(Mediaite)
With the Winter Olympics underway in communist China and many western nations engaging in partial boycotts or protests, issues such as China’s covid measures, human rights abuses, and more have become major topics of conversation. But ESPN regular J.A. Adande thinks Americans have no room to criticize China.
ESPN’s Around The Horn host Tony Reali introduced the topic at the top of the hour on Friday, listing many of the concerns that the world has about China hosting these Olympic games, including “genocide and human rights violations in Tibet region and again Uyghurs in China.”
Reali asked panelist Adande, as a “fan and then as a reporter, how do you reconcile enjoying this competition while also considering everything I just said?”
“I think it’s standard in sports right now, you have to have a cognitive dissonance, you need to compartmentalize,” Adande replied. He compared watching China’s games under those dark clouds to enjoying the NFL playoffs despite “the ongoing allegations against Dan Snyder.”
Then he made an even more absurd statement and comparison, asking rhetorically how people in the United States have the right to object to genocide when some states are considering voting legislation to which he objects.