This diary has been updated since it was originally posted. Scroll down for new content. Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on, or even glanced at this. I didn’t expect any kind of response, much less to be picked up by the Community Spotlight.
FOX Sports’ Clay Travis has vomited forth a series of articles about the protests at the University of Missouri. This made sense when news broke about the Tigers’ football team standing in solidarity with the protesters, but one has to wonder why Clay, a sports writer and analyst on Fox Sports 1's college pre-game, is still covering a story that is no longer connected to sports. Well, it seems that Clay has made it his goal to undermine the protesters, who he has publicly described as “idiots,” by any narrative possible, and his masters at FOX Sports have approved his use of their platform to carry out his own personal vendetta.
Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of MU’s graduate program in journalism and its law school, so I take Clay’s attacks against my alma mater personally.
That being said, let’s examine Clay’s case against this group of mostly 18-22 year-old students.
First, Clay thinks the whole issue stems from three race-related incidents, a disagreement about “graduate student health issues,” and the University President’s inaction in response to these incidents.
Why are Mizzou players on strike?
Because of two instances of racial slurs on campus, a poop swastika -- seriously, it's like "South Park" is writing a campus satire -- graduate student health issues, and a lack of action from University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe.
What a hip and funny guy Clay is. He knows South Park! Well, here’s a little background on the health issues thing: just before the start of the Fall 2015 semester, the school announced that it would no longer subsidize health insurance, which students must have, for grad student teaching and research assistants. Students had one day’s notice of the decision. That’s very late notice for students, who had been counting on the subsidy, to adjust their budgets or consider their options. Under pressure, the school agreed to offer a one-time direct payment to students, but made no commitment to offer it again in the future. The payment would also be less than what the students had been given before. Then, under threat of a walk-out, the school reversed its decision.
As a large, public university, Mizzou relies on teaching and research assistants. Understandably, many felt they were being taken advantage of by their employer. As someone who took advantage of the teaching assistant opportunities at the school, I know I would have been incensed if this had happened during my time there.
So the grad student issue is a little tangential to the larger protest concerning race, but it is still a valid concern. But the racial issue is, according to Clay, just about three incidents.
As a white male, I never experienced racism directed at me during my years at Mizzou, but I was not blind to it happening. My classes included people of all races and ethnicities and, suffice it to say, their experiences did not mirror my own. I mean, Columbia, Missouri may be a comparatively progressive small city, but de-facto racial segregation is still the norm inside the city limits.
But back to Clay. He is incensed that students would demand accountability from a public University President for things that happen at the University.
Why Wolfe? Because presumably it is now the university president's job to make sure that no one ever says anything offensive to anyone on campus via spoken or written word, or poop hate symbols. (I haven't Googled it, but couldn't the poop swastika actually be a meta commentary ridiculing the swastika? Like, I'm sure that has been featured in a Brooklyn art show at some point in the past ten years. Think about it, if someone made a poop Alabama logo at Auburn, would you immediately think it was endorsing Alabama? Or the exact opposite? But I digress).
It may not have been Wolfe’s job to PERSONALLY make sure that the campus environment was safe for students of all races. Wolfe was, however, ultimately responsible for executing campus policy. Under his watch, the students experienced a policy of non-concern and inaction in response to racism. In fact, Wolfe told a bunch of African-American students that systematic (I think everybody meant “systemic”) oppression was all in their heads.
"It's — systematic oppression is because you don't believe that you have the equal opportunity for success — "
Apparently Clay is unfamiliar with where the buck stopped at Mizzou. The buck stopped with Wolfe. No, it was not his job to patrol campus, vigilantly alert for signs of racism, but it was his job to make sure that students felt they had a safe campus, and that the University was sympathetic to their concerns. He failed in that job, so he was a proper target for the protests.
Clay goes on:
Anyway, activists are demanding that Wolfe step down after announcing his white privilege in a public forum. (Isn't announcing your white privilege at a public forum just more evidence of white privilege? Why are people there to see you denounce your white privilege? Because you have the power to call a press conference thanks to your white privilege. By the way, if I were a rapper, I would totally name myself "White Privilege." Game. Over.)
Yuk yuk, Clay. You know those black people love their rap music, and it would not only be HILARIOUS for a white rapper to adopt as a moniker the modern term for casual oppression while co-opting black culture, but it would be the be-all and end-all of the racial debate. Game over. White people win.
I’ve heard this argument about the call for Wolfe to acknowledge his white privilege raised elsewhere. Those who raise it are invariably white, and they do so in the context of expressing “concern” about the demand detracting from the protesters’ message. Another example of whitesplaining how to protest. Black people did it wrong in Ferguson, these people say. They did it wrong in Baltimore. And they are doing it wrong at Mizzou. From this one can conclude that there is no RIGHT way for black people to protest injustice.
The football team's protest is a natural outgrowth of social media trends on college campuses. These days it's very popular to protest things that everyone is already opposed to. ("Bro, your micro aggressions against my anti-slavery petition will not stand.") But the protest really takes off when you find a villain and charge him with the root cause of the issues at hand. Enter President Wolfe, an aloof middle-aged white man who is the perfect villain for a campus crusade against racism. Even if, you know, he isn't racist or involved in any of the actions on campus that people are protesting.
Those darn kids with their Facebooks and their Instagrams and Snapchats! Protests about systemic racism are just bandwagonnering, thanks to social media. And poor Wolfe. He should be judged on his personal beliefs, not his actions. And he certainly shouldn’t be judged on his INACTION in response to racist acts committed on his watch.
There is much to criticize in Clay’s first article, and the majority of the rest of it is dedicated to lambasting the football team and Coach Pinkel. His second article lays it on even thicker, and divests itself of any connection to sports. He begins by calling the protest a “charade,” an “absurd satire” (don’t wear out your thesaurus, buddy). The remainder is devoted to thoroughly excoriating the students for trampling the rights of the free press. But Clay can’t seem to keep his narrative straight, alternating between calling the students “delicate flower children” and portraying them as media-savvy professional activists, proactively stomping on the First Amendment.
But Clay’s magnum opus is his third article. Therein he posits that the events leading up to the protest were made up out of whole cloth.
[W]hat if there's actually zero basis for the strike in the first place? What if these alleged incidents never happened and the media just accepted them without asking any questions at all? The entire protest is based on three things, none of which have been independently verified, a poopswastika, an off-campus racial slur, and an on campus racial slur.
Methinks Clay, a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, has confused the burden of proof. A protest’s legitimacy is not dependent upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Hell, it doesn’t even need to meet an evidentiary preponderance. But he is really hung up on this independent verification thing.
In this modern era, when college kids take photos of everything, when video emerges of virtually everything that takes place on campus, how is that there is no eye witness who can say that a poopswastika ever even existed?
Wait a minute. I thought social media was a bad thing, Clay. But again, going back to his legal training, I’m sure Clay knows that if the parties agree that something is true then it is accepted as true. Both the protesters and the university have made it clear that they at least BELIEVE this event occurred, and have treated it as having occurred. So, for all practical purposes, it occurred. But self-appointed judge Clay Travis would require photographic proof before even allowing a protest.
Clay’s second complaint is as follows:
Mizzou's student body president, Payton Head, a gay black man, accused unknown and never found perpetrators in a red truck of hurling racial slurs at him off campus.
Clay makes hay out of Head’s being gay and black. In his eyes it is “more significant that Mizzou students elected a gay black man campus president,” and that the school supported Michael Sam for coming out as homosexual. Because if white people treat two black men who happen to be homosexual with some degree of dignity, that means racism (and, presumably, homophobia) are over! Everybody should just go home.
Geez...talk about white privilege.
Clay goes on to personally attack Head for being ambitious. In Clay’s view, Head may have made the whole story up because Head spread some rumors about the KKK being seen on campus (actions for which Clay has since apologized). Because if a black American has ambitions, they are automatically suspect.
Clay then asks, “WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT OF MISSOURI SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT AN OFF CAMPUS RACIAL SLUR?” Um...how about not ignore the student’s concerns? How about issuing a timely response? How about anything other than twiddling his thumbs?
Next, Clay takes aim at Jonathan Butler.
The hunger striker, who claimed he was hunger striking based, at least initially, on grad school health care costs, is the son of a man who made almost seven million dollars last year.
I’d like to credit Clay for trying to sound reasonable, because he does write, “merely being rich doesn't mean you can't advocate for social justice.” But then Clay dedicates 5 paragraphs to how Butler’s advocacy is not legitimate because he comes from a wealthy family. He even calls on Butler to check his own privilege because reasons. Um, trying to help other people who are less fortunate than you counts as checking your privilege, Clay.
I think I’ve made my point.
Does this upset you, too? Are you wondering what to do about it? Well, the best way is to do the same thing that the Mizzou athletes did and hit ‘em in their pocketbook. Cancel your subscriptions to FOX Sports. Work on the sponsors the same way we have with Rush’s sponsors, pressuring them to withdraw their financial support until FOX takes away Clay’s soapbox.
UPDATE 1 — 11/13/2015, 3:00PM EST
As pointed out in a comment by TheOpinionGuy, there have been new developments in this story.
First, the MU campus police incident report about the poop swastika was released by the school in response to a request from conservative website The Daily Caller and picked up by another conservative website, The Federalist. The university also released photos of the swastika. The first of the two Federalist articles devotes as much space to whining about how long it took for the university to release the records—fewer than the three business days allowed by Missouri’s Sunshine Law for a response to the request (the law permits the custodian of records to respond with a reason why the records cannot be released immediately, in which case the custodian will have additional time to release the records)—as it does to the substance of the report. The latter Federalist article at least calls a racist incident that had not previously been publicized “disturbing.”
Clay Travis, though, continues not to get it, blatantly moving the goalposts by saying that the very evidence he demanded to see means nothing.
Second, two statements, one by a student at MU and another by a professor at the MU School of Journalism, were given to NPR. Both of these statements describe the student’s and the professor’s personal experiences with racism at the school.
I’d also like to use this update to address MPociask’s comment regarding some of the weaknesses of this diary, because the criticism is both accurate and constructive. I agree that this diary has weaknesses. Maybe I will succeed in correcting those weaknesses, maybe I won’t, but I will try.
Kind of disappointed in this diary. I don’t feel like it gives a fair portrayal of the third article referenced (the only one of which I have read). I wish there was more substance, and less snark.
“Both the protesters and the university have made it clear that they at least BELIEVE this event occurred, and have treated it as having occurred. So, for all practical purposes, it occurred.”
That’s…. not how verification of facts works. Payton Head claimed that people yelled racial epithets at him from a pick-up truck while walking around off-campus. The protestors or the administration taking that to be true doesn’t make it true. If it happened, it's true. The only witness afaik is Payton Head.
What I was attempting to say about this particular incident is that Clay had set the bar too high. In doing so, I probably set the bar too low. Clay is correct in pointing out the media have largely accepted Head’s word as gospel, and the media should not blindly trust a source, especially one with a vested interest in the framing of the story. The media absolutely SHOULD verify. Exactly how they would go about doing so is a great question since, as MPociask points out, Head is the only witness. If Head’s story turned out not to be true it would certainly be a blow to his credibility, but it would not undermine the entire protest. This brings me back around to my overarching point: Clay’s myopic obsession—an obsession he shares with the conservative media in general—with the three incidents at the expense of the shared experiences of the protesters as a whole has the effect, calculated or not, of diminishing the protests to a tempest in a teapot. As the NPR article demonstrates, those incidents were a galvanizing force, but they are not the only reasons why these protests happened.
After touching off a campus wide debate on race, Payton Head later made up a gigantic and dangerous lie, warning everyone that the KKK was on campus, and that he personally was in touch with the National Guard to discuss the situation. This diary really brushes that under the rug, and it makes the diary weaker.
The diary notes he later apologized for spreading rumors. Okay. But if you’re going to hear the testimony of a witness, the credibility of the witness is absolutely important to know. We have at least one piece of evidence to say he’s not always credible. That doesn't mean the pick-up truck incident didn't happen. It doesn't mean it does happen. But I think it's worth pointing out.
I didn’t feel that I had to devote a great deal of space to this part of the story because Clay already laid out all of the known facts. But I did, perhaps, give it short shrift. Head does have a credibility issue. I will absolutely acknowledge that. Anyone and everyone is free to make up their own minds as to whether or not to believe him.
That being said, Clay took it a number of steps further and went after other aspects of Head’s character, and Clay’s criticisms were steeped in white privilege. I stand by that assertion.
I absolutely could have been less snarky and more substantive, but the substance I was dealing with—Clay’s articles—was, itself, insubstantial. I would have loved to provide more facts, but I’m not on the ground in Columbia, Missouri, so I can’t interview students to talk about their individual experiences with racism. Clay was largely snarky so I was largely snarky.
In the end, though, Clay has made my point for me, because he has tripled-down on his framing of the story:
The point remains after all this attention, even assuming the lying hunger striker and his friends are telling the truth about their racism experiences -- which we really can't believe at this point -- all of the tangible evidence of wrongdoing by Mizzou students is nonexistent. It's people using mean words, neither of whom were students, only one of which was on campus, and poop on the wall.
This isn’t JUST about a poop swastika. It isn’t JUST about these three incidents. But Clay dismisses all the experiences of all the African-American students as lies because he’s incapable of seeing beyond those three things, true or not. And that, right there, is white privilege.
I’d conclude there, but I know somebody is going to bring up the video in Clay’s most recent article. I’ve watched it. The key moment occurs around the 2:30 mark. All I can say is that the car is moving forward and Butler is also moving forward. Whether or not Butler collided with the car or the car collided with Butler is unclear. To me the most telling thing about the video is the analysis, itself. White conservatives are engaging in JFK-assassination-video-level scrutiny of this video to attack one man when the protests aren’t about one man, or two men, or three, or five, or one-hundred. Not to belabor the point, but this is about the experiences with racism that all African-American students at MU have endured, and the comparative non-concern of the administration about those experiences.