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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

31 May

Osaka was willing to work with Roland Garros. Their shocking response has gotten us here. They clearly wanted to send a message to a player who spent the last year refusing to "shut up and play". This is as much a part of the "backlash" as that idiot who threw a bottle at Kyrie.

Sports World was willing to abide "Black Lives Matter" because athletes playing - and risking their health - were keeping the lights on and there were no white fans to boo/shower them with trash. Now the signal from the exec suites to the fans is ringing out: it's backlash time.

They want to roll back the athletic political and economic power that's been flexed in the last year primarily by Black athletes. So you go after Osaka. You go after Kyrie. You go after LeBron. That's all this is. #Backlash

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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

6 Dec 20

si.com/sportsperson/2…
Yes, 2020 was the year of the Activist Athlete. Sports Illustrated got that part exactly right. But did they get the right five people? How do you choose even five? And, again, the erasure of Colin Kaepernick from this equation rankles. His shadow looms.

Look at the athletes SI chose and with the exception of the remarkable Duvernay-Tardif (at least from what I know), Kaepernick is part of each of these athletes' journeys. But what he's been calling for is also way beyond the parameters of what's been deemed acceptable discourse.

The other name missing is Maya Moore. Again I wonder if her example - actually leaving sports to fight the racism of the criminal justice system - was beyond the parameters of what SI was going to celebrate. Moore and Kap represent a different wing/a different kind of struggle.

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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

26 Sep 20

Don't fall for what will be horrible coverage about ACB's family, faith, career or other bullshit. This is about jamming a Supreme Court justice on the bench to steal an election. That's all it is. If this happened in another country, neocons would bray for military intervention.

@LindseyGrahamSC

They're not even pretending to hide it. @LindseyGrahamSC and @tedcruz are positively bragging that this is their end game. They can't win this honestly so they aim to steal it in broad daylight, talk about it endlessly to depress voter turnout, & then turn to a sham Supreme Court

This country is Belarus, no more no less. I only wonder if we have the gumption to fight back the way they have done in Belarus or if we are so cynical about this process and so exhausted/gutted by racist police violence, that we've got nothing in our arsenal but tweets of rage.

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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

11 Sep 20

Most hate mail I ever got was writing about how 9/11 was also a day of mourning in Chile and had been since 9/11/73 when Pinochet took power leading to the killing and torture of untold thousands of people. I lived in Chile & interviewed survivors of torture. It's their day too.

Was shocked in those earlier days of the internet that this produced such vitriol. I thought people would want to share the grief being felt internationally and even speak about the common scars created by acts violence. But instead it was, "This is OUR DAY! Not theirs!"

As someone born and raised in NYC, I certainly understand the emotions associated with 9/11. But it was people who lived far from NYC who were the most irrationally angry that anyone would dare raise the idea that anyone but Americans would have the right to mourn on 9/11.

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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

11 Aug 20

DNC with the immediate email: "Instead of coming up with a plan to contain the virus and ensure sports can return safely, Trump is willing to put more lives at risk by recklessly tweeting for college football to proceed as scheduled." (1/2)

“More than 160,000 Americans have died... and the economy is in a deep recession because Trump.. continues to downplay the virus, and still has no plan to steer us out of this crisis. The American people know that Trump is at fault when their lives can’t return back to normal.”

What's interesting about this is that this is usually Trump's terrain: using sports - and football in particular - as a (often racist) wedge to hype up his base. Here's the DNC turning it around and using the cancellation of CFB on Trump to slam the absence of "normalcy."

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Dave Zirin

@EdgeofSports

7 Jul 20

Top Five Performances of Kim BASINGER (some deep cuts) 5) 9 1/2 Weeks; 4) Blind Date; 3) Nadine; 2) LA Confidential; 1) Fool for Love (revelatory performance)
(Apologies to Cellular (great shlock), Never Say Never Again, Batman, The Natural, 8 Mile)

PS - 9 1/2 Weeks is such a godawful, dated movie with all the Adrian Lyne 80s MTV bells and whistles, but Basinger is so much better than what they give her to work with, it had to make the top five.

I’ve also been in deep thought about yesterday’s list of Bill Murray flicks. He might need to join Denzel as the only person who needs two lists: a rewatchability list and a prestige list.

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