ESPN Lied About That Whole Apolitical Thing

Nobody halfway sane cares who total strangers choose to fuck. Lesbian sex runs low on the social disease chart, produces zero unwanted children, and is a primary driver of the scented candle market. You know you’re watching mommy and stepdaughter porn, so shut the fuck up and imagine lesbians are all beautiful and shorn when they punch the button.

Since the Caitlyn Jenner-Arthur Ashe Courage Award debacle, ESPN has vehemently countered accusations that it’s falling subscriber base and widespread layoffs are related to a liberal political and social bias pervading its sports news coverage. Several weeks ago ESPN conducted and shared an independent survey to show that its bias and blowback was not nearly as bad as people claimed. Though still pretty pretty bad based on the findings.

A couple weeks later they sent out ESPN producers and personalities to conduct public interviews to disavow the progressive accusation as nonsense. All the reasonably thoughtful people agreed that the biggest reason for ESPN’s subscriber loss was related to its content licensing model and the increasing number of cable cord cutters, while pro BLM/Kaepernick/lesbian wall to wall coverage was a distant second in terms of subscriber losses.

This week ESPN published a feature article, “Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe define couples goals”. In an article by Matt Eisenberg who couldn’t have possibly wished this professional sportswriting gig upon himself, we learn that Sue and Megan support each other by attending one another’s games. Not something a straight couple would do. Count on that. 

Sue Bird being gay is not a sports news story. It’s not even a non-sports news story. It isn’t new or informational or enlightening when an WNBA player who everybody already knew was gay tells a reporter she’s gay. We saw them on a date five months ago. Further behind the scenes of Sue Bird’s love life is definitely not a sports story. To baseline this, neither are similarly cute stories about Stephen Curry and his wife, and Curry is a hundred times the celebrity status of Sue Bird. Though Curry and his wife can’t be “couples goals” since they aren’t gay. Also that Jesus stuff they love.

Whatever Disney was like under Walt’s control, the pendulum has swung dramatically to the left in the past two to three decades. There is diversity in everything but thought at the media giant. Disney is the content owner and provider of Marvel, Star Wars, Disney titles, ABC content, and on the sports side, the rights to a giant percentage of the top televised sporting events. Which means, like a rich eccentric, they can do whatever the fuck they want without any real consequences. Donald Sterling proves the case from the other end of the spectrum. He and his bitter shrew made $1.5 billion for being exceptionally horrible people.

What Disney wants up and down their content empire, after money of course, is to push a progressive political and social agenda. Everyone can ascribe their own moral judgments to that top down corporate decision. It’s the lying about their subtext mission statement that makes them bad guys. If you believe in it so strongly, admit it. It’s nearly impossible to respect a two-face.

You can’t pretend that “Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe define couples goals” is anything but editorially promoted social messaging. It’s simply not sports content. 3.8% of the population defines themselves as gay and you randomly picked this couple? Copying Hello Giggles for your headline writing style means you’re very near journalism rock bottom. Announce the Sue Bird epic comeback to hater trolls and complete your transition. 

_{Photo credit: Getty Images / ESPN}