Darned if ya do, darned if ya don’t, Dabo. That’s how it works these days it seems.
If the 24/7 microwave news cycle that’s come into existence in such a powerful way has caused one reaction from celebrities or public figures in general, it’s that the desire to cling to “no comment” generic-type comments on all things is the way to go.
For those public figures, it causes less headaches, mostly because anyone with a cell phone now has equal opportunity to have a reaction that a holy heck of a lot of people can see, and sometimes those opinions aren’t through the most nuanced and benevolent of shades.
So the media, always needing a story of any kind to keep the clicks flowing and the print flying off the shelves, doesn’t necessarily like the canned statements. Teams now have social media specialists that monitor this stuff around the clock. No one wants to say anything that would be remotely controversial, so you never really know how anyone feels because they don’t feel they can actually feel so long as people can read it and react.
Which is why, when Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney … by all accounts a fantastic human being away from his day job … decided to wade into the scalding-take caisson that is Colin Kaepernick and the National Anthem with an honest, nearly 10-minute response, he was doing something the media desperately wishes all people would do, one would think he’d have been applauded.
There was only one problem. The media didn’t agree with his completely non-offensive and personal take.
The funny thing about tolerance is that we have a backwards idea of what it actually is. It doesn’t manifest itself in some pit of groupthink where everyone pats each other on the back who has the same opinion and demonizes those who don’t.
Tolerance manifests itself in the exact opposite way, when people who have an opinion stand up for the the opinions of those who do not agree with them.
A Clemson professor wrote an “open letter” to Swinney, urging him to “take MLK’s name out of your mouth.”
Another writer termed it “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
A CBS writer at least called it “well-intentioned,” but noted it misses the mark.
NBC went the, “telling people how and when to protest” route.
Look, this piece isn’t here to tell you what to think of social issues, who has the right to have what opinion, and what is or is not ridiculous. The point is that media can’t ask public figures for their thoughts on things and then get white hot mad when the opinion doesn’t fit theirs.
That doesn’t move discussion about anything forward, just makes people more reticent to comment on it.
Heck, the writer of this didn’t even want to write a piece on how it’s okay to not be mad at people for attempting to actually answer a very difficult question that most coaches/players/politicians even would have punted into the Atlantic Ocean whether the person receiving the message agrees with it or not.
Punting it would have been the easy route. The much tougher one is to say how you feel, and you just mostly hope whether people agree with it or not, they appreciate your willingness to be nuanced, open, and honest with the people interrogating them.
The only way conversation on anything moves forward, or we get to know what guys like Swinney think because the way one person thinks on issues in the news is likely a microcosm of how many, many more people think, is to be thrilled when someone answers a potentially divisive question with an honest answer.
Until then, this becomes just the latest example of someone trying to just give an opinion, heretofore being cut down by the media that really has a voice because they may not think like him.
All this will do is keep more folks who might want to have an opinion, something new where people who may or may not agree, can learn something from how and why someone feels the way they do. All it will do is lead to the eternal giving of more canned comments that barely can make articles.
You never learn anything surrounding yourself with people who think just like you. You also willingly never learn anything when you push everyone out who does not.
Whatever your opinion is on any topic and your personal relationship to that topic, bravo for having it and saying it. Tolerance and the fixing of real issues lies in accepting the opinions of all so they feel compelled to tell you how they feel.
Until then, the “no comments” will collect amidst the rubble of once-free speaking confabulation.
