Category Archives: sports

Shame Day: Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the NBA

Today’s Shame Day has a multitude of facets, the first and largest of being that Donald Sterling is a straight-up racist.

shamesterling

To begin with we have the very recent news of TMZ’s recording [since authenticated by his lawyer] of the LA Clippers’ owner talking to his half-Black half-Mexican girlfriend and telling her the following:

– “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” (3:30) 

– “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want.  The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.” (5:15)

– “I’m just saying, in your lousy f******* Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people.” (7:45)

– “…Don’t put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me.  And don’t bring him to my games.” (9:13)

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Shame Day: The Sochi Olympics

I have this weird thing where I actually really love crowds, so if I was in Sochi right now I would be all up in the Olympic excitement. And of course as a Canadian I’m particularly excited to be a winner in something sporty, even if my association with winning is only via my citizenship.

That being said, I’m going to have to pull a Debbie Downer here and remind everyone of all the crap that has happened in Russia as a direct result of the Olympics.

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Selling Sex Pt. II: Sex at the Super Bowl

In the week leading up to the Super Bowl my Facebook feed was exploding with information regarding sex trafficking.There were articles like this one, which included first-hand accounts from victimsas well as videos like this one and the one below.


I was excited to see the increase in awareness around the time of the Super Bowl because I hoped that it would prompt a crack down on trafficking activities. In fact, that’s actually what ended up happening. For example,  Attorney General John Hoffman of New Jersey “assembled a task force, which, among other things, aim[ed] to teach the public how to identify and assist trafficking victims.” Additionally, “this year’s host, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie [was] tweeting frequently about sex trafficking at the Super Bowl and his state’s commitment to stop it.” Continue reading

Fame Day: Stopping Super Bowl Sexism

I have to admit it. We had a Super Bowl party at our house. By Super Bowl party I mean we had some friends over and John watched the game while the rest of us chatted and ate food and had fun, then when the commercials came on we would all quiet down and turn up the volume.

While there were, of course, a few “ugh” commercials, most were pretty good.
One that really stood out was this year’s GoDaddy commercial. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it featured this woman quitting her job in their commercial, since she knew her boss would be watching the game.

Gwen Dean says “I Quit” to her boss as she publicizes her plans to become a puppet master.

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Fame Day: The NBA

Let me just be clear, I am a non-consensual basketball watcher. In fact, I’m not really a fan of team sports at all. My only involvement with basketball in high school was the time I was convinced to sign up as manager, and that was only so that I could go on awesome trips with my much more sporty friends, not out of any interest for the game.

Despite my aversion to team sports I somehow ended up with a guy who loves basketball. I’m pretty sure he hid this fact from me until I was in too deep to run away. In fact, when we first met I thought he was this smart, intense, skinny nerd… which was mostly true. What I didn’t know was that he was sick at the time, so later, after we had been dating a little while (and my mom had been feeding him extensively), he started getting back into sports and putting on a lot more muscle. So what’s a girl to do? In the end, I sacrificially chose to continue loving him in spite of his newly toned body.

Anyways, since we have been married I’ve somehow ended up watching a lot more basketball. I think part of this is because we are both students and we spend a fair bit of time doing this:

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Shame Day: Nike, Coca-Cola, and Nestle

By request, this Shame Day is going to be a triple-feature, with three of the most insidious corporations out there out in the stocks. Now I’m currently boycotting all three of these companies (and have been for some time) and made banning them from campus the priority of my college activism. That’s all just to say that I’ve had a long time to build and hone my venomous rage and hatred of both these companies, so buckle up- this is going to be vicious one.


Let’s start with Nike.

Nike

Even the mildest of the companies many, many offenses is still pretty vile. Take a look at this ad Nike ran back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics:

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