ESPN Regular Says U.S. Has No Room to Criticize China Doing Genocide Because of Election Legislation
With the Winter Olympics underway in communist China and many western nations engaging in partial boycotts or protests, issues such as China’s covid measures, human rights abuses, and more have become major topics of conversation. But ESPN regular J.A. Adande thinks Americans have no room to criticize China.
ESPN’s Around The Horn host Tony Reali introduced the topic at the top of the hour on Friday, listing many of the concerns that the world has about China hosting these Olympic games, including “genocide and human rights violations in Tibet region and again Uyghurs in China.”
Reali asked panelist Adande, as a “fan and then as a reporter, how do you reconcile enjoying this competition while also considering everything I just said?”
“I think it’s standard in sports right now, you have to have a cognitive dissonance, you need to compartmentalize,” Adande replied. He compared watching China’s games under those dark clouds to enjoying the NFL playoffs despite “the ongoing allegations against Dan Snyder.”
Then he made an even more absurd statement and comparison, asking rhetorically how people in the United States have the right to object to genocide when some states are considering voting legislation to which he objects.
“Who are we to criticize China’s human rights record when we have ongoing attacks by the agents of the state against unarmed citizens?” he asked. “And we’ve got assaults on the voting rights of our people of color in various states in this country.”
He then concluded that in sports it’s possible to just “shut everything out” and enjoy.
“I appreciate everything you just said there,” answered Reali.
A few moments later in the segment, Adande gave China credit for having “an Uyghur participant” at the torch-lighting ceremony.
The clip was shared on Twitter by the show’s official account, and instantly became a trending topic and hot-button, lasting well into Saturday. The response was almost uniformly negative.
What kind of person excuses genocide by equating voter integrity to child labor and concentration camps? This is the dangerous propaganda the modern left is making mainstream. https://t.co/RGwOhLW8p7
— Burgess Owens (@BurgessOwens) February 5, 2022
“J.A., China is doing an ethnic cleansing.”
“Sure, Tony, but, uh, Dan Snyder?” https://t.co/GQBNLjpN9s— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) February 5, 2022
The false equivalency between the systematic torture, rape, and imprisonment of the Uighurs against voting laws and Dan Snyder is absolutely insane.
If you can’t see the difference between the two, then you need to educate yourself instead of looking like a clown. https://t.co/JO34o5Rcs2
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) February 5, 2022
Adande is a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. The school did not offer a comment and ESPN declined to comment to Fox News.
Watch the clip above, via ESPN.
