Dodging Dissent
By rolling back a Pride Night initiative, the Los Angeles Dodgers are playing right into conservatives' hand.
Dear readers,
Our main story this week is about another Pride Night fiasco, but before we get to that, we’d like to touch very briefly on another question: What in the world is going on with Ja Morant?
If you’re not up to date on the recent happenings, Morant, a rising superstar for the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, was caught flashing a handgun on an Instagram Live feed this week. This latest episode is notable because the exact same thing has happened before: Earlier this season, Morant was suspended for eight games by the NBA after he got caught on Instagram flashing a gun in a Colorado nightclub.
The most disturbing element of these incidents, though, has little to do with Morant, who seems like a dumb kid who would do well to screw his head on a little straighter. The really gross reaction has been from the pundits.
Here’s how it went down. Earlier this week, NBA-player-turned-TV-commentator JJ Reddick, an outspoken liberal, came to Morant’s defense, pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of “bringing the hammer” down on a twenty-something-year-old basketball — who technically didn’t break any laws — when there are no consequences for the lawmakers who oppose gun control measures and then stand idly by as their constituents get gunned down at random. Various voices on the right (and Charles Barkley) then targeted Redick, criticizing him for . . . something?
There’s not much more to say about this other than that the whole thing is remarkably stupid. Should the NBA have a code of conduct that discourages its players from waving firearms around in public? Yes. Is it silly to criticize an individual for falling prey to what is obviously a society-wide problem? Yes. Are the talking heads on sports commentary shows going to say anything illuminating about America’s broken relationship with guns? Absolutely not.
But for now, let’s get to another broken relationship: corporate diversity.
-Ian and Calder
Back in March, we wrote about various NHL teams botching their Pride Nights and speculated that the debacle may have had something to do with Russian players’ fears of being publically associated with LGBTQ rights — a topic that President Vlad doesn’t like very much.
Now, a baseball team has engineered an even more impressive hatchet job, thanks to good ol’ fashioned American homophobia.
The problem began with a right-wing freakout over the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to invite a group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to their Pride Night. The Sisters are “a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns” that formed in San Francisco in 1979 and has since earned a reputation for its irreverent and ironic celebrations of queer pride. Arch-conservative Catholics, who have some trouble understanding the whole “humor” thing, got angry. An organization called the Catholic League started making a fuss, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wrote an angry letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.
The Dodgers folded without a second thought. “Given the strong feelings of those who have been offended by the sisters’ inclusion in our evening, and in an effort not to distract from the great benefits that we have seen over the years of Pride Night, we are deciding to remove them from this year’s group of honorees,” the team wrote in a statement.
Well, distract they did. Several other groups that were planning to participate in Pride Night pulled out of the ceremonies in protest, leaving the Dodgers in an all-too-predictable bind. Now, according to reporting from the New York Times, the team is working on “potential compromise solutions” after the force of the blowback “caught the organization off guard.”
That the Dodgers are surprised is both embarrassing and indicative of a broader problem. When the Dodgers heard that some right-wing cranks were angry about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they caved immediately to pressure. For some context, the “Catholic League” that claimed to be enraged on behalf of all Catholics is, in reality, composed of essentially one guy: a former academic named Bill Donahue, who publishes books with titles like “Secular Sabotage” and “The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse” (guess where he comes down on the latter). But out of fear of bad PR, the Dodgers canceled, not bothering to think about how LGBTQ allies might react. Now the Dodgers have pissed everyone off: opponents of LBGTQ rights for extending the invitation in the first place, and defenders of gay rights for folding to a right-wing pressure campaign.
This is bad enough on its own, but the Dodgers’ decision isn’t taking place in a political vacuum. If you spend a lot of time reading conservative media these days — as, unfortunately, we do — you’ll know that there’s a bit of a cold civil war happening on the right regarding conservatives’ stance towards corporate America. On one side of this battle are the economic libertarians, who think the Republican Party — traditionally the party of big business — should continue its cozy relationship with corporations. On the other side are more the socially-conservative and economically-populist right-wingers — sometimes referred to as the “New Right.” These folks — who have made inroads into the conservative mainstream — believe that corporations have gone woke and need to have their hegemonic cultural power checked by conservative political authorities.
From the left’s perspective, neither of these options is particularly appealing. But episodes like the one that unfolded this week in L.A. seem, at least in one sense, to play directly into the New Right’s hand. A private corporation tried to impose its woke agenda on its fans, Marco Rubio (a New Right-adjacent politician) stepped in, and conservatives won the day.
But at the same time, the Dodgers’ lightning-fast acquiescence shows how wrong the New Right’s understanding of corporate America really is. For all the grousing from the right about how corporate America has gone woke, this incident lays the truth bare: Corporations still give conservative preferential treatment basically everywhere, even in a liberal shithole like L.A.
The real solution to all of this is, paradoxically, to stop placing so much stock in one-off events like Pride Night, which are essentially marketing shticks. The real work on supporting LGBTQ fans and players will take place in less high-profile settings — for instance, by continuing to support organizations that provide gender-affirming care to transgender people, even in the face of right-wing blowback.
But until that happens, teams could at least not hand conservative groups high-profile wins by folding at the first sign of trouble.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . why racehorses keep dying before big races? “At the Kentucky Derby, horses are worked to death for human vanity,” by Bryan Kateman in Vox (May 6, 2023).
. . . Jim Brown’s mixed political legacy? “Jim Brown, Football Great and Civil Rights Champion, Dies at 87,” by Richard Goldstein in The New York Times (May 19, 2023).
. . . a new bill targeting transgender athletes in Texas? “Texas House passes bill restricting the college sports teams transgender athletes can join,” by Kate McGree in The Texas Tribune (May 17, 2023).
. . . Brittney Griner’s next chapter? “Brittney Griner Is Creating a New Normal, for Herself and the W.N.B.A.,” by Jonathan Abrams in The New York Times (May 19, 2023).