Chicago - A message from the station manager

Launching College Football

By David Rutter

Get out your Sharpie and circle August 7 on the calendar. It’s a Friday.
For this brief “August 7 Survey,” you will be required to select one of two preliminary answers.
Eyes straight ahead, class.
In the realm of human cognitive ability, do you think humans would most usually be A) Smart, or B) Stupid. For streamlining, we have omitted C) Box of Igneous Rocks Stupid.
I always pick B and have no reason to change my attitude. So I do not believe there is much evidence that the brick-brain bozos who refuse to wear face masks and take normal sanitary precautions will stop the pandemic virus.
We apparently are a species with a suicide wish because, as we tell ourselves constantly with no evidence, we’re all entitled to our opinion. We have found a large cliff and come to the opinion we should hurtle over the edge.
That’s because we have left matters we care most about – living, for example – in the hands of the most dense, willful and ignorant among us. Many of them throw temper tantrums while sitting on the floors at Walmarts and screaming about having to wear a face mask.
The entitled opinion-holders, as every public health official acknowledges, are the single variable demographic that stops the nation from winning the pandemic scrum. You’ll have to stuff that face mask into my cold, dead hands, Snowflake.
August 7 is important because on that day you will know several things you don’t know now. It’s Launch Day for college football.

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Posted on July 16, 2020

Gold Stars For The Red Stars

By Jim Coffman

The Red Stars are on the board! And they did it just before the National Women’s Soccer League gets swamped by other sports, at least on standard TV, cable and satellite. On streaming services? The Red Stars still have a great chance to dominate that platform this summer, especially among young fans, which is almost exactly redundant.
And how glorious was it that Naperville’s Casey Short scored the critical (indeed only) goal! It is the ultimate local angle combined with the ultimate Black Lives Matter angle given that Short made national news with her emotional taking of a knee with teammate Julie Ertz when the NWSL tournament started two weeks ago.

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Posted on July 13, 2020

The Evolution, Revolution And Devolution Of Cuban Baseball

By Roger Wallenstein

Before there was the Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, Mexico or Puerto Rico, there was Cuba.
As in professional baseball, in which Cuba led all Caribbean and South American countries in 1878 with the inception of the Cuban League. That’s just one little tidbit from César Brioso’s Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Baseball in Cuba. With today’s absence of the game formerly known as the National Pastime, a baseball fix is welcome, and Brioso’s tome has been preferable to watching the Korean League at 5 a.m.

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Posted on July 13, 2020

A Blackhawks Proposal

By David Rutter

Friends both Internet and Real have insisted for years that the NHL franchise naming itself for a 19th-century war chief was an honor to him.
He should be happy for having everything of value in his life taken from him, as long as he gets a good NHL logo.
There is a comfortable hubris to this point of view because it requires no proof because there is none. It’s a talking point.
The Blackhawks themselves make the same non-evidentiary case by occasionally trotting out Native Americans during game ceremonies. Token gestures are pretenses.
None of that posing or fandom self congratulation counts as actual “honoring” of anyone.
But one idea would.

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Posted on July 11, 2020

Blackhawk’s Life Mattered

By David Rutter

Even more than the Atlanta Braves (stupid), the Cleveland Indians (idiotic), and the Washington Redskins (overtly but mindlessly racist), the use of Blackhawk in Chicago makes me angry.
We rationalize that using his name “honors” him when we – the Army we pay for – spent years trying to murder him.
It’s not merely an accidental theft of a tribal icon to make a buck; it’s deliberate cultural cancellation.
What’s more, the hockey team is not even actually named after him.

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Posted on July 9, 2020

WNBA Dedicates Season To Social Justice

By The WNBA

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) announced Monday the launch of a new platform, The Justice Movement, and the creation of the WNBA/WNBPA Social Justice Council.
The collaborative efforts of the League and the Players Association represent an unprecedented and bold new commitment to advancing social justice by the longest standing U.S. sports league for women, as well as the first labor union for professional women athletes.
The mission of the Social Justice Council is to be a driving force of necessary and continuing conversations about race, voting rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and gun control amongst other important societal issues.

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Posted on July 7, 2020

Your Move, Dan

By Jim Coffman

Defund the racial slurs!
It has been obvious for a long, long, long time that the Washington (D.C.) football team should change its name. It is as stupidly obvious as obvious can be, with a heaping helping of obvious and obvious on top.
But one crushingly dimwitted (if not just racist and hateful) individual stands in the way. And while I strive to not include personal insults in my columns, I think starting today I will never again refer to owner Dan Snyder without a personal insult until his football team’s goddamned Redskin nickname is changed.
There is news on this front this Thursday morning.

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Posted on July 2, 2020

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