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Tweets searched, follows scrutinized, answers demanded . . . as no variance from the accepted orthodoxy can be allowed

Media finds out tennis pro is a Trump supporter, proceeds with social media 'deep search'



Media finds out tennis pro is a Trump supporter, proceeds with social media 'deep search' I haven't really followed tennis since the days when Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe were playing. Chris Evert is retired so what's the point? But the game goes on, and apparently there is an American player of some note by the name of Tennys Sandgren. (A tennis player named Tennys? I just report the facts, people.) He's not exactly a global superstart but he did recently reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open by defeating fifth seed Dominic Thiem. So good for Mr. Sandgren!
But uh oh . . . not good. Now that his limited success has brought him into the public spotlight, some in the media have taken notice of his tweets and they've ascertained that Sandgren is a Trump supporter. That, as you may know, is not allowed and compels the media to "hold you accountable" or whatever. So they've been looking through Sandgren's history of tweets and examining who he follows. The result is instant controversy, because certain people decided that certain point of view are unacceptable in polite society - as Mr. Sandgren is now learning to his regret and disgust:
The Tennessee native lost Wednesday, after taking a much worse pounding from journalists. When one reporter learned he was a Trump supporter, others started digging. Poring over his Twitter account, reporters found that he followed people who’d attended alt-right rallies. A November 2016 tweet appeared sympathetic to an anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory. He had also called Serena Williams’s cursing an opponent “disgusting”—deemed a racist microaggression. But Mr. Sandgren never tried to politicize tennis, and he also followed celebrities like actor Hugh Jackman and the band Metallica. During his postmatch press conference Monday, Mr. Sandgren vehemently denounced the alt-right and acknowledged that some of his fake-news tweets were ill-informed. “I think it’s crazy to assume that, to say, ‘Well he’s following X person so he believes all the things that this person believes,’ ” he said. “That’s not how information works.”

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By Tuesday morning, he had deleted all of his tweets since June 2016, no doubt concerned about his ability to score endorsement and sponsorship deals. But his opponents persisted. An ESPN interviewer lobbed questions about his deleted tweets. The off-court onslaught may have contributed to his mental fatigue during his quarterfinal match. In the press conference after his loss, he went on offense with a statement blasting reporters for distorting the truth “to create sensationalist coverage.” “You seek to put people in these little boxes so that you can order the world in your already assumed preconceived ideas,” he said. “You strip away any individuality for the sake of demonizing by way of the collective. With a handful of follows and some likes on Twitter, my fate has been sealed in your minds.” He continued: “You would rather perpetuate propaganda machines instead of researching information from a host of angles and perspectives while being willing to learn, change, and grow. You dehumanize with pen and paper and turn neighbor against neighbor. . . . It is my firm belief that the highest value must be placed on the virtue of each individual, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.”
Basically Sandgren is getting the Curt Schilling treatment. Because he has political opinions, and he's outspoken about them, and they are not the opinions shared by the media, they take it upon themselves to conduct a rectal exam of his every expression, affiliation and inclination. They demand he explain to them why he thinks or expresses a certain thing, as if it's understood that certain points of view are beyond the pale, and that adhering to them makes you an automatic suspect of great evil and malevolence.

This highlights the dishonesty in claims you hear that attacks on the media are attacks on the First Amendment. The media themselves are among the biggest enemies of the First Amendment when they decide to hound people who aren't even in politics strictly because they hold to political beliefs that disagree with those of the media. And give Sandgren credit for not only standing up to them but doing so in a very eloquent fashion. They're doing exactly what he says they're doing - enforcing an orthodoxy that comports to their own thinking. They're making it known that if you express certain ideas in public forums, you will pay such a heavy price that you'll wish you had kept your mouth shut. Tennys Sandgren's political opinions are not newsworthy, but they're getting media attention because certain ideas cannot be allowed to be expressed without sanction, and he's their latest target designed to prove they control the terms of public discourse. Good for Sandgren for standing his ground. Others should do the same, and that applies regardless of what you think or how you decide to express it. We need to get past the point where people are pressured to apologize and back down just because they believe A and the media believe B. And the people abusing their influence to enforce this orthodoxy have no business whining to anyone about the First Amendment.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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