It was a beautiful spring day in Atlanta. Kids were bobbing for murder weapons in the lake at Piedmont Park. Atlanta’s new tourism slogan: “Come for the strip joints, stay to fill out the police reports.”
Suddenly, the news hit. Because of whimpering leftist comments by the leadership of Delta Air Lines and the new “Woke” Coke about Georgia requiring citizens to show a valid ID in order to vote, Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game from Georgia.
You have to show an ID to enter Delta and Coke HQ buildings and shareholder meetings. You have to show an ID at the Will Call window to get your baseball ticket. But they think they know what is better for Georgia than the state’s elected representatives do. Delta needs to spend less time trying to overturn the sensible voting laws of elected representatives and more time not losing my luggage.
You will remember that the new “Woke” Coca-Cola, run now by sharp-elbowed, cowardly, corporate weasels (none of whom started the big company, just clawed their way to the top), recently instructed employees to be less white. Coke now differs from Pepsi, whose spokesman, Michael Jackson, slowly turned white over time.
Instead of Atlanta, the All-Star Game will be moved to Coors Field in Denver. Coors is the light beer we always used to want in college because we couldn’t get it. Now it is considered a weak, low-end beer no one wants. It is the official beer of child custody hearings.
So what happened? Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner who makes $20 million a year running a government-sanctioned (why?) monopoly, decided to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta with its African American majority to Denver (about 10% black) over a wrongful interpretation of voter law changes. So the revenues from all the parking, vending, hotels, etc. surrounding such a game will go from helping minorities to helping whitey stoners in the Mile High City. And by the way, Colorado has more restrictive voting laws than Georgia is adopting.
Baseball, which already has issues with being boring, hot and excruciatingly long, really does not need to alienate any more fans. The “Commish” needs to keep his nose out of state politics and try to make his game move faster. In my opinion, a Major League baseball game should never last longer than a five-part Ken Burns documentary about baseball.
Rob Manfred, the commissioner making this boneheaded decision, got a fantastic letter from Senator Rubio asking him to resign his membership in Georgia’s Augusta National since he is so mad at Georgia. The liberal woke lesson here is that it’s always easier to be noble at someone else’s expense.
During the fashionable worry about voting rights in Georgia, which just came off an all-time high number of votes cast in an election, Manfred is trying to expand baseball in the corrupt countries of China and Mexico — both with stellar voting and human rights records. MLB has held games in Mexico to expand the sport. Patrons in Mexico did not enter through the gates; they were asked, out of habit, to enter by climbing over the outfield fence where they were met with food, housing, and in-person teacher union education.
Most of us watch sports to escape politics and enjoy ourselves for a few hours, so bringing in politics makes little sense. Maybe Major League Baseball is in cahoots with Washington to distract the citizenry from our lawmakers’ own doings, much like the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome. Sports divert attention and placate the masses. (They are also said to satisfy men’s innate lust for war but, just to make sure, Washington has us in a bunch of real wars, too.)
The same can be said for the Vatican, which seems to want to opine on global warming and U.S. immigration policy. This Pope is very political, upsetting many traditional Catholics. He is reportedly thinking about letting priests marry, which tells me he is a lot more serious about priests’ celibacy than we might have thought.
The voter laws in Georgia are not “Jim Crow,” as the media have been instructed to call them and which they parrot incessantly. They evolved over time and are more accessible than those in Biden’s tiny home state of Delaware. There are always tweaks in legislation, and laws change slowly and painstakingly over time with nothing much happening. Just like baseball.
Ron Hart, a libertarian syndicated op-ed humorist, worked at Goldman Sachs and is an award-winning author and TV/radio commentator. He can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com, or visit www.RonaldHart.com.