organization raising awareness and funds for individuals with the disease.
Now, Sciambi actively serves on the organization’s board of directors and upon landing his new job, informed the Cubs and Marquee Sports Network how he felt about the cause. Both entities have facilitated efforts to assist the nonprofit in communicating and fundraising, especially on Lou Gehrig Day.
“To me, the biggest thing is the platform and making people aware,” Sciambi said. “This is a curable disease – in 2023, it seems fairly ridiculous that we have an incurable disease. [I am] just trying to make more and more people aware of it, and hopefully in 20 years my charity won’t exist.”
With changes in consumption habits and patterns, sports media has been somewhat concatenated towards concise, “snackable” content. Individual leagues are creating in-app experiences tailored towards efficiency and convenience, and advanced statistics are being simplified to engender a deeper understanding of the sport itself.
Major League Baseball instituted a variety of rule changes this season to expedite pace of play and increase offensive output. The intended effects have indeed been realized, with the average game time down by 26 minutes and runs per game up by nearly one-half year over year. A game based on tradition adapted because of ostensible dwindling fan interest did what was necessary to position itself for long-term growth, and fans are taking notice.
“If they started this sport right now in our modern society and the first question was, ‘How many games will you play?,’ the first person that said ‘162 games’ would get laughed out of the room,” Sciambi said. “I don’t know what the number would be – I think somewhere in the 120 to 140 range – but it sure as hell wouldn’t be 162.”
Facilitating the growth of the game to younger demographics has been a collective effort, and one in which Sciambi has had a considerable role. MLB The Show, one of the most popular sports video games on the market, features in-game commentary provided by Sciambi and partner Chris Singleton.
“Seiya Suzuki – his translator in spring training this year taps me and says, ‘He wants you to know he’s been playing MLB The Show too much [and] he had a dream with your voice in it last night,’” Sciambi reminisced. “The player part is cool, but I would say that the kids thing that if in some way I’m getting young people or young kids to stay connected and excited about baseball, I think that’s the best thing.”
Before he makes the full transition back to college basketball when fall turns to winter, Sciambi will have one final baseball assignment this year that he has been eagerly anticipating. ESPN announced that Sciambi will be the national radio voice of the World Series this season, becoming just the fifth play-by-play announcer to execute the role. Previous to this year, he had contributed to radio coverage for the World Series as the on-site studio host, but he has never called one of the matchups. In just a few short months, Sciambi will be able to check a career goal off of his bucket list and perhaps inspire a college student with his eloquence and expertise. In the present moment though, he finds himself in a rare circumstance – at a loss for words.
“It’s cool that I’ve been doing it this long and I still have a little bit of, ‘Wow, that’s really cool,’” Sciambi said. “I try to find myself in those spots that I still have some, ‘Hey, I’m excited,’ and I like that.”
Even with the addition of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, the conference’s biggest rivalry game of the season won’t be changing its date and timeslot. That had 92.9 The Game host Steak Shapiro questioning why the conference wouldn’t want to capitalize on viewership.
The athletic directors at both Michigan and Ohio State confirmed over the weekend that the annual football game between the two schools will remain at noon the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It appears FOX will continue to broadcast the game in its Big Noon Kickoff window.
Shapiro said Monday on The Steakhouse that it didn’t make sense that the Big Ten wouldn’t want to open up viewership to the LA market with USC and UCLA coming in by giving the broadcast to CBS.
“Why would they want to play that game a noon?” Shapiro asked. “Maximum numbers are going to be at 3:30.”
The annual battle between the Wolverines and the Buckeyes has always kicked off at noon the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and Shapiro said he understands why the time wouldn’t be changed. But he still thought allowing CBS to carry the contest was the better move.
“For the fans, I guess that’s a tradition,” he said. “I get it, but I would move that game to 3:30. Just one man’s opinion.”
In a viral clip making the rounds on social media over the weekend, conservative radio host Dan Bongino went right after the dark, communist overtones permeating many of our highest institutions, and emanating from many in America’s current leadership.
“Kamala Harris really kinda lays out the why. Why liberals think the way they do,” Bongino began, as he previewed two clips of the Vice President. “I’m going to show you these two clips on equity. Equity is the new liberal buzz term for, basically, communism. It is. The idea that everybody should have an equal outcome in life.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, outcome is an output, what you put out. Your outcome is you’re a CEO or a doctor, that’s a result of your output. You did this in school, which led to you getting into medical school, which led to you getting a residency, which led to this. Those variables are the inputs. Those variables are infinite,” Bongino said, on The Dan Bongino Show. “Work ethic, smarts, sweat equity. Yes, a lot of luck sometimes. People who made their own luck by just taking a lot of chances. Liberals don’t want any of that.”
Bongino made his case, leading up to the first of two clips from Harris’ speeches.
“Liberals hate merit. They hate a meritocracy. Liberals hate the idea of free will, then liberals want to control everything. When liberals talk about equity, they’re not talking about equality. They’re talking about equity,” Bongino, the former Secret Service agent, said. “What’s the difference? Well, let Kamala Harris in these two clips sum it up for you.”
“Equality suggests often everybody should get the same thing. Well, that often assumes everybody started out in the same place. As opposed to equity, which is everybody should end up in the same place,” Harris said in a clip from the past. “And if you then understand not everybody started out in the same place, you understand some people need more, so we all end up in the same place.”
“I want to explain the why here,” Bongino said. “You understand what she’s saying? She’s saying that everybody should end up in the same place. Now, the same place she’s talking about, we need to be crystal clear on. It’s not a place of wealth or prosperity. She’ll tell you that. Oh equity, meaning everyone should have a beautiful house and a white picket fence and a dog and 2.15 kids. Or you should have no kids, the China one child policy. But you get the point, not to get off track. That’s not what she’s talking about. The reality of forced equity on everyone has been shown through history, over and over, through the implementation of communism, to result in what? Starvation and body bags.”
For 2,000 years humans have generally yearned to live in opposition to communist ideals, understanding such principles as “blessed are those who feed the hungry” and “those who don’t work, don’t eat.” The Bible and America’s foundational Protestant ethic have always valued the dignity of work and enjoying the fruits of one’s labor, while at the same time helping those who need a hand or cannot help themselves. These, among others now being chipped away by secular culture and media, are the principles that formed the foundation of America and other modern, democratic, societies.
It’s no surprise, then, that Marx and today’s Democrats deride religion at any chance, shifting the focus arrogantly to themselves and to government control rather than an individual’s sovereignty. It was Marx who said, “”Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.” In other words, government knows best. Only a small-minded person hangs their hat on God or personal freedom. The government must make things equal.
Sound familiar?
“When you steal from one person to give to another person, to level out their outcome and their output, eventually the person who produced due to hard work, who has to give to the person who did nothing, stops producing,” Bongino said, echoing the theme of Ayn Rand’s timeless classic novel, Atlas Shrugged. “And what happens? They both starve. The essence of equity, ironically, of the liberal principle of equity, is that it requires you via government fiat and force to treat people unequally.”
Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama and their adherents hoped they’d eventually be able to infiltrate the world’s last bastion of freedom from the inside, duping and bamboozling the masses with noble-sounding language. Much of today’s media, along with Hollywood, popular culture and the political establishment of both parties, advance the same sentiment with their own levers of influence.
“The whole principle of communist equity, which is what it is, is that you have to be treated unequally by the government. You are no longer entitled to the fruits of your own merit and work,” Bongino said.
Harris doubled down on the divisive ideology during a more recent speech.
“We have always fought for equality. But now we are also talking much more, rightly, about equity,” Harris admitted out loud. “Understanding that we must be clear-eyed about the fact that, yes, we want everyone to get an equal amount. That sounds right. But not everyone starts out from the same place.”
Dan Bongino concluded by warning against the perilous future that awaits a nation who follows this ideology.
“Do you understand when she says everybody’s going to get an equal amount, that that so-called equal amount comes from you?” Bongino asked. “The reason some other people don’t get an equal amount is, yes, sometimes it’s bad luck. But a lot of times it’s not. The reason they don’t get an equal amount is because they don’t put in an equal amount of work. It’s as simple as that. So you’re going to work harder to give someone else more, who work less.”
Kirk Herbstreit is high on New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones having a bounceback season in 2023, but 98.5 The Sports Hub host Marc Bertrand doesn’t understand Herbstreit’s justification.
Herbstreit, in an interview with Pat McAfee last week, said Jones will have a Pro Bowl year and has the ability to command a pro-level offense. He pointed to his 2020 campaign at Alabama under then-offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian and how dominant that Crimson Tide team was with Jones under center.
Bertrand just felt like Kirk was just clinging to his bread and butter of being a college analyst. Talking about Mac’s time at Alabama is largely irrelevant now in Beetle’s eyes.
“Do you know what I think Kirk Herbstreit suffers from? Overvaluing college performances,” Bertrand said Monday on Zolak & Bertrand. “And you heard it in that clip! He suffers from that. he gets enamored with the guys who were great in college.”
Herbstreit further compared Jones to Joe Burrow, saying Jones’ season was largely overshadowed by Burrow’s just as dominant senior season at LSU. But even co-host Scott Zolak said it would’ve made more sense to look at both QBs and their NFL body of work.
“It’s not like we’ve seen them for a small sample of games,” Zolak said. “We’ve seen enough of both of them to know or at least at this point kind of ignore the college resume part of it. There are things you can draw on and think about, but if you’re using that as any kind of baseline as to what they’re going to be, you don’t have to. We’ve seen both of these guys in the NFL now.”
“What are we doing?” Bertrand responded. “That doesn’t enter the conversation. I don’t care that Mac was in Sark’s offense at Alabama four seasons ago. I don’t care. It has nothing to do with it.”
