‘‘That little monkey gets loose, doesn’t he?”
The silencing of Howard Cosell could be looked at as the modern-day beginning when he, on ‘‘MNF,’’ got caught up in his own insolence to describe Washington wide receiver Alvin Garrett’s speed and stature and elusiveness during a breakaway run for the end zone.
A decade before that, Cosell unintentionally said during a highlight segment about another black player: “Look at that little monkey run.”
Canceled.
“No, I don’t believe it’s prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the, uh, necessities, uh, to be, uh, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager. . . . Well, I don’t say that all of them, but they certainly are short. How many quarterbacks do you have, how many pitchers do you have that are Black? . . . No, it’s not garbage, Mr. Koppel. . . . Why are Black men or Black people not good swimmers? Because they don’t have the buoyancy.”
Dodgers general manager Al Campanis spoke his truth in 1987 to Ted Koppel on ‘‘Nightline.’’ Speaking on the lack of black managers in the majors 40 years after Jackie Robinson had entered the National League. His reasoning didn’t go over well.
Canceled.
Twenty-nine years later, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick went down on one knee in protest of the excessive police killing of black men. He decided to do this during the playing of the national anthem at NFL games. The country took issue. The country divided over the issue. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ’’ is what the president of the United States said. “I think we’ve moved past kneeling, and I think it’s time to go into actionable items” is how Jay-Z put it upon his partnership with the NFL. As for Kaepernick and the power behind his protest . . .
Canceled.
There has been a long history of cancel culture and its relationship both within and with sports. Mostly flashpoint moments. Isolated incidents that often detonate. “The suppression of freedom of expression,” critical realist and sociologist David Pilgrim calls it. How “neoliberal individualism has enabled recent forms of silencing and punishment” and become what we now see as society’s most current version of cancel culture.
Making the most recent wave of cancelable incidents connected to sports triggering.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft decided to give Ed Sheeran the ultimate ultimatum. Everyone canceled Sheeran, but no one canceled the Patriots despite the fact that it was the team’s owner who initiated the petulant demand.
Shaquille O’Neal accepts an award from FBI director Kash Patel, and now Shaq has been the subject of a whole cancellation vibe that’s worse than Patel got when he tried to cancel the “deep state.”
The NBA canceled Steve Ballmer before the public had an opportunity to over the salary-cap scandal. But Pablo Torre came out like a king. Jay-Z’s “we’re past kneeling” came back to haunt him after his Yankee Stadium residency rant about Kaepernick. While the full-on cancel button wasn’t pushed when it came to Jay-Z, his “black card” (for that and other reasons) is inching closer to revokable status.
How about the Good Good Golf and Callaway “domestic violence” campaign? The Golf Channel pulled the plug on their reality-show partnership, and Dick’s Sporting Goods pulled all of Good Good’s product from their shelves and off their sites. Novig’s “sexualized devaluation of women athletes and athletics” ad featuring the strategically nude Sydney Sweeney saying “sport” or “sports” 16 times during a 58-second commercial. (One that caused the company to have a 151% rise on their Instagram account.) Allowed yet disavowed.
Lane Kiffin and the NCAA. LeBron James and his recent Polymarket partnership. Sophie Cunningham and the left. Cunningham and her rumored boyfriend. ESPN and Ted Cruz. Mark Walter, private equity and modern professional sports franchise ownership.
Cancel. Cancel. Cancel. Cancel.
Then there’s the Converse ad. The sneaker brand owned by Nike. In a campaign that took on a life of its own when someone cropped a still image from their latest campaign that unintentionally depicted the image of a KKK hood and the “black” feet dangle of someone hanging alongside the hood silhouette. One of those “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” images. One of those “how did no one at Converse or Nike or at the ad agency not catch this” incidents. One of those “unintentional or intentional” doesn’t even matter moments.
There is a difference between getting canceled and getting clowned. What and what can’t be written off as an accident or coincidence. That thin line between what we decide to tolerate against what we choose to cancel. Identity politics. Enragement vs. engagement. Where the messages are no longer subliminal. The Tik-Tokification of everything. Where algorithms run all things. All at the intersection of polarization and accountability.
Sports now stands at the forefront.
Nuance and narrative. The public shaming and community retribution that comes when one participates in the drama they create. Sports always has occupied some space in the cancel-culture ethos, but recently it seems to have gone rogue in a way not seen since Jim Thorpe met Jim Crow.
Now that we’re at this hypersensitive inflection extremity, I’ll ask, can canceling be canceled?