Shhh! They’re listening. They’re watching, too. And they just might be reading this now.
The social justice warriors, known as thought policemen 25 years ago and commissars 50 years before that, monitor everything. And then, through their moral superiority, they enlighten.
Not only did a replay review transform a likely 4-3 Blue Jays win into a 3-2 loss last night in St. Pete, but the reversed, ninth-inning, bases-loaded call involved the new Chase Utley rule, which controversially outlaws those hard slides into second that predate Ty Cobb. Jose Bautista made such a double-play busting slide, overshooting the bag and making contact with Tampa Bay shortstop Logan Forsythe’s foot in the process. After Rays manager Kevin Cash challenged the call on the field, the nerds in New York overturned it. In every game in the previous 115 seasons of play in the American League, Bautista’s slide strikes all as not only clean but obligatory. Last night, the hard slide into second gave the Jays their first loss.
Understandably, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons found the subtraction of two runs and addition of an out through the interference call on a slide legal in every official MLB game played until this past week difficult to accept.
“You’re going to end the game like that?” Gibbons asked reporters. “It’s a joke. Maybe we’ll come out and wear dresses tomorrow. Maybe that’s what everybody’s looking for.”
Watch your microaggressions, bro. They’re listening. And after they listen, they always lecture.
Jesse Spector at the Sporting News sermonizes, “Gibbons, naturally, was furious, but that does not give him a pass for voicing his frustration with misogyny.” He claims that the comment “implicitly refers to half the population of Earth as inferior.” But with so many men saying yes to the dress, Spector betrays his own gendernormativity, transphobia, and myriad other meaningless, made-up words. “First of all, when you accept the salary of a major league manager, part of the job is representing the franchise as its public face,” he continues. “So, when you make the implication that women are lesser, you’re demeaning a significant portion of your customer base. This is unacceptable, and Gibbons would do well to apologize for it at his first opportunity.”
When did America’s oldest sports publication give PC Principal a column?
“Please stop identifying being a woman and anything feminine as a negative,” Marc Normandin petitioned Gibbons at SB Nation. “There is literally no reason to go that route, and plenty of ways Gibbons could have expressed himself without needlessly putting down half the population. Maybe Gibbons instantly regretted his choice to go that route, but even then, that’s getting some self-awareness a little late. Do better, John.”
Gibbons not only complained in a manner rebellious to the authority of the cultural guardians, but he complained about one of those bubble-wrap rules designed to protect people who don’t desire protection. This compounded his mistake in the eyes and ears of oversocialized sports scribes. They’re PC, bro. They’ll throw down.
Keegan Matheson at FanSided calls Gibbons’ words “stuck-in-the-70s garbage” (H.R. Pufnstuf, Evel Knievel, and Leif Garrett find that timist crack terribly insensitive) and “lazy and insensitive language that’s become too quick to roll off the tongue in professional sports.”
No one actually thinks any of this. But they think others think it. So they must make others think that they think it, too.
They listen, read, and watch, feign great offense, listen, read, and watch, feign great offense, listen, read, and watch, feign great offense. They do this because they know that others listen, read, and watch, feign great offense, listen, read, and watch, feign great offense, listen, read, and watch, feign great offense.
Anyone not openly offended becomes blatantly offensive.
There’s no crying in baseball. There’s plenty of whining — whining like a little … awww, you get the point.
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