Good on Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors basketball team blew up about the Texas shooting last night before their playoff game, blaming the 50 Republican senators (and maybe Manchin and Sinema) who have been opposing any kind of gun control.
His blowup was good to see and it points out a big opportunity to strengthen this struggling democracy.
Out of about 10 radio stations that the Warriors broadcast ball games on, 3 are Republican stations that have always followed the NRA script after mass shooting like this — thoughts and prayers, blame the insanity, not the guns.
Those are the same radio stations that would have followed Limbaugh’s lead in calling San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick un-American for kneeling to protest police brutality. They call BLM a terrorist organization.
Since Columbine 1200-1500 radio stations like that have made it impossible for any Republican politician and many red state Democrats to consider any kind of gun control, even on assault weapons. They make any rational fact based national discussion about any major issue like global warming, voting rights, racism, reproductive rights, Trump treason, and gun control impossible.
Media talking heads who complain about Democrats’ inability to ‘message’ about gun control or baby formula or the price of gas are fools. In this case it’s not the content, it’s the volume. How can messaging for gun control not win out after Sandy Hook? Global warming? And many hundred of the loudest of those radio stations depend on hundreds of school and professional sports teams to keep broadcasting sports on them.
The 87 universities listed at fakenewsradio.org and many pro teams help Republicans and the NRA keep assault weapons available, even to the insane.
Syracuse University, 150 miles from Buffalo and about halfway between there and the killer’s town on the main highway, broadcasts sports on about 30 radio stations and 9 are Republican/NRA stations. There is some discussion going on there around this idiocy.
Texas A&M is on the list, supporting at least 9 Republican radio stations. I doubt they will do anything but how can Syracuse University not?
Republicans have been using stations like that for more than 20 years to tell 50 million Americans a week that Democrats are bringing (brown) people cross the southern border illegally and helping them get licenses and IDs so they can vote for Democrats. They convince millions that those ‘brown people’ are bringing drugs, crime, and diseases like ebola and COVID. That is how they’re selling all that voter suppression legislation. That is now called the new ‘replacement theory’ and university and pro athletes are being used to sell it. The Buffalo killer may have gotten his white supremacy online but upstate NY has been bathed in excuses for racism for 30 years, like many parts of the country dominated with Republican talk radio.
It would be a no-brainer for the Golden State Warriors to drop 3 radio stations. Those stations are using Golden State warrior athletes to excuse racism and oppose assault weapon regulation. Golden state can lead a national exodus of school and pro teams away from hundreds of the loudest NRA/Republican radio stations.
Advertisers will follow and the radio advertising industry will have to force the break up the racist NRA radio monopoly before too many get away for good.
Every company, ad agency, university, and pro team broadcasting on RW radio shares responsibility and they need to recognize it and act.
Students at and communities around these 87 universities can protest right on campus.