It has been said that while comic books may be nonsense, the history of comic books is scholarship. That is the spirit in which to approach the John Rocker controversy. A pitcher for the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Rocker made disparaging remarks about minorities and New York City that merit as little attention as comic books. But the reaction to those comments is worthy of inspection. There is a great deal to be learned from the anti-Rocker hysteria fomented by the media.
Hysteria is the correct term. Consider what Rocker actually said. Rocker made his comments late last year to a Sports Illustrated reporter while driving to give a speech at a school for learning-disabled children — the media’s favorite sexist, bigot, and racist may even have a kind heart. And what were the comments?
He began by spouting off at a bad driver:
“So many dumbasses don’t know how to drive in this town. They turn from the wrong lane. They go 20 miles per hour. . . . Look! Look at this idiot! I guarantee you she’s a Japanese woman.” This bit of traffic stereotyping has led the media and Major League Baseball to label Rocker a sexist and anti-Asian.
Then America’s pariah made the remarks that led to his widespread labeling as a bigot. When asked if he would ever play for a New York team, Rocker said:
“I would retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.
“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”
And why the charges of racism against Rocker? According to the reporter, “In passing, he calls an overweight black teammate ‘a fat monkey.'”
Let’s now summarize Rocker’s comments by target:
ASIANS: Rocker assumes a bad driver is Japanese.
WOMEN: Rocker assumes that a bad driver is a woman.
GAYS: Rocker refers to a hypothetical subway passenger as a “queer” and associates AIDS with him.
NEW YORKERS: The hypothetical subway riders are a punk, a criminal, and an overly productive young mother.
FOREIGNERS: Rocker is not a “big fan” and is uncomfortable with New York having so many people who do not speak English.
BLACKS: Rocker refers to a teammate as a “fat monkey.”
For these comments — which feature but one deliberately pejorative term (queer is inexcusable when meant derogatorily, though it is increasingly used by gays in academia and elsewhere) — made to a reporter asking about his feelings regarding New York and its fans, John Rocker’s name has now been sullied more than that of any other athlete, and almost any public figure, in memory. It should be pointed out that Rocker was being interviewed in the first place because of a highly marketable ongoing feud between the pitcher and New York baseball fans.
There is little question that a media mob set out after Rocker not for reasons of moral principle or damage to the sport but because, for all their talk against hatred, many liberals have a great deal of hate, and the liberal media frequently foment it. Had Rocker beaten his girl-friend or wife, he would have been ignored. Had he choked his coach as Latrell Sprewell, now a beloved New York Knicks player, did, he might have received a sympathetic 3,000 word profile in the New York Times Magazine. Had he sold heroin, he would have been punished, but no columnist or editorialist or comic would have humiliated him, no fans would have cursed him as tens of thousands recently did in Los Angeles and as packed stadiums no doubt will in New York when his team plays there at the end of June.
Certainly had Rocker chosen his ethnic targets more carefully he would have escaped media censure. If he had mocked Mormons, as former basketball player Dennis Rodman did, he might have been fined by the league, but the media would have snickered, as it did over Rodman’s insults. Had he attacked Cuban-Americans, he might even have been considered a fellow liberal. The good liberal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Peter Angelos, reportedly decided earlier this year not to hire Cubans for his team because it would upset his plans to do business with Castro. This was a policy directly comparable to that of whites-only baseball team owners who didn’t hire black players until the 1950s because it would upset their racist fans. Did the media go after Angelos for this? No, he backed down only because conservative legal experts pointed out that such a discriminatory policy could violate civil rights law. Rocker, in short, has been singled out for punishment by liberal vigilantes in the media.
Here are some examples of the anti-Rocker hysteria fomented by the media:
* Jay Leno. The host of the Tonight Show has had guests take baseball bats and whack a John Rocker dummy. Leno remains one of America’s most popular TV comedians by attacking “safe” targets. He picks on Rocker for a reason: According to the broken moral compass of liberal America, there is only one repellent act deserving of public mockery and censure, and that’s when a white man (especially a southerner) says something negative about liberal minority groups. Other minorities, such as Cuban-Americans, Korean-Americans, Mormons, and Catholics may be ridiculed with impunity (as Catholics routinely are) and even attacked (as Koreans were in the Los Angeles riots).
* George Vecsey, chief sports columnist for the New York Times. In one column alone, Vecsey describes Rocker as a “bully,” a “bigot,” a man with “deep-seated hatred of the other,” “bigotry incarnate,” and “vicious.” He expounds:
“It is a rather sad chore to discuss the bigotry incarnate in one relief pitcher, but John Rocker left us no choice. . . . Most of all, he hates foreigners, his definition most obviously including African-Americans.”
Most obviously? This is plain dishonesty, and must reflect a desire on Vecsey’s part to arouse racial animosity against Rocker. African-Americans were not even mentioned by the pitcher.
“Official Atlanta, black and white, must back far away from John Rocker and his vicious sense of disenfranchisement, which is no small factor in rural America.”
So according to Vecsey, Rocker must be ostracized by all decent people. This excommunication of enemies is catching on in liberal America. San Francisco mayor Willie Brown recently called for all blacks and all black institutions to shun Justice Clarence Thomas. What’s more, Vecsey feels free to generalize as disparagingly about rural America as Rocker does about New York. Except when Vecsey indulges his prejudices, it’s just another day at the office; when Rocker does so he’s a “muscle-twitching, wide-eyed specimen” of bigotry and hatred.
Vecsey concludes his rant: “Rocker has since issued an apology whose coherence and maturity make it impossible to have been written by him. The ghostwritten mea culpa will not work. He said it, now he has to live with it.”
A characteristic view of contemporary liberalism is the importance of forgiveness — especially of violent criminals, whom we are incessantly instructed to understand rather than judge. Liberals, for instance, never remind Jesse Jackson of his references to New York as “Hymietown” or opine that his excuses for the lapse should not be credited. They believe, correctly, that the Rev. Jackson should be forgiven. But Rocker’s apology “will not work.” The team’s owner should “just fire this rube . . . as a gesture to peace on earth.”
You could with equal justice argue that, given the hysterical hate-mongering nature of this column, relieving George Vecsey of his duties would increase peace in America.
* Richard Matthews, editorialist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In an April 20 piece, Matthews comments: “Yes, of course [Rocker] has a right to any ideas that occur to him. So did Idi Amin.” Another thoughtful analogy from our mainstream media. An editorial writer on Atlanta’s major newspaper compares Rocker to one of the twentieth century’s most notorious mass murderers and a cannibal.
* Lewis M. Steel, a lawyer whose specialty is defending minorities and women insulted in the workplace, writing in the New York Times, February 12, 2000: “What Jackie Robinson endured when he broke into baseball should not be allowed again.”
Another thoughtless analogy — the terrible treatment directed by many white players at Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player, and John Rocker’s uncivil tongue. There is no evidence linking John Rocker to any mistreatment of any minority player in baseball (unless you count the numerous strikeouts that he metes out to batters without regard to race). But when an activist trial lawyer wants to smear, facts don’t get in the way.
Steel’s real goal, though, is not to smear Rocker but to further the most frightening legal innovation of contemporary liberals — using the threat of litigation to suppress freedom of speech: “John Rocker is an employee of the Atlanta Braves. His employer has not only the right but the duty to see to it that his conduct comports with federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race and national origin. The Supreme Court has ruled that an employer cannot allow any of its workers to create ‘a hostile work environment’ based on bias.”
The totalitarian impulse in contemporary liberalism is nowhere more evident than in the speech codes that blanket the American workplace. Here is a lawyer writing in the New York Times that John Rocker has created a “hostile work environment” for all the non-whites in baseball. “Besides making remarks insulting to his fellow employees, Rocker insulted his employer’s customers — the fans of Major League Baseball. Not only is letting an employee behave this way to customers likely to be bad for business, but it may well violate the public accommodations provisions of the federal civil rights laws. Permitting players to trumpet their racism publicly is just another way of telling certain fans they are not welcome in major league ballparks.”
In this paragraph we have two examples of liberal incitement to hate. One is the cavalier use of the word “racism,” which serves only to increase racial tension in America. The other is the pronouncement that Rocker insulted “the fans of Major League Baseball.” This is a lawyer’s clear invitation published in the New York Times for baseball fans to abuse Rocker. Needless to add, Steel, like all of Rocker’s critics, was missing in action earlier this month when baseball faced its only real civil rights threat in recent memory — the aborted policy of his fellow trial lawyer, Baltimore Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos, to discriminate on the basis of national origin against Cuban players.
* Bill Plaschke, sports columnist, Los Angeles Times. Of all the ugly hate-filled anti-Rocker rhetoric, a May 2 column by the chief sports columnist of the Los Angeles Times stands out as the most irresponsible. Until Plaschke, no one had celebrated hate-filled behavior against the Braves pitcher.
On the night of May 1, the Atlanta Braves came to Los Angeles to play the Dodgers. When John Rocker entered the game in the ninth inning, as Plaschke told it, “Dodger Stadium erupted in chair-shaking boos filled with a venom rarely heard in these placid parts. By the time he reached the mound, he had been pelted with cups and trash thrown with such furiousness that the public-address announcer was quickly and heartily threatening arrests.
“The boos stayed strong with every pitch. The debris disappeared, but then fans in the stands began throwing words and shoves, emotions spilling over like ninth-inning beer.
“Then, finally, with a 1-and-1 count on Kevin Elster and a man on first base, a fan spoke for everyone.
“He ran onto the field.
“He turned his back on the man who turned his back on us.
“And he mooned him.
“Forcing Rocker, perhaps, to see the world as the world sees him.”
The lead sports columnist for one of America’s major newspapers sees a man expose himself in front of tens of thousands of men, women, and children and the columnist lauds it.
Plaschke cited with approval all the hate-filled speech screamed at Rocker:
“John Rocker, you racist pig!”
“Rocker, you’re ugly!”
“Rocker, you can autograph my toilet paper!”
“Hey Rocker, are you as dumb as you look?”
To Plaschke, all this and the mooning was evidence that “a city’s conscience broke out.”
The abuse heaped upon Rocker needs to be explained, for three reasons.
First, Rocker’s comments themselves, while foolish and insulting, are only that — foolish and insulting. They are not evil; and they are not necessarily racist. While driving, I have probably thought something awful about every miserable driver who had any identifiable trait — religious (“God, are nuns lousy drivers”), ethnic (“Another slow driving Asian”), sex (“Of course he’s speeding, he’s a young male”), dress (“Maybe if you grew up and didn’t wear your hat backwards, you’d know how to drive!”), class (“White trash”), and many more, including derogatory thoughts about my own religious/ethnic group (“Doesn’t a guy wearing a yarmulke know not to act that way on the road?”). I don’t think I am exceptional in this regard. Anyone who declares such thoughts to be manifestations of dangerous racism is a self-deluding fool. Anathematizing trivial behavioral tics that are universally engaged in is more dangerous to the cause of combating racism than John Rocker.
The second reason the hate-filled reactions to Rocker’s comments need explanation is that Rocker is, after all, nothing but a pitcher on a baseball team. The thoughts of a baseball player on immigrants, Asian women drivers, and New York subway passengers are of little importance to society. Rocker’s opinions might be deemed more significant if he went around America saying these things in public speeches. But he doesn’t. Instead he gives, apparently, motivational talks to disabled kids. He has confined his negative thoughts to one interview with a sports reporter with whom he drove through Atlanta while answering questions about New York City, whose fans had treated him despicably before these comments were made.
The third reason the intense reactions need explanation is that John Rocker has profusely apologized. In fact, both verbally and in writing he has more than apologized; he has, as his inquisitors wanted, groveled, and shown, in ways reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, that he has been reeducated. But no matter: He remains the butt of media jokes and continues to be treated as America’s Great Hater.
How to explain the anomaly of such intense hatred directed at a baseball player who made intemperate comments to a reporter and who has been punished (Major League Baseball suspended him for several games at the beginning of the season) and apologized? Especially when other athletes have done so much worse?
The answer tells us a lot about contemporary liberalism, and especially about the liberal media.
Most obviously, liberals who devote great energy to “combating hate” need to look inward. If there were a meter to measure hateful public speech in America, the needle would surely spend more time pointed left than right.
Yes, the Clintons have attracted their share of haters on the right. But they are dwarfed in numbers and influence by the liberals whose relentless barrage of loathing and contempt pours down on out-of-favor groups and individuals. There is such a thing as a politics of personal destruction in America. John Rocker has been its perfect victim. The wild overreaction, the hysteria, the media incitement to hatred — over trivia uttered by a trivial personality — is an astonishing spectacle.
Think of these terms — “racist,” “bigot,” “sexist,” “chauvinist,” “homophobe” — and think how often you have heard them hurled at a person with whom a liberal disagreed. Think how often the terms are used unfairly. Think how often they are used instead of debate. Can you now list the comparable pejorative, dismissive, hate-filled terms in common use by conservatives? There is no such list.
In fairness, it should be recorded that a few members of the media have pointedly refused to join the anti-Rocker mob.
Here is John Leo, U.S. News’s indefatigable crusader against political correctness: “Traditionally, society has been concerned with the behavior of its members, not their thoughts. As long as you do not violate the rights of others, you can think what you like. Your mind may be saintly or aboil with wild prejudices. But your thoughts are yours alone, not to be refurbished under pressure by government, employers or anybody’s trainers.
“There are problems in punishing speech when you hardly ever punish action. [Major League Baseball commissioner Bud] Selig didn’t suspend the Colorado Rockies pitcher who recently pleaded guilty to beating his wife, or the Arizona Diamondbacks reliever charged with smacking his wife around as their young child watched.”
And here is Lance Morrow, writing in Time’s Internet edition: “There is no more deserving target [than New York fans]. Anyone who knows New York baseball fans, especially Yankee fans, knows they include some of the most loathsome characters on earth. When is Selig going to suspend them from baseball? I stopped going to Yankee games years ago because invariably, toward the end of the sixth inning, the morons in the upper deck would be drunk again, and dumping beer on those below, and spewing a violent, concussive line of filth (directed at players on the field — especially if they belonged to the Boston Red Sox — or at their neighbors in the stands). That is the way they root, root, root for the home team out in the Bronx. During the World Series, these animals threw flashlight batteries at John Rocker on the field.
“Long ago, in another country, there was a noble American cliche: I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. No intelligent person would defend what Rocker said. But every intelligent person should defend the principle that Rocker can say what he damn well wants. First you censure people for what they say, then you censure them for what they think or feel. Eventually they pre-edit what they say and think and even feel. Then we all live harmoniously, under the rule of a coercive pietism.”
But the Leos and Morrows are few and far between. They are honorable exceptions to the media rule, which is a noisy, angry, morally confused liberalism.
The reaction to John Rocker is another reminder that liberal hysteria diminishes the struggle against racism. An unforgivable sin of modern liberalism has been to cheapen terms like “racist” and “bigot” to the point that most decent Americans now yawn at the accusation.
Worse still, the news media, which are overwhelmingly liberal, now actively foment race hatred in the guise of combating it. Media coverage of real and alleged white racism often verges on the hysterical. The most prominent example was the tape of white police officers beating Rodney King. American television news programs endlessly showed (a highly selective part of) the tape, and skewed all reporting toward one end — enraging black Americans. How else to explain the almost universal description of Rodney King as nothing more than “a black motorist.” His leading police on a long and life-endangering chase was rarely reported, nor was his criminal record, nor was the fact that his black companion in the car wasn’t touched.
Seeing and hearing frenzied, hate-filled mobs — as I did in Los Angeles and as we will in New York — inevitably makes me think about what mobs have done at other times in other places. That these mobs are created in large part by a hysterical elite and its media only adds to my worry. Clearly, angry people with a broken moral compass and a great deal of hate are setting much of this nation’s agenda.
Dennis Prager is an author, theologian, and syndicated radio talk-show host based in Los Angeles. A longer version of this article appears in a forthcoming issue of his newsletter, The Prager Perspective.
