WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) — Trash littered the Jackie Robinson Pavilion Sunday morning; a plaque with the words ‘FRIENDS OF JACKIE’ had the name ‘Jackie’ crossed out in pink marker — ‘Mark Goston’ written underneath.
“This kind of stuff is always upsetting, no matter where it happens, but it’s particularly annoying when it affects League 42,” the league wrote in a Facebook post. “We have worked hard to improve these facilities from when we started 13 years ago. And there is no comparison.”
This isn’t the first time a League 42 baseball facility has been vandalized. In 2024, Wichita police arrested 45-year-old Ricky Alderete in connection with the theft and burning of a statue of Jackie Robinson in McAdams Park.
The statue was donated to the non-profit baseball group League 42 in 2021. Soon after the theft, the founder and executive director of League 42, Bob Lutz, launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to replace the statue.
The youth baseball league said it received a $100,000 gift from Major League Baseball to replace a statue of Jackie Robinson. The GoFundMe raised a total of $194,780.
After six months without the statue, a new Jackie Robinson statue was unveiled in August 2024.
Now, in light of the recent vandalism at the pavilion, the league is working with the City of Wichita and District 1 councilman Joseph Shepard, according to a Facebook post.
“… we will be discussing ways to combat this nonsense,” League 42 wrote. “I don’t understand why people can’t just leave things alone. We want to share our facilities, and we believe the Jackie Robinson Pavilion is a destination spot for Wichitans and for visitors to our city. But when our citizens do this kind of damage, what are we really showing off?”
KAKE crews have confirmed the trash has been cleaned.
Never a good idea for journalists to become chummy with politicians and people in power but this year particularly, it’s allowing an autocrat to continue his attack against the free press.
Right-wing commentator, white nationalist, Vladimir Putin fan, former Fox News host, and former bowtie aficionado, Tucker Carlson, is now sorry that he helped elect Donald Trump to the presidency.
Tucker, who was often at Trump’s side during the presidential campaign in 2024 and who was a huge lobbyist to get JD Vance on the ticket, now says he will long be “tormented” for helping Donald Trump get to the White House and start a war with Iran.
Tucker is just one of several right-wing goons who have gone from being full-fledged MAGAts to personal enemies of Donald Trump. They include not just Tucker, but Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens. (snip-MORE)
I was surprised a year or so ago when I learned that people were betting on professional wrestling. As you are probably aware, professional wrestling matches are pre-determined, as in, they are fake. I guess the only thing that prevents a writer of the matches from cleaning up is that the stakes are very low.
When I was a kid, my mother told me that people could not bet on who shot JR from the TV show Dallas because one of the writers could go to Vegas and place a large wager on it. That would have been insider trading. That’s not allowed, right?
Yesterday, a U.S. Army special forces soldier involved in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was charged with using classified information to bet on events related to the mission. The soldier made more than $400,000 by betting on the prediction markets that the capture would happen. (snip-MORE)
And along those lines, check this out, and also check in on your own state legislature, because these laws are coming from a national organization. Also, dig “Independence Day”, which is not at all acknowledged in the Bible; it gets more time than even Christmas or Easter. I do not think “Christian” means what they think it means. Emphases within are mine.
TOPEKA — The Kansas Legislature’s negotiators on education bills deleted a Senate-approved change to state law prohibiting school sports practice and competition on Sundays, Wednesday evenings and multiday periods centered on Easter, Christmas and Independence Day.
The effort to expand on Kansas State High School Activities Association rules for scheduling athletic events, currently concentrated on Dec. 25 and July 4, was led by Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, R-Wichita. He convinced Senate colleagues to accept his amendment to Senate Bill 515 expanding no-sports days on calendars at public and private schools statewide.
During Senate debate on Blasi’s amendment, questions were raised about his focus on Christian faith traditions. His amendment passed on an unrecorded voice vote of the Senate.
During Senate and House negotiations Monday on SB 515, Wichita Republican Rep. Susan Estes and Wichita Sen. Renee Erickson, who serve as lead negotiators on the Legislature’s education bills, agreed to cast aside Blasi’s broadened moratorium. His amendment was removed from legislation intended to enable homeschool students to join sports at private schools in the way state law permitted them to be part of public school athletics.
Blasi said he was motivated to act on concerns expressed by constituents that school-sponsored sports interrupted periods that ought to be reserved for family or church activities.
Specifically, his amendment would forbid sporting events on Sundays and on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. to midnight from Sept. 1 to April 30. In addition, he sought to apply the prohibition to a four-day window around Easter, but only from 6 p.m. to midnight. A five-day ban at Christmas and a seven-day ban encompassing Independence Day would be part of the new state law.
“This is going to assure we focus on what really keeps communities strong — that is family and faith,” Blasi said.
Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said she was anxious the Legislature was wading into the KSHSAA rulebook without considering family interests in other religious faiths. Blasi’s amendment didn’t address Islam’s Ramadan, Judaism’s Passover or Rosh Hashanah, Hinduism’s Maha Shivavatri or Buddhism’s Bodhi Day.
“Not any religion was considered,” Blasi said. “This was just a response to constituents.”
Francisco wasn’t convinced of the amendment’s merits.
“My constituents would like me to be as inclusive as possible,” she said.
The amendment left on the cutting room floor by the House and Senate conference committee was defended by several other members of the Senate.
Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, said she was a strong supporter of Blasi’s effort to turn back the clock in Kansas to an era more respectful of faith traditions.
“It’s a sad day that we have to legislate this,” Tyson said. “Years ago, it wasn’t even an issue. It was a standard and acceptable, but here we are.”
Sen. Brad Starnes, R-Riley, said the amendment was crafted to affirm religion as the “bedrock of our country.”
The objective of the amendment was to clear school calendars so students had more time to pursue religious interests, said Sen. Michael Murphy, R-Sylvia.
“As we move away from that, we do so at our peril,” Murphy said. “It’s time we moved back to some of those traditions that served us well.”
The House-Senate conference committee bundled the stripped down SB 515 and Senate Bill 361 into Senate Bill 382. SB 361 allows foreign exchange students to enroll in their host’s public school district. SB 382 deals with administration of state assessments to K-12 students in virtual schools. As of Tuesday, neither the House nor Senate had voted on the the three-bill deal.
To me, this is basic misogyny; soon it will be simpler for the Olympics to ban women and girls entirely. I will note that it doesn’t seem that they’re going to check for trans men. I wonder if trans men ought to play in women’s sports, under this “logic”? Meanwhile, all the girls and women who are a little too tall, a little too strong, a little larger built in the shoulders, etc., etc. are going to be excluded along with other women who passed through male puberty before transitioning. The illogic of this makes my head explode.
I will add that there is a special place in hell for women who undermine other women; especially those who get somewhere, then yank the ladder up behind them. Lookin’ at Kirsty Coventry, pictured below, now IOC President.
GENEVA (AP) — Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the International Olympic Committee said, to be determined by a mandatory gene test once in an athlete’s career.
It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, though weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.
The eligibility policy that will apply from the L.A. Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said.
“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.
After an executive board meeting, the IOC published a 10-page policy document that also restricts female athletes such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.
“We know that this topic is sensitive,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said in an online news conference to explain the policy.
Coventry and the IOC have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies who previously have drafted their own rules.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, said in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
She set up a review of “protecting the female category” as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.
“This was a priority for me way before President Trump came into his second term,” Coventry said. “There’s not been any pressure (on) us to deliver anything from anybody outside of the Olympic Movement.”
Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports — track and field, swimming and cycling — excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has testosterone levels higher than the typical female range, won a European Court of Human Rights judgment in her years-long legal challenge to track and field’s rules which did not overturn them. (snip-there is more, sort of pleading for understanding, but go see the rest of it if you like)
The expert group agreed the current gene test is “the most accurate and least intrusive method currently available.” The saliva, cheek swab or blood sample screens for “the SRY gene, a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of testes/testicles.”
Still, the mandatory gender screening — already conducted by the governing bodies of track and field, skiing and boxing — is likely to be criticized by human rights experts and activist groups.
Athlete appeal to CAS?
The IOC policy can — and likely will — be challenged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the Olympic body’s Swiss home city Lausanne, perhaps by an athlete acting alone.
Track athletes Dutee Chand of India and Semenya challenged previous versions of their sport’s eligibility rules at the court.
Any potential appeal would examine science underpinning IOC research which was not published Thursday. A case could occupy much of the near-28 months until the L.A. Olympics open.
“As we know in today’s world,” Coventry said, “any and all rules and regulations at any point in time could always be challenged.” (snip)
The White House welcomed the IOC’s decision, describing it as the result of the executive order.
“The IOC aligning their policy with President Trump’s executive order ahead of the 2028 LA Games is common sense and long overdue,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.
(Well, another one!) I watched part of Sherri Shepherd’s interview of Jayne Kennedy yesterday morning. I didn’t catch the beginning, but recognized the name earlier when I read it. I looked her up, and found the following from BET, and that’s the post. In addition to what’s included, Jayne Kennedy seems to be living with depressive anxiety, from what I gleaned in the Sherri interview. I couldn’t find anything about that, but she’s written a book, Plain Jayne that I intend to read as soon as I can. From this article, I figured out how I recognized her name and her face; I recall when she was in the Miss USA pageant in the late 1970s. Then I recalled she got a job on some sports show, as covered below. Anyway, this woman, aside from being talented and beautiful, is also courageous. Follow the links within for more information.
Explore the multifaceted journey of the Emmy-winning trailblazer who transitioned from Hollywood to the NFL, changing the game forever.
By Tamara Brown March 9, 2026
NEW YORK – JANUARY 1: Jayne Kennedy and Brent Musburger on “N.F.L. Today,” on the CBS Sports television network. Circa 1978.
In the late 1970s, the network TV sports was a club where the doors were mostly locked to anyone who wasn’t white and male. But Jayne Kennedy didn’t just knock; she blasted those doors off the hinges.
As we continue our Women’s History Month spotlight, we’re looking back at the woman who, in 1978, became the first Black woman to co-host a major national sports program. When Kennedy stepped into the anchor chair on CBS’s The NFL Today, she did more than just read highlights.
Jayne Kennedy, now 74, held that ground-breaking role from 1978 to 1980, quickly becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the country. Before her history-making run at CBS, the former Miss Ohio USA was already a star. She got her start as a dancer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and spent years touring with legends like Bob Hope and Dean Martin.
While her Hollywood resume is long, her impact on the sports world is what truly changed the culture. Beyond the NFL, Kennedy remains the only woman to host the long-running series Greatest Sports Legends. She even stepped into the ring as the first female color commentator for men’s professional boxing.
Even now, Kennedy isn’t slowing down. She was a key player in the LA28 Foundation, helping secure the bid for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She’s also sharing her full story in her new memoir, Plain Jayne, which dives into the grit, faith, and ambition it took to navigate a career filled with hurdles.
By breaking that ceiling nearly 50 years ago, Kennedy didn’t just make a name for herself. She made sure that for the rest of us, the path was already paved with the excellence she brought to the screen every Sunday.
and go on about our day being peaceful, in order to bring about peace. (I have a dental appt. to finish what was begun a couple of weeks ago at that dental appt. I feel all pure-white-dovey inside.)
This is just hate and bigotry. It is a group of people who hate trans people for some unknown reason and have made their life / career the harassment of trans minors who play sports. I can not see how this harms this reporter and his group in any way. To make your life about harming others is a real petty way to exist. Many conservatives use their religion to justify such hate but the Jesus of the bible never said a word against the entire LGBTQ+ community. So their hate is internally driven and they must be such miserable people. So Sad. The drive to regress the world’s most progressive countries back to an uneducated straight cis white male controlled society is really causing a lot of damage to people and freedom to express your life as you wish. It seems driven by two groups, the older people who are uncomfortable with the progression of society and younger religious people driven by wealthy religious hate groups. Hugs
Since Sept. 5, right-wing sports publication OutKick has published 19 articles about a 12th grade girls’ volleyball player at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The player caught the attention of reporter Dan Zaksheske after he obtained public documents that appear to show her requesting a legal name change from a traditionally masculine first name to a traditionally feminine one.
Over the next three months, Zaksheske would write 18 of the 19 articles OutKick would publish about this student. He and other OutKick reporters attended multiple high school girls’ volleyball games where they recorded and reported on Skyline High’s volleyball season. At the heart of each article was a focus on the girl, who Zaksheske refers to as a “trans-identifying biological male.”
Zaksheske’s reporting stoked a controversy that drew the attention of multiple right-wing publications, politicians and influencers. This coverage led Sean Lechner, whose cisgender daughter played against Skyline and allegedly shared a locker room with their team, to file a Title IX complaint.
Lechner’s daughter at a press conference about the complaint. Screenshot via Fox Business.
While the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) does require trans athletes to get a waiver approved to compete in official state tournaments, the Democrat-majority state Senate outright rejected the idea of a trans athlete sports ban earlier this year. In addition, LGBTQ Michiganders have strong anti-discrimination protections under the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
In the complaint, Lechner calls for a ban on “biological males from competing in female sports” and for a “full investigation into actions and communications of Ann Arbor Public Schools/Monroe High/Chet Hesson,” citing a Trump executive order that declares that trans-inclusive policies are in violation of Title IX.
Shortly after the complaint was filed, Uncloseted Media published an interview clip with Hesson, the athletic director of Monroe Public Schools, in which he simply said his “heart goes out” to the player for being under such scrutiny. Less than 24 hours later, he was put on administrative leave.
As this story spreads like wildfire, experts in journalistic ethics are raising concerns about Zaksheske’s reporting.
“OutKick’s inflammatory reporting on a Michigan high school volleyball player who may or may not be trans disregards several core principles of the Society of Professional Journalists’ [SPJ] Code of Ethics,” Dan Axelrod, chairman of the SPJ’s ethics committee, told Uncloseted Media. SPJ’s Code of Ethics, originally drafted in 1973, has been embraced and used by thousands of journalists from numerous newsrooms and schools.
“The Code cautions reporters to ‘show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage,’ and to ‘use heightened sensitivity when dealing with juveniles,’ while ‘weigh[ing] the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information,’” Axelrod says. “[OutKick] has essentially ignored all those ethical principles, given [Zaksheske’s] relentless coverage of the player, which has led the public to easily infer who she is, and its negative framing of her story.”
The player, whose mother did not respond to an interview request, does not appear to have publicly come out as trans prior to the publication of Zaksheske’s first article.
Chad Painter, associate professor and chair of the communications department at the University of Dayton, says this “brings up a whole host of issues.” While Zaksheske wrote that he did not name the girl “because the student athlete is under 18,” Painter says that doesn’t do enough to conceal her identity.
In his reporting, Zaksheske references the existence of publicly accessible name change documents, the girl’s county of residence and the name of a local volleyball club she’d been a part of. “Someone who is reasonably well-versed in being able to Google someone can figure this out pretty easily,” Painter, who has co-authored multiple media ethics textbooks, told Uncloseted Media.
“There’s longstanding norms in newsrooms that we don’t out people, that that is a very personal decision that an individual gets to make, and unless there is a massively compelling reason to do that, it’s not our role,” he says. “The idea that he is in the clear because he didn’t specifically write this person’s name in a story, it wouldn’t hold up to journalistic scrutiny.”
And Zaksheske’s reporting appears to have outed the girl. The same day that he published his first article on the matter, an X account whose mission is “to call out these male athletes and expose the damage that they have each caused to women and girls in sports” published the girl’s full name and deadname along with multiple photos and videos of her. (Uncloseted Media has chosen not to link to these posts directly in the interest of her privacy.)
In addition to the 18 articles Zaksheske wrote, he also tweeted about the situation at least 41 times and attendedatleastfourhigh school girls’ volleyball games. While watching, he recorded videos of the girls playing and then posted them to X and OutKick’s website.
“Having 19 stories about one athlete … to me, that seems like this coverage is out of line with how we’d normally talk about, especially high school sports, which, frankly, no one outside of this little area in Michigan are going to really care about,” says Painter.
“Outside of the culture war stuff, I don’t see where this is a story.”
When Zaksheske was confronted by multiple people at the school about attending and recording one of the games, he published another article accusing them of harassment. “I was shadowed by the school principal and harassed and stalked by Skyline supporters,” he wrote.
Painter notes that while Zaksheske was within his rights as a journalist and citizen to be attending and recording such events, he understands why the school would approach him with skepticism.
“I have a feeling that if I just started showing up randomly to high school volleyball games and taking photos and videos, there would probably be questions,” Painter says. “Because, again, we are talking about minors.”
“The reporter has a right to pursue news … and that right especially exists at a public school,” says Axelrod. “However, one has to wonder at what point is the coverage just pandering to curiosity as opposed to serving a valid societal purpose in informing and facilitating larger discussions about real and valid questions regarding the participation of trans athletes in sports.”
Misinformation and Animus
Zaksheske has pushed back against similar criticism on X, accusing those who question the ethics of his reporting of being “in favor of sterilizing, mutilating and castrating children” and characterizing his reporting as “exposing their heinous acts.”
“I don’t see that as an ethical problem because it doesn’t even enter into the world of ethics,” Painter says of Zaksheske’s rhetoric. “It is wrong factually and it doesn’t really have a place in what we do in terms of the journalism field.”
Misleading rhetoric about trans health care is common throughout OutKick’s reporting. Zaksheske has written several articles about gender-affirming care, where he has claimed that puberty blockers “take healthy children and sterilize them for life.”
Puberty blockers have been FDA-approved for treating precocious puberty in cisgender children since 1993. Multiplestudies have found no evidence of them causing permanent infertility, and gynecologists and endocrinologists have said that they do not cause sterilization.
Much of Zaksheske’s coverage of trans people has been negative. Of adult trans women, he wrote that “that person might see himself as a woman, but we are under no obligation to ‘affirm’ that.” He also wrote that doctors who provide gender-affirming care “have to answer to their consciences.”
OutKick also generally misgenders trans women and girls, referring to them as “males,” “biological males” or “trans-identifying males,” additionally using masculine pronouns to refer to them.
Painter notes that this goes against the “Associated Press Stylebook,” which he says “any newsroom worth its salt is going to follow.”
“The journalist and the news outlet squander their credibility covering these types of societal questions when they use language … that fails to recognize and respect the underlying humanity of an entire group of people,” he says.
In an email, Brian Karpas, OutKick’s director of media relations, told Uncloseted Media that the publication “stands by the thorough and responsible reporting of Dan Zaksheske and will continue to protect women from competing against biological males.”
Beyond Michigan
OutKick’s extensive reporting of the Michigan volleyball player is reflective of the publication’s increasingly conservative bent since it launched in 2011. In 2021, it was acquired by Fox Corporation. Since then, it has partnered with Fox News and has become home to numerous right-wing personalities known for anti-trans rhetoric. These include founder Clay Travis, who has said World Aquatics is “encouraging …super young kids to be transitioned”; Tomi Lahren, who said that liberals “don’t know what a woman is”; and Riley Gaines, who referred to an eighth-grade trans girl as a “mediocre man.”
This story in Michigan is not the first time OutKick and Zaksheske have hyperfocused on one trans girl. They were one of the first national publications to report on California-based track and field athlete AB Hernandez, who later became the center of a feud between the Trump administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Since March, OutKick has published at least 24 articles about Hernandez, 10 of which were written by Zaksheske. They sent reporters to at least twogames to photograph Hernandez and other teenage players. Additionally, OutKick published 15 articles and attended at least four games covering the story of a trans softball player in Minnesota, whose presence on the team became a key point of a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom.
This massive amount of coverage is common for U.S. conservative media: A report published this year from Media Matters for America found that Fox News ran over 400 weekday segments mentioning trans athletes from Feb. 5 to June 6.
All of this has had an impact. While the Title IX investigation is still pending, Hesson, who was named in the complaint, told Uncloseted Media that he had been targeted with harassment and vitriol online.
Uncloseted Media on Instagram: “Last Friday, Uncloseted Media p…
In the comments of the Instagram post, Hesson was attacked by numerous users: squaredbeach9 wrote, “Stop normalizing these freaks. You don’t give a bulimic chick a bucket and some gum.”
And others chimed in, saying:
“Guaranteed he has child pron on an electronic device.”
“Fuck off, poor tranny hates attention, give me a fn break.”
“So a male playing in women’s sports. And this cuck is defending it.”
All of this has come even though Hesson is not directly affiliated with Skyline High School, which is part of a different district. As such, he was not involved in the decision to allow the girl to play, and he was also not privy to whether she had a waiver.
In addition, numerous right-wing lawmakers and candidates have endorsed Lechner’s complaint. Republican state Rep. James DeSana posted a statement to Facebook “calling for Chet Hesson to be removed immediately.”
“The public cannot have good discourse, debate, or dialogue without good information,” Painter says. “Supplying that information is the fundamental duty of the news media. When journalists are distracted by inconsequential stories, then we’re not spending the time to cover interesting and important news that our readers really need.”
Both Painter and Axelrod took note of the small number of known trans athletes in the U.S. Last year, the NCAA’s president told a Senate panel that fewer than 10 of the 510,000 college athletes affiliated with the organization were transgender.
“This controversy is part of a much larger national narrative about transgender athletes and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole,” Painter says. “The entire national conversation is based on virtually nothing, so this particular set of stories are based on an inconsequential premise.”
Going Forward
If the Department of Education does find that Title IX was violated, the school district could risk losing federal funding if it continues to allow trans athletes to compete.
Zaksheske has been pressuring the MHSAA to confirm whether a waiver was approved for the volleyball player to compete, citing a statement from early September in which the association said it had not yet approved any waivers for the semester. On Dec. 9, MHSAA confirmed that one waiver was granted in the fall season, though no details were given in the interest of the student’s privacy.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, numerous experts and athletes say that politicized vitriol, misleading information and outsized media attention about trans athletes makes girls’ sports less safe for all athletes.
“There are real, valid, and necessary societal discussions to be had about trans athletes participating against competitors who don’t match their birth gender, and ethical journalism can have a place in informing those discussions,” Axelrod says. “At the end of the day, this woman is still a human, and a child at that, not a canvas for OutKick to paint a distorted picture of one individual who’s a tiny part of a much bigger societal dialogue about trans athletes.”
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
October 23, 1915 33,000 women marched in New York City demanding the right to vote. Known as the “banner parade” because of the multitude of flags and banners carried, it began at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and continued until long after dark, attracting a record-breaking crowd of spectators. Motor cars brought up the rear decorated with Chinese lanterns; once darkness fell, Fifth Avenue was a mass of moving colored lights. The history of women’s suffrage in the U.S.
October 23, 1945 Jackie Robinson and pitcher John Wright were signed by Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club, to play on a Dodger farm team, the Montreal Royals of the International League.Robinson became the first black baseball player to play on a major league team. Jackie Robinson
October 23, 1947 The NAACP filed formal charges with the United Nations accusing the United States of racial discrimination. “An Appeal to the World,” edited by W.E.B. DuBois, was a factual study of the denial of the right to vote, and grievances against educational discrimination and lack of other social rights. This appeal spurred President Truman to create a civil rights commission.
October 23, 1956 The Hungarian revolution began with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets to demand an end to Soviet rule. More than 250,000 people, including students, workers, and soldiers, demonstrated in Budapest in support of the insurrection in Poland, demanding reforms in Hungary. Hungarian students,1956 Hungarian revolution monument The day before, the students had produced a list of sixteen demands, including the removal of Soviet troops, the organization of multi-party democratic elections, and the restoration of freedom of speech. On the evening of the 23rd a large crowd pulled down the statue of Josef Stalin in Felvonulási Square. Hungary 1956 and the Political Revolution More
October 23, 1984 The Fact-Finding Board looking into the assassination of Filipino democratic leader Benigno Aquino confirmed that his death was the result of a military conspiracy, and indicted Chief-of-Staff General Fabian Ver, the first cousin of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos had blamed the chair of the Communist Party for the assassination, despite the fact that Aquino had been in the custody of the Aviation Security Command and surrounded by military personnel as he disembarked from the plane returning him to the Philippines. The chair of the Board, Corazon J. Agrava, was pressured into submitting a minority report clearing General Ver. He and the 25 other military officials charged were all acquitted.
There’s only one rational answer to this question. It’s the Super Bowl. Nothing else comes close. Not in size or grandeur or symbolism or global resonance.
This past February, for the first time, as many Americans watched Super Bowl LIX as those who watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969, long considered the biggest live audience draw in U.S. broadcast television history.
Neil Armstrong walking on the lunar surface was once indisputably the most-watched live event by Americans. This year, it officially had competition for that title. By 2030, it may not even crack the top five.
What will the top five otherwise be by then? All Super Bowl broadcasts. Right now, if you exclude the moon landing, the top ten live American television broadcasts are all Super Bowls, and the top three are all from the past three years.
Maybe you’re not into sportsball. Maybe you can’t stand the NFL. Maybe you have fond memories of watching the live series finales of M*A*S*H or Cheers or Seinfeld or Johnny Carson’s final Tonight Show appearance, and you’ll recall that it felt as though the entire country were watching those, too, at the same time you and your family were glued to the tube.
But those days are long gone. Network television has been cannibalized by satellite and streaming over the years. If a scripted network series draws ten million viewers for any given episode, it’s more than enough to take the crown over its competitors.
The Oscars draws 20 million. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade does better at 30 million. Trump’s inauguration in January had 25 million viewers, nearly ten million fewer than Pres. Biden’s in 2021.
There is no American cultural event that comes within shouting distance—much less spitting distance—of the Super Bowl. When you walk around today, wherever you are—at work or a café or a park or your kid’s school—keep in mind that, on average, at least a third of the adults around you were all watching the Super Bowl at the same time this year.
Consider the global audience: the Super Bowl is the most-watched live annual television event around the world. The Men’s World Cup Final draws as many as 1.5 billion live viewers, but that’s every four years. The Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony is capable of drawing half that, but it’s also every four years. The Super Bowl draws 200M live viewers globally every year.
No annual live television event in the world is bigger than the Super Bowl, and no other country can lay claim to having a live broadcast of this size that is so inextricably bound with a celebration of its culture.
The Super Bowl is a distillation of all things America: sports and celebrity and military pageantry and unabashed patriotism and unapologetic commercialism all being slammed together, and in terms of annual events, more human beings on this planet watch it live, together, than anything else.
And it’s because of all those elements that most American conservatives perceive it as a showcase of American exceptionalism. It’s not that it’s inherently conservative or that non-conservatives don’t watch it; it’s that the sheer scope of the Super Bowl combined with all the patriotic bits make it a crown jewel in their argument for American cultural hegemony.
That’s why when Apple Music and the NFL announced last night that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny—Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—is headlining Super Bowl LX this upcoming February, my jaw dropped.
For those unfamiliar, Bad Bunny is one of the biggest entertainers in the world. Were you to remove Taylor Swift and Beyoncé from the metrics conversation, he’s easily the biggest. He led global streaming charts from 2020-2022, and he’s still among the top three even now. His Un Verano Sin Ti world tour in 2022 dominated that year, and only Taylor Swift has surpassed his touring numbers since.
Based on both merit and marketing, Bad Bunny is an obvious choice to headline the Super Bowl.
But he’s also an outspoken LGBTQ ally, particularly on trans rights. He has been consistently critical of Trump, especially in regards to immigration. Earlier this month, he announced he would not include any U.S. dates for his 2025-2026 Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour out of fear for his fans given the fascistic crackdown by ICE. He notably endorsed Vice President Harris last year after Puerto Rico was mocked at Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden campaign rally.
Oh, and he performs solely in Spanish. That’s right: he does not rap or sing in any language other than Spanish. He does speak English, but he’s not a “crossover” Latin artist as an intentional choice. He has made it clear that he wants Spanish-language music to be normalized in the global marketplace, and so, he only produces work in Spanish.
He is an avatar of Latin excellence in a moment when the U.S. government is violently hostile toward Latin people.
The biggest American cultural event—with massive global influence—is about to be headlined by an unapologetically proud Latin trans ally who can’t stand Trump and performs solely in Spanish.
Based on all this, the NFL selecting him to headline the Super Bowl is pretty damn surprising and may indicate no small measure of intended protest by those involved in the process.
What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall during the discussions that took place between the NFL and Apple and Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation—which advises the league on entertainment—in choosing Bad Bunny for the greatest entertainment gig in the world.
I suppose I’ll have to settle for Bad Bunny’s instantly iconic hint posted on social media just prior to the announcement last night:
“I’ve been thinking about it these days, and after discussing it with my team, I think I’ll do just one date in the United States.”
Goddamn. I love this guy.
Now the questions become: what does Trump do? Is there an online meltdown incoming? Will he attempt to pressure the NFL to cancel Bad Bunny? If he does, how will the NFL respond?
Trump may not want this fight. This may be one of those rare moments he wisely chooses to avoid controversy. His poll numbers are terrible, the Midterms are next year, and his party will need every vote they can get. Alienating young and Latin voters would be a massive, unforced error.
I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, we’re about to be treated to a hell of a show. (snip)
Scottie's Playtime 
