{"id":1525572,"date":"2022-06-22T08:49:09","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T12:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1525572"},"modified":"2022-06-22T08:50:06","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T12:50:06","slug":"once-great-sports-illustrated-is-now-just-another-bullhorn-for-attacks-on-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/once-great-sports-illustrated-is-now-just-another-bullhorn-for-attacks-on-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Once-Great Sports Illustrated Is Now Just Another Bullhorn For Attacks On The First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fonce-great-sports-illustrated-is-now-just-another-bullhorn-for-attacks-on-the-first-amendment%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1525572&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2022-06-21T160558.151-1024x576-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Younger readers probably won\u2019t comprehend how important magazines like Sports Illustrated were in pre-internet culture. Most sports news was\u00a0found in local papers and in short segments at 10 p.m. on the nightly news. Sports Illustrated was often\u2014though, periodically, competition would pop up\u2014the sole venue in which a sports fan could find deeply reported, well-crafted features and profiles, not to mention often-remarkable photography (the swimsuit issues, naturally, sold best). The magazine\u2019s circulation hit around 3.5 million in the mid-1980s, with another million copies being bought on newsstands.<\/p>\n<p>In my late 20s, I briefly\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/status\/1536780109646020608\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">worked<\/a>\u00a0for the company (well, the website, which was then called CNN\/SI.com\u2014perhaps a portend of terrible things to come), where I occasionally interacted with one of my writing heroes, Frank Deford. What a dream it was. I would have done it for free. I guess I almost did.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve largely ignored the magazine for the past decade or so, not for any philosophical reasons or any animosity, but with all the choices it simply fell off my radar. But after running across an astoundingly nonsensical piece\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/high-school\/2022\/06\/13\/fear-over-scotus-ruling-in-public-school-coach-prayer-case-daily-cover\">headlined<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWhen Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy,\u201d I\u2019m glad I did.<\/p>\n<p>Ostensibly, the feature is about <em>Kennedy v. Bremerton School District<\/em>, a SCOTUS case regarding a school district punishing a football coach named Joseph Kennedy for a 30-second silent prayer on the 50-yard line after every game. The piece\u2019s subhead describes the case as so:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>\u201cThe U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the case of a football coach at a public high school who was told he wasn\u2019t allowed to pray on the field in front of players. The expected result is a win for the coach\u2014and the further erosion of the separation between church and state.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>In front\u00a0<\/em>of players? Can you imagine? How will our brittle democracy survive an open display of religiosity? Greg Bishop, who could easily have written this piece for The Nation, offers no explanation of how a prayer is eroding \u201cseparation of Church and State.\u201d Even this atheist, after all, understands that the Establishment Clause doesn\u2019t ban praying in public places\u2014not in schools, and not even in Congress, where prayers are recited before every session.<\/p>\n<p>Bishop anoints Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State his proxy, allowing her to frame the debate over Kennedy in the most preposterously hyperbolic, partisan terms imaginable, even though the only thing her organization excels at is losing cases. The bad-faith retelling of Kennedy\u2019s story is crammed with partisan platitudes about \u201cdemocracy\u201d being under attack on issues like \u201cvoting rights, LGBTQ rights,\u201d and the potential overturning of \u201cRoe v. Wade.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Now, it\u2019s unimaginable that a major publication would allow a\u00a0reporter to throw around phrases like \u201cvoting integrity, religious freedom, and protecting the life of the unborn\u201d\u2014without quotation marks intimating that the ideas aren\u2019t real\u2014and that\u2019s probably always been the case. Though the piece brings up\u00a0<em>Roe<\/em>\u00a0three times, no one explains how a court (concerned solely with the constitutionality of laws) is undermining democratic institutions by giving abortion \u201crights,\u201d unmentioned in the Constitution, back to voters. Washington State, home of Bremerton High School, sadly, will not be restricting abortion any time soon.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, Bishop also uses appeals to authority, tapping \u201cindependent scholars or legal experts who hold no vested interest in the outcome\u201d\u2014one of the only names offered is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/02\/12\/harvards-laurence-tribe-has-become-a-deranged-russia-conspiracist-today-was-his-most-humiliating-debacle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">conspiracy theorist<\/a>\u00a0Laurence Tribe. He warns readers about the nefarious, big-money forces propping up Kennedy. First Liberty\u00a0(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.influencewatch.org\/non-profit\/first-liberty-institute\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$7,255,961<\/a>\u00a0in assets), writes Bishop, is a \u201cpowerful Christian conservative law firm,\u201d part of a\u00a0\u201cpowerful right-wing machine\u201d\u2014<em>powerful<\/em>\u00a0is the key word here\u2014while Americans United for Separation of Church and State\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.influencewatch.org\/non-profit\/americans-united-for-separation-of-church-and-state\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">($11,141,577<\/a>\u00a0in assets, not counting in-kind contributions from places like the Meredith Corporation, which has $6.727 billion in assets), are simply \u201cterrified\u201d and \u201ctransported\u201d to an \u201calternate universe of disinformation and propaganda\u2014and, in that world, even democracy is in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Disinformation? It\u2019s all just progressive mad libs. That\u2019s what happens when \u201cdemocracy\u201d is a euphemism for achieving political ends in whatever fashion happens to be convenient. Sometimes, when the numbers are there, it means crass majoritarianism and centralized federal power; and when the numbers aren\u2019t there, it can mean compulsion or a court dictating \u201crights\u201d by fiat.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, a school district, not the coach, is attempting to limit speech. There is no prohibition on praying in public institutions. Such a prohibition has never existed. Any scholar\u2014and Bishop claims to have spoken to many for the piece\u2014who claims that the Constitution\u2019s authors would have found the act of kneeling after a competition \u201cperilous to foundational American ideals\u201d is a complete fraud. Then again, \u201cWhen Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy\u201d is a microcosm of the incurious activism that dominates journalism these days. It\u2019s one thing to put up with relentless bias that\u2019s infected virtually every area of mainstream culture, but another to see once-respected magazines putting out such banal, predictable propaganda.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books\u2014the most recent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eurotrash-America-Reject-Failed-Continent\/dp\/0063066017\/\">Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent<\/a>. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/\">@davidharsanyi<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Younger readers probably won\u2019t comprehend how important magazines like Sports Illustrated were in pre-internet culture. Most sports news was\u00a0found in local papers and in short segments at 10 p.m. on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}