Those of you who have not held your tongue about ESPN’s move away from an all-sports-all-the-time mantra also should not hold your breath waiting for a change.
ESPN has made it clear: It’s not sticking to sports.
This, despite his awareness that a huge percentage of ESPN’s fan base wants the network to do just that.
ESPN’s shift toward more cultural and political content — even a slight-to-moderate one — is noted with derision by some fans.
“Why does FiveThirtyEight write about things other than sports?,” one reader writes. “I go to ESPN.com because sports are fun. Politics are not always fun. Yet I go to the website every day and see that there is a new agenda-driven FiveThirtyEight article about why Trump won’t win or something else other than sports. Why is FiveThirtyEight even affiliated with ESPN.com?”
Says another: “I want to know if there if is any way I can remove The Undefeated from the ESPN page when I view it. I, along with others that I know, do not feel The Undefeated page is an appropriate way to discuss racial issues. I have always used ESPN to get sports news coverage but have recently reconsidered using different media outlets. Making ESPN all about race and culture is ruining what was a great product.”
This, despite knowing that quantitatively ESPN’s entire product lineup — from its mainstay SportsCenter to its website to its other assorted programs and websites — have morphed from a sports media to a sports-plus-other stuff media.
For comparative purposes, I recently reviewed a few SportsCenter episodes from the past couple of decades, and it is indeed noticeable how little politics and culture intruded into the tsunami of highlights and witty banter that once marked that show.
This, despite the vast amount of data showing how financially unsustainable ESPN is, thanks in no small part to its sharp turn left over the past decade.
Why would anyone keep doing something that leads to his financial ruin and alienates vast segments of his once-loyal peers, while knowing beyond doubt that such an action is the cause of those consequences?
There can be only one explanation: It is his religion. It is his god. It brings him such meaning and fulfillment that he is willing to forsake human society, monetary gain, and physical comfort in obedience to it. It is the end for which he is willing to lay down his very life.
Thankfully, people who follow false gods can be converted. We can and should preach the Gospel to them. We should explain to them why not only their god but their values are, shall we say, less than ideal. We should show them that they are in rebellion against the one true God, that their values offend Him and harm His creatures, and that they will one day account to Him for their lifestyle and agenda. Some will be Sauls that become Pauls. Most will not, but that is true for people in general.
As an operating premise, the assumption that leftists are following a false god and practicing a false religion, that they are just as devoted to it as we who follow the true God and practice the true Faith, helps us decide how to plan for the future. While we can try to reach these blind, lost souls with the Gospel, we can also expect that most of them will do what ESPN’s public editor and other leaders have done. We can expect that they will double down on their position, which defies Christ and antagonizes and persecutes Christians, whites, heterosexuals, masculine men, and ordinary Americans who in any way resist the march of this newfangled version of Communism.
As has always been the case, mankind is split into two camps: those who will follow Christ down the straight and narrow path, and everyone else who follows false gods down the broad road to perdition. We’re seeing it in 2017 just as clearly as we saw it in the days of the early Church and the Old Testament days of Israel wandering in the desert. Cain will always choose to follow his own way and to harm Abel. It’s just the names that change. Murderous Roman pagans and their faithful victims, become Papal Inquisitors and their Gospel-loving victims, become murderous Jewish Bolsheviks and their White Russian victims, become lying globalists in media, finance, and government and their innocent Christian victims among the unborn, elderly, white, middle class and the poor. The dynamic of spiritual and temporal struggle has endured for millennia. Nonetheless the Church has endured along with it, and has not backed down from her divine mandate to preach the Gospel to all of creation, to baptize and make disciples, and to be the pillar and ground of truth.
So literally pray for the best, such as conversion, repentance, and society-wide reformation, but prepare for the worst, such as the need to build our own institutions, to destroy our antagonists’ bulwarks, and to have contingency plans in place for absolute worst-case scenarios.
If the loss of money, credibility, and power won’t tame the ambitions of SJWs at ESPN and elsewhere, it’s unlikely that anything short of the quickening work of the Holy Spirit will.
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