'Keep grifting': ESPN host trashes critics after Jackie Robinson webpage is restored to government website



ESPN reporter Mina Kimes told critics to stop telling her how to do her job following backlash over her defense of a government webpage dedicated to Jackie Robinson.

The 39-year-old, along with fellow ESPN reporter Jeff Passan, took grave issue with the Department of Defense removing a webpage dedicated to the baseball legend's military service as part of their anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. Despite the page's origins dating back to just 2021, the reporter went on a full offensive to get the story republished.

Passan started with a complaint late Tuesday about the page's removal, calling government officials "ghouls" before he demanded they "fix this now."

On Wednesday afternoon, Passan published a response he received from Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot on the issue:

"As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department," the Pentagon official explained. "Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services' core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed -- either deliberately or by mistake -- that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly."

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Less than 30 minutes later, Passan posted an updated statement from the government entity that said the DOD "loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others."

The department still stood with its anti-DEI message, however, and said it saluted the heroes for their "heroic service" but did not view their achievements "through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex."

"We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like ever (sic) other American who has worn the uniform," the department added.

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However, it took less than 40 minutes after the DOD's first statement was posted for the agency to restore the Jackie Robinson page, which highlighted the legendary player's athletic and military history.

Enter Kimes, who appeared on ESPN's "Around the Horn" later that evening to echo similar sentiments to Passan, despite it being after the fact.

"Jackie Robinson was known for many things, but above all, first and foremost, it was his ongoing courage in the face of racial discrimination. In fact, in addition to crossing the color barrier in baseball, he served in a segregated unit in the army and, in one instance, refused to move to the back of the bus, was arrested and acquitted. That matters," Kimes said on the air.

"That history cannot be erased. It cannot be undone, and it must be recognized to fully understand and celebrate his legacy."

Fans reacted strongly to her video, criticizing ESPN for its never-ending battle in favor of DEI initiatives.

"It's unfortunate you haven't learned," one football fan wrote. "Most of the public views sports as an escape from politics, divisiveness, DEI, racial talks, etc."

Kimes gave a snarky reply, "Thanks for the career advice but Im good."

Fans did not let up, though.

"I miss when it was about sports and not about liberal women needing to inject soft social science BS," a female viewer added.

"Mina [is] trying to finish ESPN off," another football fan joked.

Kimes then responded to conservative commentator Jesse Kelly, who told his followers there was a time when sports shows stuck to sports, but now hosts scold fans like they "forgot to take out the trash."

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Kimes then trashed Kelly as a grifter and said he is not a sports fan, which she felt she aptly displayed by including a screenshot of Kelly saying he had "checked out" on NFL and NCAA football.

The host soon alluded to sexism when responding to her supporters, claiming that despite other hosts echoing her sentiments, critics chose to focus on her:

"We know what they're doing. The funny part is when they pretend to care about sports," Kimes wrote.

Furthermore, Kimes strangely agreed when a viewer stated that she is mostly known for her political and social takes, ignoring the fact that those views were indeed presented on a sports program.

Kimes then tripled down and said the reason was because Kelly does not watch sports, again calling him a grifter for sharing his opinion on the matter.

"Once you realize that 99% of these grifters are the same way it becomes obvious."

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Whitlock: Tony La Russa groomed Tim ‘Jackie’ Anderson for premature emasculation



Tony La Russa’s pronouns are they/them.

The legendary 77-year-old baseball skipper and best friend of Bob Knight and Bill Parcells has apparently bowed to the social media social justice winds and reinvented himself as a “groomer.” He’s overseeing the transition of the Chicago White Sox into a sixth-grade girls' softball team.

Adhering to leftist custom, Chicago’s lone African-American player, Tim Anderson, volunteered to be the first major-leaguer to sacrifice his stick and balls.

Saturday night, Anderson erupted in anger and emotion because a member of the New York Yankees, Josh Donaldson, trolled him with the nickname “Jackie,” a reference to Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson. Three years ago, in a Sports Illustrated interview, Anderson analogized himself to the baseball pioneer who integrated Major League Baseball in 1947.

Anyone remotely familiar with sports culture isn’t surprised that Anderson’s opponents would use the analogy to rib the shortstop. La Russa has been involved with professional baseball for 59 years. He made his major league debut in 1963 with the Kansas City Athletics. An infielder, La Russa is acutely aware of the kind of banter players use to get inside the head of an opponent.

“Jackie” is quite possibly the tamest insult ever uttered on a baseball diamond, football field, basketball court, soccer pitch, or hockey ice. La Russa compared it to one of the worst.

“He made a racist comment – Donaldson. And that’s all I’m gonna say,” La Russa said following Saturday’s game.

La Russa turned a routine, bench-clearing standoff into a Black Lives Matter debate. To no one’s shock, Tim Anderson embraced the role of baby George Floyd with a heavy dose of Jussie Smollett. Anderson loves attention. He’s a bat-flipping showboat.

So, of course, Anderson overreacted to Donaldson’s harmless jab. The race card justified Anderson’s blowup, put Donaldson on the defensive, and summoned Major League Baseball to launch an investigation.

I’d love to know what exactly the league is going to investigate. Donaldson copped to calling Anderson “Jackie.” Donaldson said it’s not the first time he’s done it.

What needs to be investigated is the public mutilation of Anderson’s genitals. Three years ago, in the Sports Illustrated article where he compared himself to Jackie Robinson, Anderson proudly boasted about calling Royals pitcher Brad Keller a “weak-ass, f***ing n***er.”

Anderson received a one-game suspension for that derogatory attack. Keller is white. I’m sure the light discipline given to Anderson for that bit of racism caught the attention of many white major league players. Anderson’s defiance surely registered, too.

It’s also difficult to miss Anderson’s delusion and/or racial dysphoria. In the Sports Illustrated piece, Anderson and the writer, Stephanie Apstein, insinuated that Band-Aid is racist because it doesn’t make Band-Aids in Anderson’s skin tone.

Here’s the paragraph:

Sometimes the indignities are smaller. After the Royals series, he tore up his left thumb sliding into second in Detroit, so he dug around in the team first-aid kit until he found a one-inch dot the color of flesh – someone else’s flesh. “That’s small,” he says. “We got bigger problems.” But it is symbolic of his place in his sport in 2019. Anderson plays a white man’s game, and he plays it in a white man’s Band-Aid.

I wouldn’t call Anderson “Jackie.” I’d call him “Band-Aid” or Karen. He thinks – or they think – his purpose in life is to be a racism hunter. Racism and victimhood hunting are the new path to stardom. It’s "Star Trek."

“Race: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the racism Enterprise. Its Black Lives Matter mission: to explore strange, inconsequential interactions. To seek out new racism and victimhood. To boldly go where no real man has gone before!”

No real man wants to be a victim. But the left has convinced black men there’s no higher form of black humanity than being a damsel in distress.

Instead of Tony La Russa telling Anderson to calm down, act like a man, there’s no crying in baseball, and sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me, La Russa baited Anderson to act like a b***h.

That’s the prevailing message to all men. But black men are the lab rats of the emasculation movement. We’re the first to surrender our stick and balls. We’re the belles of this ball. Everyone knows it. We’re mocked in popular culture. In "Game of Thrones," everybody was fighting for power except a group of ball-less black men called “The Unsullied.” Tim Anderson is Grey Worm.

He snapped because his feelings got hurt when little Joshy called him “Jackie.” La Russa and members of the White Sox consoled little Timmy Anderson, claiming “Joshy was ray-cess.”

Black men are perceived to be that fragile and that unstable. No one can tell us the truth and no one can criticize our behavior.

In a story where he defends calling an opposing player a “weak-ass, f***ing nIIIer” and insinuates that Band-Aid colors are racist, Tim Anderson compared himself to Jackie Robinson.

The jokes write themselves. Anderson is a talented baseball player with the mental capacity of an 8-year-old girl.

You know why he’s that weak and stupid? Because the world constructed by the left rewards him for being that weak and stupid. It has nothing to do with his skin color. Jackie Robinson had the exact same complexion. Robinson lived during an era when the world rewarded men for their intellect, emotional control, and strength.

Men are being transitioned into little girls and little girls are being transitioned into grown men.

Weak old men like Tony La Russa are too afraid to do anything about it. At age 77, with millions of dollars in the bank, La Russa would rather collect another check grooming men for castration than take the risk of telling Anderson – or any black man – to man up.

Jackie Robinson’s Great Personal Sacrifice Made America A Better Nation

To win over a baseball establishment highly skeptical of integration, Jackie Robinson faced treatment that echoes that of One we also remember today.

Professor says transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is just like Jackie Robinson and ought to be celebrated as a trailblazer in women's sports



Opinion writer and professor Cheryl Cooky said over the weekend that the country ought to celebrate University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas instead of criticizing the transgender swimmer — even going as far as to compare the athlete to baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

Last week, Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I championship in any sport despite ongoing controversy surrounding eligibility to compete as a transgender woman in typically biological women's sports.

What are the details?

In an editorial published on NBC News, Cooky — a professor of American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Purdue University — wrote, "For anyone who cares about the advancement of sports, and women's sports in particular, her win should be celebrated."

Further, Cooky added, Thomas should be "embraced in the history of progress that sports represent and recognized as the trailblazer that she is."

"Women's sports are situated at a paradoxical intersection wherein sex segregation is upheld through claims of biological difference, yet equality is prefaced on being treated the same and given the same opportunities as men," she reasoned. "If we are to change this, we need to ask some important questions."

Those questions, according to the professor, include "How does one advocate for equitable treatment while also adhering to the notion of biological difference?" and "If separate is not equal in the case of schools, bathrooms, restaurants or other social institutions, can separate ever truly be equal in the case of sports?"

Cooky added she believes the playing field between transgender women and biological women is level enough, as regulations require biological men to undergo hormone-suppressing treatment for what she says is a reasonable amount of time leading up to being able to participate in their women's sport of choice.

"Athletic performance is influenced by a number of factors, including hormones, but also other things like coaching and training, psychological makeup of an athlete, access to resources and equipment, among others," she reasoned. "Attempts to ban or limit the participation of trans athletes are not based on science. Instead, they are rooted in societal and cultural definitions of what constitutes gender or what defines a woman."

Such attitudes, she added, only lead to discrimination against transgender women.

Cooky then concluded the editorial by going on to compare Thomas' inclusion to Robinson's.

"Major professional sports leagues like MLB and the NFL resisted racially integrating their player rosters," she wrote. "It was not until 1962 that the last NFL team, the Washington Commanders, would racially integrate. Moreover, athletes of color played in the NFL in the early years of the league, only to be excluded as the league developed. Today, athletes like Jackie Robinson are celebrated as 'breaking the color barrier' in sports, although that narrative often requires sanitizing, simplifying or rewriting a more complex, nuanced and contradictory history."

She added, "There remains though a cultural investment in celebrating sports' 'firsts,' whether that be Robinson as the first Black MLB player, the first openly gay active player in the NBA, the first nonbinary U.S. athlete to participate in the Winter Olympics or the first woman to score in a Power Five college football game. Many of the athletes who become the 'first' encounter resistance, backlash and opposition, especially from those who have historically benefited from the status quo in sports."

The professor concluded by pointing out that Thomas, as such, should be elevated to Robinson's status and celebrated for "the trailblazer that she is."

"Thomas, as the first transgender athlete to win a Division I NCAA championship, deserves to be placed among the other firsts," Cook insisted. "She should be embraced in the history of progress that sports represent and recognized as the trailblazer that she is."