There are many liberal publications that fail to even give 5% of their opinion space to conservative viewpoints. So, I appreciated the San Francisco Chronicle’s willingness to publish my oped.
But, after being online for a little under five hours, my article—which was both popular and controversial—was taken down. I was not given any explanation until the following day, and there was no explanation offered on the Chronicle’s website. Instead, the link triggered a "page not found" error.
On February 20th, the editorial page editor told me via email that it was taken down because its key premise—that Huff was being banished because of his support for Trump—and was overtaken by the news of Huff’s acknowledgement to the Chronicle’s Henry Schulman that he was not told that by the Giants. The link to my op-ed was also updated with this information.
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San Francisco Chronicle editorial note.[/caption]
On Aubrey Huff’s official verified Twitter account, he states, “When asked why I wasn’t invited he told [me] that the board didn’t approve of my Twitter posts, and my political support of Donald Trump.”
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Aubrey Huff responds to the SF Giants.[/caption]
I based my op-ed on this. In fact, my main point was that Huff should not be excluded from the reunion based on his tweets, even if a large number of people felt they were crude and vulgar.
I believe the Chronicle should have added an editor’s note to the article regarding Huff’s acknowledgement to the Chronicle’s Schulman, rather than taking it down. My op-ed, a criticism of cancel culture, appears to have been taken down because of the complaints of the liberal rage mob—perhaps it, too, was the victim of cancel culture.
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Aubrey Huff, San Francisco Giants.[/caption]
THE GIANTS GOT IT WRONG WITH AUBREY HUFF
The San Francisco Giants board, voted unanimously, to deny former Giant and World Series champion Aubrey Huff, an invitation to the team’s 2010 reunion because, according to Huff, they don’t approve of some of his tweets and of Huff’s support of President Donald Trump.
Baseball is for all Americans—not just for Democrats.
I was a San Francisco Giants season ticket holder during their World Series runs, and I attended the World Series games. I lived in the Marina District in San Francisco and I had been a Democrat my whole life. Aubrey Huff was one of my favorite players and he was a huge and instrumental part of the 2010 World Series Championship team.
One night in 2013, on my way home from a Giants game, I was mugged by two guys with guns. This was a watershed moment in my life. Three years later I became a gun rights and self-defense advocate, which ultimately led me to leave the Democratic Party. Literally, I became the personification that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.
San Francisco is in many ways a very beautiful city, but the failures of the Democrat leadership to address the crime, rampant homelessness, drugs and litter on the streets, coupled with their failure to recognize our Constitutional right to bear arms, led me to ultimately leave the city and state.
Baseball is as American as apple pie and as American as … well, baseball (or it used to be). Baseball is for all Americans—not just for Democrats. The SF Giants board should keep their personal politics out of baseball, and need to realize that not all of the Giants fans are liberal, not all of their fans are fans of political correctness, not all of their fans believe that normal, common masculinity is toxic.
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San Francisco Giants.[/caption]
I would argue that it’s this type of progressivism that is in fact toxic. Does Aubrey Huff say and tweet some things that I would never personally say or tweet? Sure he does. But for God’s sake, he’s a professional athlete.
Twenty years ago, no one would have complained, or raised an eyebrow at anything Huff has said.
Has everyone on the Left completely lost their sense of humor? Is locker room talk now deemed completely inappropriate? Do progressives want men to act like women now? It is not yet illegal to be crude and vulgar, but I’ll bet most progressives would like it to be illegal, and they certainly want to ban anyone who is crude and vulgar from anything and everything. Twenty years ago, no one would have complained, or raised an eyebrow at anything Huff has said.
According to Huff’s statement on Twitter, SF Giants CEO Larry Baer said the board did not approve of Huff’s tweets or his support of President Donald Trump. But Huff’s support of the President of the United States should in no way be relevant to his participation in the 2010 team reunion. The majority of the players from the 2010 team are not from California. Many of them are from the 30 states that put Donald Trump in the White House. 62.9 million people voted for Trump in 2016 and it’s a safe bet that Huff was not the only member of the 2010 team who voted for Trump, or who now supports Trump.
Moreover, Huff stated that his tweets are meant to be satirical and sarcastic, and that he effectively used this exact same humor in the Giants clubhouse to loosen up the team during their 2010 World Series run.
Instead of supporting free speech, progressives label all opinions that differ from their own as hate speech. We all should stand up for free speech and opinions we disagree with. We need to make jokes and flirting acceptable again, and we need to keep baseball and men’s sports masculine.
