It was hard to find a single USA men’s hockey team member who wasn’t grinning from ear to ear during Tuesday night’s State of the Union (SOTU) address, but to one ESPN radio host, they looked like “sad little pawns.”
Peter Rosenberg uploaded a live reaction video to the YouTube channel of The Ebro Laura Rosenberg Show, arguing that the gold-medal-winning hockey team was being used as props.
“Y’all decided to go all the way full on props for the president,” Rosenberg said. “You pawns, you sad little pawns. What are you doing? And you guys will probably get to live a white, cushy, privileged enough life that you’ll never even have to answer for how embarrassing this is to do.”
Rosenberg’s racist remarks aside, the entrance of the men’s hockey team was one of the few moments to get (at least mostly) standing bipartisan support.
Still, while Rosenberg and others in the mainstream sports media accuse the hockey players of allowing themselves to be used as “pawns,” the media had no such issue with athletes allowing themselves to be used as pawns of the Obama administration in 2012, when the Boston Bruins came to celebrate their Stanley Cup championship.
In fact, the media had an issue with only one player, goalie Tim Thomas. And why? Because he decided not to go to visit the Obama White House.
Here is the interaction between MSNBC’s Neera Tanden and Alex Wagner.
Tanden: “This is kind of the hyper-partisanship that just irritates everybody.” “It’s like, just go to the White House. You don’t have to run an ad or cut a commercial or anything. Just go to the White House, take part, celebrate just like everybody else celebrates with Republicans or Democratic presidents.”
Wagner: “Especially when you’re getting honored.”
Oh, so athletes should attend White House and accept invites from the president regardless of the president’s political party.
Unless!
The current White House occupant is President Donald Trump. Then, accepting his invitation is evidence of willingly making oneself a pawn in a political game. And for the USA men’s hockey players who chose not to attend, were they charged with “hyper-partisanship”?
Of course not. The only athletes charged with hyper-partisanship were the ones who actually chose to attend.
Makes total sense.
