Former ESPN anchor explains the 'wokeification' of the sports network
Former ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor Sage Steele was living the life that all sports anchors dream of — until that dream job turned into a woke nightmare.
“When you kind of get pushed into a corner so many times, you have a decision to make,” Steele tells Dave Rubin. “Obviously, I made the decision I thought was right for me, to stand up and have a voice about being treated differently compared to my peers at the network because I didn’t fit the narrative.”
Steele was removed from the network in 2021 after she spoke out against vaccine mandates, telling a podcast host that while she respected an individual's decision to get vaccinated, she thought that mandating it was “sick” and “scary.”
Steele had also come under fire for her comments regarding female sports reporters and harassment, saying that women need to take responsibility for the way they present themselves.
“When did you start to see that something was not quite right?” Dave Rubin asks Steele, who tells him that there was one major catalyst for the woke shift.
“When Trump got elected,” she says, noting that on the night of his election, high ranking ESPN executives were tweeting about his election and how “sickened” and “disgusted” they were.
“That was the beginning of the end to me,” Steele says.
While ESPN’s blatant wokeness became a problem for Steele, it’s not the network's politics that rubbed her the wrong way.
“At the end of the day,” she says, “I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care who you sleep with, I don’t care about any of it. Are you a good human? Are you kind? How do you treat me? Most importantly, how do you treat others when the lights aren’t on?”
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Woke writer BLASTS child as racist for dressing up for KC Chiefs game
Is it racist to dress up in support of your favorite sports team? Well, according to Carron Phillips, it is — especially if you are a child.
Phillips, who is a writer from the sports website Deadspin, attempted to accuse a young boy of racism for dressing up as the Kansas City Chiefs’ mascot. The boy’s name is Holden Armenta. He was wearing black face paint on one half of his face and red on the other.
The article used a side profile of Holden as it’s proof, which showed only the black side. “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” read the headline.
The article went on to accuse the boy of “doubling up on the racism.”
Sara Gonzales believes this was “a disgusting attempt to sick an outrage mob on a young child” who seems to have been Phillip’s target because he was white.
“I hope they Nick Sandman them,” Chad Prather tells Jaco Booyens and Gonzales.
Booyens notes that it was clear that the intent was to “go after the most vulnerable and say, ‘Oh, I can score points here.’"
Phillips, whose first name is pronounced “Karen,” doubled down on his attack of the child in a tweet.
“For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse. Y’all are the ones who hate Mexicans but wear sombreros on Cinco,” Phillips wrote.
However, over half of the players in the NFL are African-American. Prather notes that it then makes no sense for a racist child to be at an NFL game, let alone cheering them on.
“He’s cheering them on, supporting their careers, funding them,” Prather says, adding, “If Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback for the Chiefs, had walked up to that kid, that kid would crap his pants with excitement.”
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