Bill Rhoden, You Can't Be Serious?!?

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. I don't know where to start.

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I don't do this often, but I saw a video, I think it was in my inbox, I clicked on a news story about this news anchor who didn't want to see the

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American flag at the Olympics. And I thought, I got to see this. And then I watched it, four and a half minute segment, and I don't know whether you laugh or cry.

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I feel like I'm in clown world. But I thought, you know what, I'm going to go through this, we're going to watch this.

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And it illustrates a point that I've made a number of times about cancel culture. So I'll make the point again.

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But we have to learn to laugh at some of these things. I don't know how else to deal with it. There is no other way to deal with it. It's like a comment that was left on my

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Facebook this morning. This is an actual comment from a serious person. Let's see if I'll pull it up here.

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Just like an hour ago, I saw this and I thought this cannot be serious. So two things in the same morning, within about an hour of each other, that I thought, this is crazy.

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Someone who's a real person on Facebook left a comment on a pro -life post I made and said, you will never end abortions, you just make them unsafe.

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Let's make it mandatory for all males to have reversible vasectomies at puberty. Because that says my body, my choice right there, forced vasectomies for young males who are probably like 13, for minors, forced vasectomies for minors.

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And I thought, this has to be a joke. And this is an actual serious person, it looks like from everything that I could see.

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It's clown world. I don't know what else to say. I really hope this isn't gaining momentum on the left. But then again, when you're talking about forcing everyone to be vaccinated for a virus that has almost very little effect on healthy demographics, then

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I don't know. I don't know anymore. I just, I'm gonna throw my hands up. We have to laugh at this kind of stuff.

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You can't say, my body, my choice, and then, oh, enforce vasectomies for minors. It doesn't work that way.

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You gotta pick a principle that is so inconsistent, because the only thing that matters, well,

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I don't wanna speak for this person necessarily, but broadly speaking, social justice activists, the only thing that matters is diversity, equity, inclusion, some kind of egalitarian outcome that they want.

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That's the only thing that matters. Some kind of utopia they're all shooting for. So that was on my

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Facebook this morning. But this is a serious, this happened. This happened on television, on CBS.

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It's literally posted on CBS. It's posted on CBS. They literally posted this on their

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YouTube channel. They're not embarrassed by it. It's like they want people to see it. All right, well, let's watch it. Legendary sports writer,

03:02

Bill Roden, on USA Basketball Loss, Gymnastics Surprise.

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Joining us now is Bill Roden, a writer at large for the undefeated ESPN's website about the intersection of sports, race, and culture.

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The legendary sports writer is also the host of the Bill Roden on Sports podcast. Bill, good morning.

03:22

We called you legendary. You ever notice ESPN is basically to the left of MSNBC?

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And most of what they talk about is the stuff MSNBC talks about. I don't watch ESPN a lot, but up until very recently,

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I was doing a lot of repair work in people's houses for my own business that I ran.

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And they would have ESPN on sometimes. And I just, like, why even, you're not even talking about sports anymore.

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So this is one of the anchors, I guess, that's talking about politics.

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An activist hired to talk about sports, though. So let's see what he says.

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No pressure, sir. The legendary sports writer. Wow. As old as his brother. He might be. That's what that means.

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That's belay wording for you've been around it for a while. So it's been a conspicuously slow start for Team USA in a couple of areas.

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Should we be surprised? Well, I think we should be humbled. Yes, we should be surprised.

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Why is the USA doing so poorly? That should surprise us. The USA is not doing well.

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What do we attribute this to? So he says we should be humble. We should be humble.

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We should, I guess, like, we're there to win. Anyway. I mean, this whole last year in this country is about entitlement and privilege.

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And nobody epitomizes that more than basketball, because we're just supposed to win the gold.

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Wait, did he just say nothing epitomizes entitlement and privilege? Nothing.

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More than basketball? Because the USA is supposed to win basketball.

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They're good at basketball. It's funny. I mean, I'm just saying, demographics of people who play basketball, not exactly all that pale and pasty, if you know what

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I mean. So I just thought that was interesting. But he's saying that the

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USA is expected to win, because basketball is their sport. And it did originate in the

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United States. I mean, it's a popular game more than any other country in the United States. So I mean,

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I know it's popular in Japan and other places, but it's bigger in the United States.

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We all know this. So yeah, we would expect the USA to win basketball. But we are,

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Bill, supposed to win the gold. Is that entitlement? Well, it is, because we sent in the

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Marines in 1992, Michael Jordan, all that, as a reaction to losing. But now we send in the Marines. And then

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I'm saying, OK, after the rest of the world catches up, now who do you send? And that's what we're seeing now.

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And you know, Luke O'Donnell has just hit 48 points. Well, and the MVP of the NBA Finals is from Greece.

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Yeah, so I just think across the board, I think we just need some humility.

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And I know that's antithetic to what we're about here. Yeah, it's antithetical to the fact that you're...

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Eric Little showed this well, right? How to be an Olympian and be humble about it, right? Congratulate the people that you run against, whether you win or lose, good sportsmanship.

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It used to be a thing. I don't know if you remember like 10 years ago when sportsmanship was still kind of a thing, maybe.

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It was... That's what I was taught when I was playing soccer as a teenager. Sportsmanship, you always go and congratulate the other team.

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You can be humble, but you can still be humble and want to win. The reason that the

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United States is over there, the reason that every country is at the Olympics is they're trying to win. It is a competition.

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It's a lot better than shooting guns at each other, right? Trying to win in sports. This is like...

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Well, you got to be humble. You just got to realize that... You got to shed that entitlement attitude that we should win.

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Even the news anchor, the other news anchor is like, wait, hold on. We should win, right? We're the United States. We should win basketball.

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And he's like, oh, no, no. That's not good thinking. And he's going to expand on this. And this is where it gets really wacky.

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So I think everybody's, oh, it was just a wake -up call. It was more than that. I mean, this is a living nightmare. Well, do you think the

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U .S. can still win gold in basketball? They probably will. Though I asked myself yesterday,

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I'm saying probably will. I said, why are you saying that? Why are you saying that? And that's because we're all used to it.

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We're conditioned to it, yeah. We're just conditioned. We're conditioned. Yeah, because they are better.

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And it happens like every year the USA wins. So why is this like, oh, it's just like this conditioning.

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It's just this horrible culture. Like, why internally am I expecting the United States to win? Because you're there to root for the

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United States. And they usually win. And that's what you want to happen. And that's the goal is to win over there.

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Like, what's the point of competing? I mean, yeah, it's to have.

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There's all sorts of other things that accompany playing a sports game, right?

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Yeah, you'll learn sportsmanship. You should. Yeah, you create relationships with other people that are different than you from other countries.

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If you're competing internationally. Yeah, there's a whole Olympic experience. And you go to that little makeshift village they make for all the athletes.

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And yeah, I mean, you represent your country. And there's a civic. But ultimately, all of those are secondary.

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Or they're the result of the primary goal, which is you're trying to win. You're trying to beat the other countries to show for the honor of your country that you're the best.

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It's all about patriotism. It's all about how good your country is. It's all you're doing.

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You're representing more than you as you do it. But you're trying to win. And if you got that out of it, then what's the point anymore?

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If you make it about something else, well, I don't even know. What is he going to make it about?

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Then you've lost the Olympics. And we're going to keep losing if that's the case. If it's just not even about winning anymore.

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It's just about, I don't know, going there and being humble. And that's it. Yeah, be humble.

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But your primary purpose is to win. All right. I said that's where it gets weird.

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This is where it gets really weird. Swimming, where we're supposed to do this. There's going to come to be a point where we're not doing this stuff.

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We're just not routinely winning this stuff. Do you look at the Olympics differently now? Do you even think we should be happy?

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Yeah, yeah. I've covered like about five of them. And I was telling you, my favorite part of the Olympics was always going to the stadium for the opening ceremonies.

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I love the opening ceremonies. Then I just realized, you know, man, particularly after these last four years,

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I had it wrong. Nationalism is not good. We've seen the rise of white nationalism. Nationalism is not good.

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I got nothing.

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I don't know what to say to that. Other than why are you at the Olympics?

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It's nations competing against nations. Does anyone see this?

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I know people do. Why aren't the anchors jumping all over him and being like, wait, hold on.

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Aren't you at the Olympics? Did you check? Did you look around you? Did you realize this is the

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Olympics? The point is every nation is there competing against other nations.

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It's nationalism. It's the epitome of nationalism. It's nations.

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And they're there to beat each other in games. And they represent their nations in the opening ceremonies.

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They're showing this is the best of our country. This is what we represent. This is who we are.

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This is our identity. We're Americans. We're Chinese. We're Russians. We're English.

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We're French. We're wherever. We're South African. This is the point of the

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Olympics. So if you're sitting there and your job, literally your job is you're a sports commentator, and you're thinking, you know,

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I used to enjoy this, but I realized nationalism, especially that white nationalism, nations that are white, maybe

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Scandinavia, I don't know. That's really bad. That's really, really bad.

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I can't enjoy this anymore. This is why social justice ruins everything. This is why you lose your sense of humor.

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You can't enjoy the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which, as I understand, was pretty woke.

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Like, you've seen the pictures of the athletes. I didn't watch it, but I usually do. You see the pictures of the athletes kneeling, most of them.

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And he's still saying, you know, that nationalism. But it gets worse.

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Also, this whole idea, I keep thinking back on the Capitol riots. And I saw a lot of, you know,

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U .S. flags. So now when I see the flag and the flag raised, what America am

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I living in? You know, are the ones that don't think, you know, we should be here? The ones that think that we should shut things down?

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The ones that, so, I don't know.

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The Capitol riots is what he's thinking of during the Olympics ceremony. His mind is hijacked.

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This is sad. I actually have some compassion for this guy. It's Bill Roden. If you listen to this, which

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I don't think you will, there is a way that you can get your humor back and enjoy things like the opening ceremony of the

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Olympics without having to think about how the flag was used on January 6th.

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I think the first step might be turn off your television. If you're getting across,

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I mean, if you look at CNN, I know when I go to the gym and I see CNN, they're always talking about January 6th.

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So if that's all you're hearing all the time, turn it off. Because you shouldn't be thinking about January 6th when you're sitting there for a tradition that has gone back way further than January 6th.

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And furthermore, January 6th, the people who, yeah, a lot of them did fly the

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American flag, and they chanted USA and all those kinds of things. They weren't there because they wanted people like him outside of the country.

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There's no evidence for this. They were there because they were protesting what they believed to be a fraudulent election.

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That was the purpose for going on January 6th to the Capitol, to DC.

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It's so warped. This is so warped. There's just no reality has left the building. We're in clown world.

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This is like watching. It's like I don't even know what to compare it to. We're watching people who are so deluded.

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They're just out of touch with what's right in front of them. And it's sad. It really is. But this is the point

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I wanted to make a little bit. This is part of the reason I was going to do this podcast. I've been saying for years now, ever since, what, 2015, when

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South Carolina was going to take down their Southern Cross, their Confederate flag, from the

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Confederate Memorial, Soldier Memorial at the

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Capitol, State Capitol. And I've been saying since that time that if you do this, you take this step for the reasons they're taking the step.

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They're attributing, well, it's this flag's fault that Dylann Roof did what he did and stuff. If you make that connection and you take this flag down and you reinterpret it, and then for the foreseeable future, this is going to start happening all over the place.

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And that's been proven true. And the United States flag is no exception.

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I mean, he's doing exactly the same thing. He's saying, well, I saw that United States flag. And, yeah, that represents our country.

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But you know who really defines that flag? January 6th, protesters. Those are the people that they define the flag now.

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That's what that flag represents. And so the symbol is losing its meaning.

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It's lost its meaning in the mind of Bill Roden. And no one on this panel seems to be able to challenge that and say,

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Hey, wait, hold on, Bill. We're there as the United States. That's our flag.

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The people on January 6th, they don't define what the flag means. The flag has been used in all kinds of ways.

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But it is the official flag of our country. Whatever it represents to them on January 6th, it represents to all of us the country we live in.

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And we're there competing as a country. So this is sad.

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And this is what social justice does. It tarnishes everything. You can make anything just about out to be racist in two steps or less.

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You can connect it to something, and it's racist. And it's like the laws in the

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Old Testament when something's unclean, right? You touch something that had blood or something, you got to go sit outside the camp.

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I mean, at least when you sit outside the camp, you can come back in. With cancel culture, you never come back in. Everything is unclean in this mindset because it's all connected to racism or something.

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And the connections he goes through. I mean, look at the – there's a two -step jump here.

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Jump number one was, hey, those Capitol protesters on January 6th, they were basically – he's saying they're a bunch of white nationalists or racists, something along – basically, that's what he's insinuating.

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Which, okay, you haven't proven that. You're assuming that. But that's the first assumption. That's the first jump. Second jump is, and they define what the flag is now.

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They like that symbol, so I can't like it. That's the second jump. And now that's what the symbol means.

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And you convince more people to think like Bill Roden, and you don't have a country anymore. You don't have a flag that you can be proud of.

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You don't have a country you can be proud of. You can't even be proud of your basketball team because if you're proud of them, then you're saying that all the other basketball teams are less than somehow.

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This destroys sports. What's the point of being a sports commentator? All right, we're going to finish this out.

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It's only like two more minutes. I just think that this is a very – these Olympics should be a time of soul searching and winning sometimes is antithetic to soul searching.

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The Olympics. That's the new purpose of the Olympics, soul searching. That's what we should do.

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We pay all this money. We train all these athletes. We travel across the world, do a little soul searching.

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That's why we do it, right? No, it's to win. That's the point. It's always been the point.

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And he's saying, well, if you focus on winning, you can't do the soul searching. You do one or the other. What are the athletes supposed to think about this?

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Should they just like start walking in the races, start floating when they're supposed to be swimming?

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I mean, they're just soul searching right now. They're just inside their head. No, that would be horribly selfish.

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It's extremely selfish and extremely ungrateful for all the people that are behind you, all the people of the

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United States who you represent, your trainers, all the time that you've put into it, the sacrifices your parents have made in some situations.

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This is horribly selfish. But this is what wokeness does.

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Keep thinking about the athletes who have trained and trained and trained to be here. This is their moment.

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This is the first little bit of pushback. And she makes, she's not like, well, hold on, the athletes did train to go.

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Shouldn't they try to win? I love that. I mean, we're athletes. I love that. But athletes are just held hostage because they've got to be there.

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And I just think that the Tokyo Olympics - No, they don't. Athletes have to be there.

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What are we, in the USSR in the 1980s? Athletes are just forced to be there?

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No, they're not. They train throughout their lives. Yeah, sometimes parents can be overbearing and make their kids do things kids don't want to do.

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When it comes time to be an adult, the kids don't have to go over to the Olympics. They're forced to be there. What are they, slaves?

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Forced - Like, these athletes don't have any will of their own to make any adult decisions.

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They are forced by the United States of America to go compete in these Olympics. Like, how warped of a mind must

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Bill Roden have to think this? This guy is so out of touch with reality. He's so -

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He's dived so deep into social justice thinking that he's just -

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There's nothing left. And the people in the room can't see him. The best pushback he gets is, Wait, hold on. Didn't the athletes train?

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This is sad to me. This is really sad. This is on a mainstream news. This isn't like some

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YouTube channel. This is CBS. And it's a morning show. Why are we even talking about COVID?

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This guy's there to talk about the Olympics. Do you see how it just went from white nationalism to COVID?

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These are the two things he wants to talk about. He's a sports commentator. So we're getting to maybe the root of it a little more.

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He doesn't want to actually be there. He's saying the athletes are forced to be there. He, for his job, has to be there.

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He's the one that feels like he doesn't want to be at the Olympics. They shouldn't have had the Olympics. And now he has to cover this Olympics thing.

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I don't know. That's the best I can come up with. And it's all about money.

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And I'm sure Bill Roden makes a pretty penny talking about the Olympics. I'm sure he does.

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And ESPN. I'm sure he's on this show, on CBS This Morning, talking about it.

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He's talking about it's all about money. This is all motivated by money. Meanwhile, Bill Roden is one of the recipients of the money.

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Or at least he should be if he's a sports commentator. This is his wheelhouse. He's guilty of what he's accusing others of.

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It seems like he's projecting onto the athletes his own feelings about having to cover the Olympics. The opening ceremony is ruined for him.

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He doesn't think it should be about winning. He thinks it should be about soul -searching. And this is the legendary commentator that they introduced to talk about the

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Olympics. They're telling fans, athletes, roll the dice because we are going forward.

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What do you make of Simone Biles saying that she feels the weight of the world on her? And when you look at the fact that there are no fans, the impact that that's having on athletes.

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Yeah, I love Simone Biles. And I love the fact that Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka, two of the most prominent activist athletes, are going to be there.

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And she does have the weight of the world on her, as does Naomi Osaka, because it's just about more than competing.

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There's a lot going on. But she's got some broad shoulders, Simone's got some broad shoulders, there's no question about it. I love

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Simone and I love Naomi. And I'm wondering what they're going to do. He loves the activist athletes. In terms of protesting.

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Because what are they going to do, kick them out of the Olympics? So I'm very confident about that.

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But we should not hold these events. But I understand that that horse has left the stable.

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Yes. All right, well, Bill Rodent, always good to see you. The legendary Bill Rodent. The legendary. Haven't seen you in a while, but good to see you.

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Always great seeing you. I'm not sure what to say after all this.

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I've said that like five times, I'm not sure what to say. It's just so outside of the experience of regular ordinary

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Americans and what we expect to see in the Olympics. And by the way, the viewership is way down. And I'm part of that.

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I haven't really watched any of it. I don't know, maybe it's just because of what happened last year.

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And because I see these pictures of kneeling athletes, I just know I'm not as interested. I don't know. I haven't though. But we want to see people who are actually trying to win for their country.

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Who show good sportsmanship, who are good examples to all of us about what hard work can do.

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And then they represent their country. They're proud of their country. This is actually part of, it's something that's very healthy for the

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United States and every country that goes, I think. To be, it's kind of like, it brings people together.

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Sports does bring people together. Now, sometimes it's a little superficial, but it does, it is a glue and we need a glue right now.

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We need something to unite us. And this would have been it. The Olympics would have been it. If nothing would bring us together, it would have been the

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Olympics. That's always been something that has brought United States citizens together and across the political divide, et cetera.

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And that won't even work anymore. That's what you need to take away from this. That the

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Olympics can't even serve to bring people from the left and right together. Because now people from the left, like Bill Roden, are attacking the

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Olympics itself. The whole concept of trying to go and win is not a good concept.

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It's, so, I mean, what justifies being at the Olympics, right?

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Soul searching, but being an activist. Those two Olympians he talked about, well, what are they gonna do as far as protesting?

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That's what he's interested in. You go to the Olympics to do soul searching and you go to the Olympics to protest your country, apparently.

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And not to win, not to represent your country and try to beat the other countries.

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This is where we're at. This is just a wake up to us. Not everyone thinks like Bill Roden. I'm just saying,

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Bill Roden is someone who's actually taking this social justice stuff seriously. And he's got a platform. And this is mainstream. This thinking is out there and it's not some fringe group anymore.

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This is, these are people, I mean, his job is a sports commentator, for goodness sake. So this is someone who's like, why don't you have another job if you don't like this so much?

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But that's where we're at. We have people that are in sports who don't think you should win, don't like the country all that much, think the

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American flag isn't great. You have people in the church. And this is one of the parallels

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I wanted to make. You have people in the church who think, well, you know, the Bible's kind of, they'll never say that, but some of them will,

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I guess, in the more mainline denominations. But in evangelical circles, you have people that think, you know, God's law is kind of outdated or needs to be rethought of, reinterpreted kind of.

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Everyone before us, the great Christians of old, they pretty much got it wrong until we came along.

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And now we're the ones that are the tolerant, inclusive people that are diverse and believe that everyone should be equal, et cetera.

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You have it in Hollywood. You have it in news media, in academia.

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It's really every institution. Academia is not so much about learning. It's not about wisdom anymore.

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It's about activism. And you're seeing that in everything. Everything's becoming activist, ripping down to somehow usher in some kind of new, vague,

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I guess, utopia of some kind, but some kind of, bring about some egalitarian results. That's what every industry and institution seems to be circling around.

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And so we need to be aware of it. We need to resist it, like truly resist it.

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And we need to be just happy. It's fine to be happy with your life, to love your country, where you came from, to enjoy watching people try to win, to try to win yourself for the sake of your family, your country, your community, whatever.

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The Lord, most of all. It's funny that that's a way to almost rebel against this, but it is.

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The way to actually rebel against this kind of thinking is just to go through life and be happy. Don't let something negative ruin everything.

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God made some pretty amazing things. Unfortunately, Bill Roden is letting even the things that should be nice and pleasurable and just motivating and fun, he's letting those things become ugly to him.

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And it's very sad. So I just wanted to show you that. I thought it was interesting. I thought I'm going to do a podcast on that.