Won’t throw the first pitch so nyah
Texas governor Greg Abbott said on Monday that he won’t throw the ceremonial first pitch as planned at the Texas Rangers’ home opener, the latest jab in a fight that is pushing corporate America into the political battle over voting rights.
I suppose “home opener” means the first game of the season which is being played in the home town of the Texas Rangers. I guess we’re all supposed to be fluent in Baseball.
The Republican governor informed the Rangers via a letter, citing Major League Baseball’s decision to move the MLB All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s sweeping new voting laws, which include new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run. Critics of the law say it will make it more difficult for minority groups to vote in Georgia.
Because it will. Closing voting sites and drop boxes will of course make it more difficult for people to vote, especially people without much money, without cars, without the ability to take time off work whenever necessary, without someone to watch the kids, without the stamina needed to stand in a line for five hours. That’s the whole point. Put up obstacles that will be obstacles to the people who vote Democratic as opposed to the people who vote Republican.
“It is shameful that America’s pastime is not only being influenced by partisan political politics, but also perpetuating false political narratives,” Abbott said.
It’s not false at all. Voting laws in Georgia (and Mississippi and Alabama and the rest of the former slave states) were intended to impede black people from voting, and they did so. That’s why the Voting Rights Act was passed. These new post-Shelby laws are the same kind of thing, albeit slightly more subtle.
…said the politician, in his naked attempt to influence said pastime towards his politics.
Because he’s an idiot I guess.
Only the other side’s politics are “partisan” or “ideological.” He’s being principled. But that this is a business decision: aren’t Republican’s usually in favour of letting the market make these sorts of choices?
Only when they make the right choices. They were also all up in arms when the NFL (?I think?) fired Rush Limbaugh for racist comments about a black player. They felt it was bad for business (though why anyone thought he would do otherwise is beyond me), and jettisoned him.
Only those businesses that support their politics (like Goya and My Pillow) are just following capitalistic market forces. When businesses support (gasp! choke!) liberal politics, no matter what the justification (usually money – the market demands), the business is no good, doing bad things, socialist, fascist, atheist, Satanist, soul-sucking, evil, partisan…I think I’m running out of adjectives, but they don’t. They have all sorts of adjectives.
” I guess we’re all supposed to be fluent in Baseball..”
Don’t worry. When baseballers start taking sides with [choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit!*] progressives, y’all knows that things is movin’, politics-wise. Go with the stampede, or else watch it from below as it goes right over the top of youse.
TBF, Virginia’s voting laws are more inclusive.
iknklast, it was ESPN, which had stupidly hired Limbaugh as a panelist for their football discussion studio show, who fired him just four weeks in, after he claimed that QB Donovan McNabb was being overrated because the league and the media were anxious for a black QB to succeed.
Of course, any network executive with half a brain would have had to realize that Limbaugh was going to say something exactly like that, and in fact, why would you bother to hire him if you DIDN’T want him to say things like that? Although he apparently liked to talk about football on his radio show, it’s not like he had a reputation as being a particularly insightful commentator on the subject. The only reason to hire him was because he was a big name with a huge following that ESPN was hoping to attract. But Rush fans weren’t going to start watching an ESPN panel show just to hear Rush issue ordinary opinions about football; the few of them who actually cared about that could get those from his radio show, without all those other people butting in. I suspect Rush was genuinely shocked when ESPN couldn’t handle the blowback and fired him.
Thanks, Screechy. I could have googled that, or asked my husband, but I was definitely feeling lazy. And I agree; no one should be surprised when a Limbaugh…well, Limbaughs. Maybe that’ll be my new name for the ridiculous phenomenon that occurs when someone hires a well known individual, who then acts exactly as could be expected, and they have to terminate him because…well, because he acted like himself (or her acting like herself…I mean, if you hired Ann Coulter for a liberal station to give balance, she would almost certainly act like Ann Coulter). Like when Atlantic fired Kevin Williamson. What did they expect? He would have certainly done a Limbaugh if he stayed long enough to actually write for them.