Sportscaster Bob Costas Quotes Writer Who Likens NRA To The KKK – OpEd
By Jim Kouri
The blogosphere went into a warp speed frenzy when a sports announcer during a NFL football game’s half-time show on Sunday decided to preach about the dangers of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights. What NBC’s Bob Costas failed to mention is that he was quoting a writer who likened the NRA to the KKK.
NBC’s high-paid “talent,” Bob Costas voiced his support for gun control on a “Sunday Night Football” halftime segment on the broadcast of the Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, according to critics who said they watched Costas to get football scores not lectures on liberalism.
The comments from Costas were the result of a Kansas City Chiefs star football player, Jovan Belcher, who committed suicide after murdering Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his child.
Within minutes, the Internet was abuzz with criticism of Costas and his simplistic pitch for gun control, including reaction from rock star Ted Nugent, for GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, and conservative pundit and blogger Michelle Malkin.
While in the past several high-profile television personalities lost their jobs for making politically incorrect statements, talk of NBC firing Costas went ballistic on Twitter and Facebook after he allegedly voiced his support for gun control. However, NBC is not likely to sack Costas since most of that company’s liberals share his beliefs on issue such as gun control, according to political strategist Mike Baker.
As you can see in the video, Costas was passionate about his anti-gun diatribe while he should have spoken of the violence resulting from steroid use by NFL players, noted Baker.
The transcript of Costas’ comments includes:
BOB COSTAS: Well, you knew it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf-life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.
“Our current gun culture,”Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”
“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?”
“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock,” is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
What Costas failed to tell NBC viewers is that Whitlock said the NRA (National Rifle Association) is the new KKK (Ku Klux Klan). www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/12/03/anti-gun_sports_columnist_jason_whitlock_the_nra_is_the_new_kkk.html
