I like NBA legend Charles Barkley. He’s a guy who says what he thinks and doesn’t really care how anyone feels about it.
Not so long ago, that was called “strong.” These days, I believe it’s called being an insensitive jerk. For a significant other, that’s probably accurate, but when it comes to national personalities, to a point, I prefer the previous interpretation.
And on Wednesday, Charles had strong words for Democrats.
Speaking to Michael Smerconish on SiriusXM, the sports icon recalled his efforts for Doug Jones during the 2017 race against Republican Roy Moore.
Barkley explained that he pledged Doug his assistance but ripped Dems in general:
“I said ‘Doug, I’m going to support you. I’m going to try to get every black person in Alabama to vote for you.’ And it worked out. We won for the first time in 40 years. But I said, ‘We need to start holding you Democrats accountable’ because they’ve been taking black people’s votes – and they only talk to black people every four years. All of these politicians only talk to black people every four years because they want their vote.”
And they offer nothing:
“Oh, actually, the Republicans don’t, the Democrats do. But when they get elected, they do nothing in the four years in between.”
The Alabama man also asserted Trump supporters are being wrongfully characterized as racist:
“I don’t think everybody who voted for Trump is racist … I think some of them are, but I don’t think everybody who voted for Trump is racist. But this thing started way, way back. When we started shipping all our jobs overseas many, many years ago, it was really going to have a negative effect in the long run; you notice now that all these malls and places are closing because people are doing all their shopping online, that’s going to have a negative effect … that’s not the President’s fault.”
The power forward doesn’t like talk of race being inserted where it doesn’t belong. He made that clear in January of 2016, when he accused ESPN of extreme goofiness in its framing of the Broncos/Panthers game, featuring white quarterback Peyton Manning and black QB Cam Newton:
“ESPN has already started their crap about black versus white, good versus evil—and I know a lot of those fools over there got radio talk shows. … It really annoys the hell out of me. We really just can’t appreciate the greatness of Peyton. And, clearly, Cam is on the track to become one of the greatest players ever. You can already see them framing this narrative ‘black versus white, good versus evil.'”
He said race sells:
“The best way to make talk radio good is to make it racial. … I hate bringing up the race card because there’s more important race stuff, but race does have something to do with it. There is a racial component, but I hate talking about that because we, as black people, we got way more important things where race is a factor than something silly like sports.”
As for “more important things,” when Doug Jones toppled Roy during the special election two years ago, Charles told CNN he was proud of Alabama, but he also grilled Democrats then as well, saying they needed to “get off their a**”:
“I’m so proud of my state. I love my state. We got some amazing people here. Yeah, we got a bunch of rednecks and a bunch of ignorant people, but we got some amazing people here and they rose up today. … It’s time for [Democrats] to get off their a** and start making life better for black folks and people who are poor.”
-ALEX
See 3 more pieces from me:
Think You’ve Heard The Stupidest Thing Ever? I Disagree. Witness The Woke’s New Condemnation Of IKEA
Find all my RedState work here.
And please follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook.
Thank you for reading! Please sound off in the Comments section below.
If you have an iPhone and want to comment, select the box with the upward arrow at the bottom of your screen; swipe left and choose “Request Desktop Site.” If it fails to automatically refresh, manually reload the page. Scroll down to the red horizontal bar that says “Show Comments.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member