You may recall Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s Gun Violence Action Day (GVAD). You may not. The event was the dictionary definition of a damp squib. As we reported, only a handful of celebrities, politicians and true-believers participated. The largest single group picture we could find depicted the entire New York Mets baseball team [above]. Nestled amongst the players wearing prison jumpsuit-colored T-shirts: Mets’ Pitcher Dillon Gee. Mr. Gee is now saying [via Twitter] “Aw gee! I didn’t know it was a gun control event!” And you know what . . .
I believe him.
TTAG readers are not duped by gun control euphemisms. When gun control advocates use the term “gun safety” you know they mean “gun control.” When they say “gun violence” you know they mean “anything we can use to wave the bloody shirt for gun control, including firearms-related suicides and teenage gang bangers making guns go bang.” And so on.
The average low-information voter can be forgiven for buying the B.S. They’re too busy putting food on their table and diverting themselves from life’s struggles with Caitlyn Jenner’s sex change, local gossip and, perhaps, baseball, to contemplate the truth about guns, and unmask those who’d steal their firearms freedom.
The players of said sport are not, to a man, Rhodes scholars. Some of them are educationally challenged. Or, more accurately, they weren’t educational challenged – allowed to cruise through college on their merits as ball players. I don’t know if that applies to Mr. Gee. But he’s a Texan who went to a Texas university. Who hunts.
Something tells me the amiable pitcher hasn’t spent a lot of time debating gun control with the pro-gun control side. I’m thinking his only experience of anti-gun nuttery arrived when he was told he couldn’t bring his shooting irons to New York. Because of “gun safety” and “gun violence.” Which I bet he didn’t question too closely out of deference to regional differences. And money.
So when the Mets told Gee to don on an orange T-shirt and pose for the camera to oppose “gun violence,” well why not? Nobody told him the truth about Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, whose very name is a euphemism (i.e. bald face lie). Which reminds me . . .
When Mayor Bloomberg started Mayors Against Gun Violence (now moribund), plenty of Mayors signed on without knowing that MAIG was pro gun control. Upon learning of MAIG’s duplicity, several Mayors quit the organization. Some of them around election time. If we can give hard-working Democratic politicians the benefit of the doubt – accepting their contention that they were duped by anti-gunners’ misleading misegos – why not Dillon Gee?
Making the assumption about the level of education of various college ” ballplayers” seems like something the anti-gun folks would do to gun owners. Lazy tactics , be better than your opponent next time .
Your comment reminded me of another incident involving football players. I don’t remember all the details but some player commented on a national economic issue. Some politician replied scornfully about the education level of the player and how dare he make that sort of comment. Turns out the guy had a Masters in Economics from Harvard. I suspect that a lot of the players today are very well educated.
Anecdotes are not data. A sample size of one is meaningless. There are a number of smart guys in every major sport, and a few of those are even well educated. In Dillon’s case, based on the timing of his college career I don’t think he graduated, and while he was there his major was “interdisciplinary studies”. Not that there is anything wrong with that, he was smart enough to cash in on his talent and take care of his family. There is something weirdly elitist to think that everyone has to go to college.
So your point is….? What? exactly. I was referring to RF’s comments about the general education level of ball players. There are guys who play ball right out of High School and some of them actually do well. I in no way indicated elitism.
His point is that your anecdote about a football-playing MA from Harvard does not do anything to disprove RF’s comment about baseball players and their relative educational prowess.
RF’s point wasn’t “Baseball players are morons who don’t deserve to have oppinions,” but; “Most professional baseball players are heavily invested in the game, which takes a tremendous ammount of time when you perform at the national level, and many of them either do not have, or do not spend the time to be fully informed on all subjects which are, quite frankly, mostly irrevelent to their livelyhood.”
I’m stepping out on a limb and standing behind the probable fact that this guy is a stupid bastard, being better than your opponent lol.
Probable fact? Jumbo shrimp much?
Yes, something that is likely to be a fact…I don’t see the misunderstanding you’re pretending to have. And “jumbo shrimp” is a bad example of an oxymoron if that’s what you are zinging me about, the words aren’t contradictory since in your example “shrimp” is a noun.
That’s more than seienbls! That’s a great post!
I don’t expect the average ball player to have a clue-but it IS New York after all…
Here’s another story related to my post above:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-20/an-nfl-offensive-lineman-just-published-an-insanely-complex-study-in-a-math-journal
Pi fight? 😀
I was wondering if anyone else would get that. I don’t have the math skills or I would have come up with a formula that translated to cream pi.
😉
One anecdotal story does not disprove the mean, median standard deviation or any other statistic about a population. It is not a valid statistic. Now if you can present to me the mean and standard deviation of IQ and education levels for baseball players versus the US population, that WILL prove your point. Otherwise you are blowing smoke. I get it. you love baseball. No one said you don’t.
Are we not each responsible for our own actions – or, in this case, our own speech/expression? I don’t promote causes with which I am unfamiliar, and I don’t support charities I haven’t personally vetted.
Politicians who signed on to MAIG out of ignorance were forced to lie in a bed of their own making. Celebrities who made a public show of wearing orange for “National Gun Violence Awareness Day” are held to the same standard. If you’re too stupid to understand, or ignorant and too lazy to learn, what “National Gun Violence Awareness Day” is before you express yourself in support of it, should you not be held accountable for your stupid/ignorant/lazy expression?
What if your workplace says “We’re all going to do this”?
If you’re unfamiliar with the cause du jour, you probably put on the shirt they gave you, pose for the stupid picture, and then get back to doing whatever it is they actually hired you to do.
It gets a lot stickier if you’re aware of the cause and it offends your deepest convictions. Do you do what you’re told, or do you make waves and maybe risk your job because some jagoff in upper management wants everybody to wear the same shirt?
And they’re probably taking promo pictures all the time.
I can imagine the conversation going something like this:
“We got another group shot before batting practice, here’s an orange shirt”
“What’s it this time, orange juice makers?”
“Nah, gun violence awareness.”
“Huh. Orange… [shrugs] Okay, let’s go.”
In that situation, you’re trusting people to be straight with you. Of course, by their very nature, the gun control groups are completely dishonest. They know there’s no way they would get anywhere by being up front with what they want.
I found it a little too coincidental that a primarily orange colored ball-club be in a photoshoot for wearing orange… I just figured it was a photo taken out of context and thought nothing more of it.
I saw only one person wearing orange that day. It was a very angry looking mom who looked like the type who would be quite comfortable with gun owners being executed by firing squad.
It’s hard to keep up with the way liberals are constantly changing the meaning of words or phrases if you don’t take the time to read blogs like TTAG. They co-opted ‘gun safety’ around the time of Sandy Hook to try and negate the fact that the NRA is the biggest supporter of literal gun safety around, so its not really new.
Only person I saw wearing orange was from Tennessee and it was a Volunteers t-shirt with an NRA camouflage ball cap
What a shocker, a bunch of people, for New York, pose for gun control.
In other news, the sky is blue.
Just because they play for a ny team does not mean they support gun control in any way.
I believe the guy. Then again, I have no forgiveness in my heart for the guy — because I’m a Yankee fan.
Actually, I think I am going to applaud the guy for having the sense to know the difference between “preventing gun violence” and “gun control”–something the half-assed lefty sportswriter (yes, I know it’s redundant) who ridiculed him for his stance evidently doesn’t “get”.
I suspect that Mr. Gee never thought to question the ’cause’ for which he was posing because everyone knows YOU DON’T MIX POLITICS WITH SPORTS. This was just insane. I don’t blame him for not questioning posing for the photo. They probably do that sort of thing all the time for different charities. Even on the pro-2nd amendment side of the crowd I don’t think we really get how insane this was. Can you imagine if the Texas Rangers tweeted out a photo of themselves in red shirts in support of a Koch brothers funded anti-abortion group? To raise awareness of fetal violence? Is there any difference between that and what the Mets did? Can’t blame him for not even suspecting his bosses would do such a thing.
Now for the other 24 NY Mets players…
Well, considering the fact that one of the colors for the Mets’ uniforms is orange and they have worn orange shirts and jerseys in the past long, long before Bloomberg was even mayor, it’s not a stretch by any means to think that the players were told nothing other than to wear orange shirts for a team photo.
Yes, Dodger blue and Giants orange. It would have raised suspicion if they had asked them to wear a different color.
Which all gets to the simple point that Shannon failed. Again. Maybe it is me, but if I f**cked up so many times, I would have been walked out by security. Unless I was banging the boss. Just sayin.
Liberals have to hide their intentions to get people to go along with it. Conservatives tell the truth and lose popular support. Wadayagunnado?
“The event was the dictionary definition of a damp squib.”
Anyone else read this line and immediately think of “The IT Crowd”?
It’s almost as if unpopular fascists have to hide their true intentions in order to get unwitting people to go along with them.
Notice, we good guys never have that problem. I’ve never seen anyone claim they were tricked into a pro-gun event. That’s because we tell the truth and value integrity, two concepts the leftist statists could never understand.