Sibling rivalries can make for strained bedfellows…
In the case of former Kansas City Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock, circumstances cast us as adversaries. Because when “Big Sexy” came to KC in the early ’90s, I’d been there for a year or so before and was mopping up the floor in readership surveys, kicking butts and taking names in a way no other mainstream, local media personality had done before.
And truth be known, though some labeled what I did as a “gossip column” – little did they know I was being edited beyond belief by no fewer than six, buttoned down editor types, whose main goal in life was to keep me (and the newspaper) out of trouble by verifying pretty much each and everything I wrote.
Columnist insert: That’s a far cry from the way things are being done these days with what’s left of the so-called journalists at 16th and McGee.
The editors and publisher of the Star as recently as 10 years back would be horrified to see “editorials” butchering mainstream pols like Kris Kobach by suggesting the Trump administration would like to see the former Kansas secretary of state and father of five “kneecapped” and left along a road nobody drives down.
Trust me, Jason and I had more than our fair share of wrist slaps for far less egregious journalistic transgressions.
So I was riding high when Whitlock sauntered in and left me in his dust by butchering sports icons like general manager Carl Peterson of the Chiefs and other local sports heroes who were more accustomed to jock-sniffing journalism.
Don’t get me wrong, for the better part of the 15 years or so we “competed” at 18th and Grand, I was either the highest read or close, with the odd exception of Jason – or more occasionally – a long-winded, bleeding heart sports suck up named Joe Posnanski.
Subsequent to Whitlock and my departures – including his throwing of new Star editor at the time Mike Fannin under the bus for fooling around with a married subordinate – Jason bounced around back-and-forth between ESPN, AOL and Fox Sports before landing again in 2018 on Fox.
Whitlock’s trademark skill of pimping white folks garnered him high profile appearances on former Fox News superstar Bill O’Reilly, and later Tucker Carlson’s shows.
All long the way, deceased KCC scribe Craig Glazer celebrated Whitlock’s every firing and job change, guesstimating how huge his paychecks might be. Which of course, I was always skeptical of.
Now forget about all that…
Cuz when I saw Whitlock on Tucker last night – looking way older and dressed in his usual pimp with really bad taste duds – poised to talk about the NBA coach who recently got reprimanded by the league for sticking up for Hong Kong against China.
Little did I know what was about to unfold…
“You really have to understand the shoes companies – Nike and Adidas,” Whitlock told Tucker. “They run American basketball from the high school level all the way to the pros. And the shoe companies are dependent on the China market, and that’s where all of this is coming from.
“You see NBA players constantly over the summer during their off season running to China to do the bidding of the shoe companies and to sell their shoes in the China market. So the NBA is really being exposed as not really as much of an American business as it is a global business with China having even more influence over it than even America.”
There’s more.
“When people start talking about being a global citizen, I don’t think people really understand what that means for American culture. And I think for a lot of the typical, everyday American sports fans, this is an educational experience. This is what people have been talking about. We can’t let our corporations, our country be totally driven by China, because it’s driving our culture.”
And it’s not just the greedy bastards at the NBA, Whitlock notes.
“These athletes are young. I’m not giving them an excuse, but they’re young. Many of them didn’t go to college or only played a year or two in college. They don’t understand how they’re being used and played to promote a communist, a Marxist agenda.”
The bottom line:
“It’s all a scam by the shoe companies. Look how socially aware we are – look how we fight against injustice. No, you’re actually doing a marketing ploy to pretend you have a social conscience and you’re actually doing the bidding of the communist regime in China.”
As for the so-called “woke” NBA coaches and players, “Tucker, these guys can rail against our government, our president and be applauded for it,” Whitlock says. “They don’t have the courage to speak out against a communist government with all kinds of human rights violations. It’s the epitome of hypocrisy and cowardice.”
Big Sexy’s come a long way from his days here pimping rednecks, kissing up to Bill Self and inhaling Gates bbq while splattering the sauce all over his home gym.
It was an excellent and informative interview.
Jason was dead on the money. I loved watching Steve Kerr, that sanctimonious, holier-than-thou-woke shitheel squirm like the worn he is when questioned about the Chi-Coms and the Honk Kong riots.
Oops, “worm” not worn, although the guy is such a poseur, that reading only the first two letters, “wo” would take most people to the next word, assuming “worm” was intended.
Excuse me, but there’s nothing mainstream about Kris Kobach. Had he won, he would’ve been the second consecutive train wreck as Kansas Governor. And now that it’s clear that even the Trump goon squad wants nothing to do with him in D.C., he’s gunning for Roberts’ seat in the Senate. Won’t happen.
Perhaps not, but for some reason or another it’s being reported that he’s up for a big job on Team Trump