By Steve Woodward
NBC Sports football analyst and ex-NFL head coach Tony Dungy, a man of exceptional character and talent, is under siege by a very corrupt media because he challenged its version of “truth”.
Dungy recently issued a concise tweet lamenting public education’s facilitation of gender fluidity, which is universally opposed in school districts nationwide. In particular, he sarcastically noted the possibility that school districts soon will be providing “litter boxes in school bathrooms for students who identify as cats.” This sounds insane, except for this: Students at Pinecrest High School have been known in recent years to arrive in cat attire (photo nearby), and not only on Halloween. Cats, once a Broadway show, is now a state of mind, or so it seems.
Sports Illustrated dutifully reported that Dungy “came under fire” for the tweet, which soon was deleted (probably because NBC Sports’ woke brass offered an ultimatum). And in rapid succession the lefties in sports media took their shots at Dungy for repeating a long ago “debunked”, mythical narrative about litter boxes in schools.
But Dungy did not back down. Instead, he honored a commitment to be a speaker during the March for Life rally in Washington on its 50th anniversary. He was not going rogue. Dungy has spoken out against abortion throughout his life. This triggered a complete meltdown within the elite sports media, who are in reality no longer into balls and strikes, but more so balls and skirts. They love ‘em some drag.
“Dungy went ahead with his speaking engagement, using his athletic celebrity coupled with his religiosity as deodorant for a theme of intolerance,” wrote activist Washington Post “sports” columnist Kevin Blackistone. “That came days after a tweet by Dungy for which he was rightfully and soundly denounced, shamed into apologizing and deleting his words.”
Blackistone condemned Dungy for dismissing “student identity differences — and about the need to halt them … (and) disobliging the necessities of LGBTQ kids, and even those of kids of color.”
Blackistone seems to lament that Dungy is not black enough and, obviously, not woke enough. We must suppose that Blackistone detects racism any time he is covering a sports event in which a black athlete is called for a penalty or a foul. He must be exhausted by the end of the game. (This is the same columnist who condemned soccer icon Pele following his death at the end of 2022 because Pele did not oppose the dictators who controlled Brazil in his athletic prime).
Google provides plenty of cover for the hysterical reaction to Dungy’s tweet about cat children. Search “high school furry trend” and you will find link after link pointing to accounts with headlines including, “How an urban myth about litter boxes in schools became a GOP talking point” (NBC News), and, “Fact-check: No evidence that U.S. schoolchildren are self-identifying and disrupting classrooms” (Reuters).
Yet, those willing to do nominal research quickly discover that the dress-up phenomenon has, in fact, proliferated across the land, in lock step with more “conventional” gender fluidity trends, including drag queen story time for children as young as elementary school age.
Suppose litter boxes for school kids are disproven as widespread, like Bush 43’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq two decades ago. Their absence does not excuse the dangerous inclinations of woke school systems to pander to the whims of children rather than addressing their potentially serious mental health problems. (Just as vanishing WMDs did not diminish Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror).
What the media actually was objecting to in Dungy’s case was what prompted his hair-trigger tweet in the first place. This same media that in years past hailed Dungy as a pioneering black NFL head coach has no patience for his conservative, Christian values today. How dare this football analyst cross the line, and on NBC, of all places, Trump Derangement Syndrome’s birthplace.
Dungy was reacting to an unhinged demand by a Minnesota state legislator (Sandra Feist) that menstrual products be made available in boys bathrooms in state public and charter schools because, she argued, “not all students who menstruate are female.”
Not all television broadcasters who pontificate are woke. Put me in, coach.