Americans thought disrespecting the national anthem was a relic of the past that voters left behind when they repudiated woke ideology on November 5.
But that ended up not being the case.
And one woke network insulted the national anthem and it backfired in this major way.
ESPN executive apologizes for refusing to air the national anthem
An ISIS-inspired terrorist murdered 15 innocents by plowing his car into a crowd on the streets of New Orleans in the early morning hours of January 1.
That attack happened less than 20 hours before Notre Dame and Georgia were set to play in the Sugar Bowl, a College Football Playoff Quarterfinal matchup.
The College Football Playoff announced it would delay the game until the following day.
That’s when the troubles for ESPN – the network televising the game – began.
ESPN’s broadcast began with a message from the CEO of the game’s title sponsor All State, Tom Wilson, delivering a recorded message where he blamed Donald Trump and the political climate he fostered through “divisiveness and negativity” for the Islamic terror attack.
“Our prayers went to victims and their families,” Wilson stated. “We also need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity. Join Allstate working in local communities all across America to amplify the positive, increase trust, and accept people’s imperfections and differences. Together we win.”
The message became so embarrassing that All State scrubbed it from its social media pages.
But that was just the beginning of the surrender to woke.
ESPN didn’t air the pregame prayer or the national anthem.
Viewers were outraged and the backlash on social media reached nuclear levels.
ESPN Vice President of Programming Burke Magnus apologized for the network’s failure to air the national anthem, blaming “human error.”
“There’s a group of people in Bristol who just made an enormous mistake, it was a human error, it happens. I don’t want to minimize it by any stretch,” Magnus explained. “That was just a horrible error that was made by a group of really well-intentioned people who feel terrible about it.”
Magnus cited the confusion that swept over ESPN after the terror attack as the network juggled covering the news out of New Orleans and how the College Football Playoff postponing the game until 4 PM January 2 affected ESPN’s programming.
“Nothing was normal about that next day, including our programming lineup,” Magnus added. “I could give you a whole host of reasons why it wasn’t the normal circumstance.”
Magnus claimed not airing the anthem wasn’t a political statement by some woke employees.
“The notion that it was somehow intentional or we were trying to avoid acknowledging what was a horrific situation in New Orleans was really misplaced. It was just a mistake that we feel terrible about and, by the way, we should be held to account for,” Magnus continued.
Magnus said ESPN failed to air the anthem because quality control broke down and ESPN was in a commercial break when the “Star Spangled Banner” played.
“Our timing got fouled up. We happened to be in a commercial break when the anthem happened, it was just not good by any measuring stick and not up to our standards,” Magnus concluded.
ESPN then bent over backward to try and atone for this error by airing the pregame prayer and national anthem before the College Football Playoff Semifinals.
