Dan Le Batard Show Apologizes for Jonathan Isaac Knee Injury Poll
Not sure if you caught this yesterday, but the Dan Le Batard Show Twitter account posted and later deleted a poll asking if it was “funny” that Orlando’s Jonathan Isaac tore his ACL during the second game back after NBA season postponement.
The context here is that Isaac, a black man, stood for the national anthem last week and decided not to kneel in solidarity with his teammates. The poll touched on the irony of the incident, which Le Batard later pulled while offering this apology:
We apologize for this poll question. I said on the front and back end of the on-air conversation that I didn’t think it was funny. Regardless of the context, we missed the mark. We took the tweet down when we realized our mistake in how we posed the question to the audience. -Dan pic.twitter.com/iL5HtFm6gs
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) August 3, 2020
The bigger issue here I think is that it’s a waste of time fretting about who is standing and who is kneeling, who’s wearing a t-shirt and who isn’t. People seem more interested in keeping these Grover Norquist-style lists, and then passing judgment on others based on whether or not they participate in symbolic gestures and hashtag activism.
That’s what’s important; turning these displays into something tangible and effective. I’m sure people wouldn’t give a shit if Jonathan Isaac was standing, sitting, kneeling, squatting, or doing downward dog pose if he donated $100,000 for social justice causes, or successfully ran a voter registration drive in his hometown Bronx. In this case, a left-leaning show with left-leaning hosts crossed the line by taking a cheap shot at a 22 year old who just blew out his knee.