Speaker 1Someone once said everybody's got a plan till they get punched in the mouth. I did. Mike Tyson. Oh, well, Mike Tyson and Boost are here to tell you that your mobile plan is punching you in the mouth. With prices that can knock you out. That's a low blow. Totally. But you can do something about it. You have to punch back. No, Mike. You gotta switch to Boost. With a plan that's $25 a month, forever. Oh, that's a great plan. Maybe you can do both. Boost Mobile, what's your plan?
Speaker 2Did you know Texans who switched to Kin say they saved around $1,100 a year on home insurance? That's a lot of cash. Here are some ways you could spend it. You could finally take that weekend getaway. You know the one we're talking about. You could fix that fence post that's been leaning since last summer. It's out there right now just waiting for you. Or, hear me out, $1,100 worth of brisket. You'd be a legend at the neighborhood cookout. Point is, it's your money. Kin just helps you keep more of it. And the savings don't have to stop at your house. With Kin, you could bundle home and auto insurance in Texas and save up to 20% on auto. Plus, you'll have one dedicated team taking care of your two biggest investments. So, when a storm hits your house and your car, you only have to make one call. Get a quote at kin.com slash iHeart. K-I-N dot com slash iHeart. Kin, Texas-sized savings. Home insurance refers to the Kin House and Property HD3 policy with an owner-occupied endorsement where applicable. Texas customers who switch to Kin report annual savings of $1,160 on average. Based on Kin customer savings survey conducted August 2025 through August 2026. Kin Interinsurance Nexus Exchange, Phoenix, Arizona. Savings apply when you bundle home and auto based on filed rates. Savings vary and are not guaranteed.
Speaker 3Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a minute, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's raw. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4I'm Fox Sports reporter Jenny Taft. And I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player Carly Lloyd. And on our new podcast, Whatever It Takes, nothing is off limits. I played with players that didn't truly love the game. I found the love with the ball at my foot. I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps and love it and embrace it. Listen to Whatever It Takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why have so many crop
Speaker 5circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪♪♪
Speaker 6Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. My name is Beaumontie Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. I will introduce this with a little more somber tones. I know you're trying to come in like real big on it, but we're talking about 25 years since 9-11, so I don't exactly feel like it's time to be like, coming up next! So coming up next, we have our good friend joining us here, live and direct from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Howard Bryant. What's going on? Oh, man, how are you doing?
Speaker 7Hey, man. I think it's a smart move, by the way, Bo, to not be all enthusiastic about it. I mean, you even want to call it an anniversary? Just mark the time, right?
Speaker 6Yo, it's exactly it. Yay, anniversary! Like, woo! It's kind of like I talk about the internet has made it a thing. Like, people don't remember Biggie's birthday, but they remember the day he died. So it's a party every year on the day. The day he died, I'm like, nah, let's learn his birthday, baby. Like, these are not.
Speaker 7Nah, that's right.
Speaker 6This is not a celebratory time. I guarantee you this. His mama wouldn't throw in no party on the 9th. Like, man, you're touching me. Remember that shit?
Speaker 7That was like when we were doing NPR. You'd have these horrible stories about death and, you know, famine and the rest of it. And then, and now it's time for sports. I'm like, can we transition this a little differently?
Speaker 6Yes. Yes. But I wanted to have you on to talk about, like, 25 years since 9-11. And particularly in sports. In part, and this will be something we get to a little later, I'm not exactly sure how the rest of our industry will have handled this. I know how they would have handled this 25 years ago, where we had a little bit more of a concern for kind of looking back at these historical moments and putting them in context. Boomers love that. And by the way, makes great content. People generally enjoy it. We don't really do it anymore. But this is a topic that you, honestly, for these 25 years, have written a lot about that people can check off. Which is kind of how things changed in and around sports with 9-11. And you were covering the Yankees that year. I was. Which is interesting for me, because I always say that 9-11 hits me a little differently because I was in California. And so this didn't happen at 9, 12 in the morning or whatever. It happened at 6-12. And I had nowhere near a television. I was in a place with no telecommunications whatsoever. And somebody came in and told me what happened. And I honestly thought he was lying because it sounded like science fiction. Like War of the Worlds. And I went on about my day. And then it was like, oh, wow, this is a really big thing that's been going on all day long that I've been too wrapped up in my own shit to get to. You, on the other hand, are around New York City.
Speaker 7Oh, I was in New York City. I was living on 49th and 10th. And I remember at 8.45 in the morning when the first tower got hit, I was just waking up. It was a Tuesday morning. And I remember what was sort of wild about that was the speed of the calamity, right? I mean, within a half an hour, no cell phones were working. Like, it was hard to get through to anybody. And, you know, you saw, like, disaster. I mean, it was really incredible for all kinds of different reasons. Like, you just saw life in real time just act out in, you know, on a bus. You know, like, all of a sudden, the cab drivers were like, oh, you want to go over the bridge? $300. Like, that was that element of it. And then on the other hand of it, you had all the first responders, just everybody just racing downtown. It was chaos. It was. And then, of course, here I am covering baseball feeling completely insignificant. Who cares about baseball at that moment? Like, you couldn't. Back then, they actually had pay phones. Pay phone wasn't going to work. Pay phones always work. Couldn't get through to anybody.
Speaker 6Right. Yeah. And, like, I feel like with major moments, they're the kinds that are the where-were-you-win dot, dot, dot moments. But then there is the whole next level of it, and you just don't get that many of those, which is everything changed at this moment. Well, this one's both.
Speaker 7Yes. Right? Yeah, this one is 100% both. And the thing about 9-11 and sports, there is probably. I mean, off the top of my head, I'd have to really sort of parse it down, but off the top of my head, there are three moments that change the trajectory of sports in the 20th century into the 21st century. One is integration. Two is television. And three is 9-11. And, obviously, if you want to extend that out, you could probably go into the pandemic. But up to that point, this is the moment. Whenever I think about 9-11, I always think about it from the standpoint of each generation has its seismic moment that shifts the whole world. The whole culture that changes everything. With my parents' generation, it was World War II. With my generation, it was a Cold War. And with this generation, it's 9-11. It looks, looks, feels, sold. Everything was different from that day forward.
Speaker 6Yeah. And it's interesting when you say the sports feel so insignificant in that moment. And, of course, that was a message that we spilled. And then, give it a week, right? Or have a long week. It was before sports got back on the road. And then it was the complete opposite, right? It was the most important thing. Right. Not just is it important. To me, people immediately tapped into the entirety of the reason that sports are allowed to exist on the plane that they do, with the support they do, with the attention they do, with the funding they do, everything else, which is sports have always served the interest of whatever the dominant regime is of the time, whether it be, whether it be government on whatever level, right? Like it's part of the appeal of college sports in this country is the affirmation of pride and region or whatever that institution happens to be. But the whole point and the reason of it becomes a celebration of certain parts of our society. And it feels like when 9-11 hit across the board and also specifically as it related to New York City, sports now became a celebration of the nation itself, of the symbols, of the nation itself.
Speaker 7Yeah, sports, it was tribal before and then it was tribal and then it became completely tribal where you could feel, I was afraid to be honest. I remember we were out a week. 9-11 hit on a Tuesday and the Yankees, we ended up driving. That was the other thing too. What was kind of funny was how easy you recognized the things you take for granted were not to be taken for granted. for granted, which was okay. the season's going to reopen in Chicago a week from today. I'm not getting on a plane. How are we getting to Chicago? And so all of that infrastructure suddenly came into question because no one wanted to get on an airplane. And what was fascinating to me about that whole period, and it was a period, it was at least a month or two, because the second piece of this was now we got to find Osama bin Laden, right? So everybody was on high alert that there was the next shoe going. And let's not also forget during that same time period, you had the anthrax scare happening too. So there was this real feeling that the entire country was under attack because it was. But the piece of it to me that was really that changed it all was the injection of politics into sports permanently. And I don't think anybody knew that was going to happen at the time. I don't think anybody knew that was going to happen at the time. World War II athletes wore patches to recognize the fact that the country was at war. Vietnam, same thing, but to a lesser extent. But there was recognition that American soldiers were fighting around the world. 9-11 was all of that times a thousand, that the entire approach of sports, which was to avoid politics because everybody was under the same umbrella. We're all Yankee fans and we're all Cowboys fans or Patriots fans or whatever. That all went away. And it was replaced by a real angry, dangerous sort of sense that now we're going to go back to sports and we're going to put 40,000 people in one place who are enraged right now that there's an enemy out there that we can't see. And where is that? Fervor going to release. It's going to release at ballparks. And the sports industry itself recognized, even as you were talking about moment versus change, from that day to 25 years later, the entire business of sports, how sports was sold to you, was changed cosmetically. And it's never gone back. After the Gulf War, we saw Whitney Houston out there singing and then the Duke and whoever they were in Vegas, in UNLV, they had to go back to sports. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so important. But once that war ended, those patches disappeared. Those American flags after 9-11 showed up and they haven't gone away.
Speaker 6Yeah, it's funny because there is a book called Brand NFL by Michael Loriart that I recommend that people check out. It really talks about how the NFL has been promoted and marketed throughout its time. And one point that it makes is that what the NFL really caught on to in the last 10 years is that the NFL has been a product to symbols like the American flag in a different way. And once they made it a red, white, and blue league, that always popped, right? Like for that league that always worked as a mechanism of sale. For baseball, like you would see the red, white, and blue like bunting around the field for like game one of the World Series.
Speaker 7During the post
Speaker 6season. Yeah, for the All-Star game. Yeah, but it was never an all-the-time thing. They started breaking out God Bless America. It's never been. It's never been. It's never been. It's never been. It's never gone away. I still don't know the words to God Bless America. Like God Bless America was not a, at least to me, that wasn't like a song everybody knows, right? And why did they do that, Bo? Why did they do that?
Speaker 7They did that because after the towers went down, Bobby Valentine was the manager of the Mets. And John Franco, you know, New York dude, was closer on the Mets. And the Mets went to Shea Stadium and they opened up a relief center in the And in very, very fast time, the Mets were being associated as New York's team. The Yankees were like, no, let's let the authorities handle everything. And we're the Yankees and we're going to take a step back. And by the way, let's not forget both Roger Clemens and Andy Pettit hightailed it out of there in their private planes. The minute those towers hit, they're like, we're getting out of here. And they bolted. But the New York guys, the Mets, they stayed. The idea that the Mets were more patriotic than the Yankees, that they were more New York than the Yankees, enraged George Steinbrenner. And he was like, well, we got to do something. So they went out and got one of the great Irish tenors, Ronan Tynan, to sing God Bless America in the seventh inning. And then the Yankees went to the armory. Then they went to the firehouses. And suddenly, nobody likes to admit this. And of course, Joe Torre, New Yorker, Brooklyn guy, his sister is a nun. And then all of a sudden, the Yankees and the Mets were sort of battling for the hearts and minds of grieving New Yorkers. And George was like, this is going to be, this is our staple. So suddenly, you've got Ronan Tynan out there singing God Bless America during the seventh inning of all the games. And then, of course, because baseball also saw football out there with all the mini American flags out there and Joe Andrews running out with two flags with the Mets and the whole thing, then baseball made God Bless America mandatory for all the teams. Mandatory. So now you're starting to see all of the sports trying to tap into the red, white, and blueness of the business of the game. And now each sport is trying to, and baseball especially, in addition, let's not forget, you had, you know, 1,800 firefighters killed in the, you know, in whatever that number is. It's not that number, but, you know, over 1,000 and then the police as well. So now you also, in addition to the red, white, and blue of America fighting Osama bin Laden, now, and Al Qaeda, now you also have the police and first responders, but especially police as heroes and military as heroes. So now this sport, where sport was for where, you know, for America's emotions. And this was the place where everybody was like, we can't have sports. We can't have politics involved here. And so now you've got the cops singing the national anthem. You've got, you've got the flags and the flyovers and each sport is now using the, this place. And by the way, when I was speaking to some of the military guys, when I was working on my book, The Heritage, they were saying like, hey, they recognized opportunity. Where else are we going to get this kind of recruitment opportunity? We're at war right now. And if this is a moment where people come together, there are going to be people watching these games that are going to want to serve their country too. So this, so suddenly sports became the land grab for patriotism, you know, both, both commercially, emotionally, and then of course, militarily.
Speaker 6All right. I want to start with the God bless America part, because I did not know that story about the back and forth between the teams. Like this was, this was the result of like economic, economic competition in the market of patriotism. That's right. I don't know if anybody else ever feels this way, but I was at a Yankees game a couple of weeks ago and God bless America. And I was like, are you supposed to stand for this? Cause it's, it's a song. It is not the national anthem. It is not a like prescribed hymn. It's a song. And I was like, wait, I got to stand up for this too. Cause I ain't standing up for Lee Greenwood. You understand what I'm saying? Like, I'm not, I would not do that under those circumstances. I was like, oh man, this is all just kind of.
Speaker 7Not only the Yankees make it mandatory, but the Yankees threw fans out who didn't stand. Get ejected from the ballpark. If you didn't stand, some usher could come by and toss you out of the ballpark.
Speaker 6It is. Wow. That is great. It is amazing how instant this all was too. Right. Like, I don't know if you could have convinced me in the year 2000, that this almost like Orwellian response would have been the result just a year.
Speaker 7It wasn't even a year. It didn't even take a year. Right. I mean, and also let's, I mean, I think it's really important to remember the timetable and everybody is talking about, this is a really important conversation, Beau, from a lot of, you know, when you're thinking about where we are today and, and, and the amnesia of Americans, because they're all talking about Donald Trump. And when you're using the words like authoritarianism and fascism and this and that, this surveillance state started back then. I mean, you weren't in New York. I was in New York. And that's where, if you see something, say something, here we go. All in the name of patriotism. And Rudy Giuliani was the mayor and America's mayor. And every single basic civil liberty was now a threat. What do you want the terrorists to win? Of course, we have to search your bag. But you have a reason to search my bag. We have to search your bag. And going through the airports. Remember, you could go through the airports.
Speaker 6You'd be able to hang out at the airport.
Speaker 7You'd be able to go hang out at the gate. You couldn't do that anymore. You couldn't, you know, at first, you had to take a sip of water if you brought water to the gate. I'm sorry, when you're going through security. If you had liquids with you, you had to drink some of it. So everyone knew that it wasn't like nitroglycerin or something, right? Then they just got rid of all that. Now, no liquids at all. Then they had to start coming back because people were like, well, what about my saline? You had to pack all of that stuff. And now that now you've got the travel sizes where you have to, you know, it's got to be a certain amount. You know, all the lotions of mine that have been confiscated, I lament that right i mean all of that stuff and so the speed of the sports really did help that too because you're at this place and everybody anybody who's ever been around a mob whether your team won the championship and y'all are flipping cars over or whether you want to beat somebody up like the power of the mob and people 40 000 people chanting usa you right i mean that stuff gets scary and it was a release and a lot of people called it something else they used to call it healing but on the other side of healing there was revenge you know that's when you started seeing a lot of american flags and a lot of ethnic restaurants up on 8th avenue and 9th avenue be like hey hey hey it was like do the right thing right you know we black too right i mean it was definitely that and all of the things that we talk about today uh in terms of fascism and the rest of these things i mean certainly there's an extra legal sense of what's happening in the white house now but this idea that your civil liberties had to be sacrificed in the name of patriotism in the name of your country and the things that we stood a lot of that comes out of 9-11 and um and that hasn't gone away it's only intensified no matter who the president was yeah now
Speaker 6the other thing that you mentioned there that i think was important is something that that you've written about extensively also is the police became the military after 9-11 in terms of the same thing yeah right in terms of like the level of reference that's expected and to a degree it's understandable because taking what happened you know in dc out of it and just looking strictly at the new york part um those were the normally the heroes of war is the military and that wasn't the case in this one this was a and it was an attack on the military and it was an attack on the military and it was an attack on the military on an urban area right on a municipality the heroes became police they became fire department and the likes and so they became elevated in a very very important way now like the elevation of the fire department you know nobody's really got a problem with that right yeah nobody did and i mean like fire departments probably have the highest q ratings of just about any of these things right they run into burning buildings and stuff okay and they'll be beating people up they don't run in and set you straight up and they'll be like oh my god you're gonna be like oh my god on fire because they mad at you no they go in and they put out fires and they
Speaker 7try to save your life
Speaker 6yes the police occasionally do those things and also occasionally tune you up give you that wood shampoo everything else but they became capital t capital p the police not the band but they became something that everybody at least for a short term you treated them like they were the police like the flag basically it became a gigantic change i think in terms of the way the exp i mean there's always been an expectation of how to deal with the police or what the police represented but not quite like 9-11 and sports and arenas never treated them like this
Speaker 7no and also let's you know you have to make this link and and by the way before we continue on my number was way up it was 343 firefighters were killed and then so it's about 400 first responders total the 1800 number i was thinking about was the number of unclaimed uh on you know that went missing that were bodies were never discovered um after the the uh the 3300 people were killed in the towers uh but yes i mean that was the the idea now that we were going to conflate police and military puts us a lot of where we are today and and and also with some of our previous conversations the the the arc of colin kaepernick is totally different without 9-11 because colin kaepernick is essentially the heir to the protest of for rodney king that never really happened in sports but now you're doing it 15 years after 9-11 where the police are heroes i mean they are in undisputed heroes that you are now you've been you've incorporated them into the selling of your sport without 9-11 perhaps he's treated very differently because sports doesn't now have that layer of the hero worship of of police military etc where the two are the same where we're criticizing the police a domestic institution questions your patriotism like the the link between patriotism and police was virtually non-existent pre-9-11 right i mean this changed it changed
Speaker 6everything well i think that raises a question would he have positioned his protest in the way that he did prior to 9-11 right because part of it is a great question i say because part of it is the response i was going to say it's how is it that one could so seamlessly make the transition from a protest against the police to being a protest against the military and the answer is he chose to protest the police as an affront to the national anthem as an extension of the flag that's right because
Speaker 7they're on the field because of
Speaker 69-11 right right so like how connected do all those things become because that also leads to the other part which is and i wondered this prior to 9-11 did the flag belong to the military before 9-11 and all of its adjacent wars because that's another obviously the big social thing about 9-11 is this country was at war for 20 something years just yeah with people some of the warring you know like what we do during war just stuck around and became permanent fixtures in part because if you felt like we need to do god bless america because we had war we were at war for 20 years straight after that
Speaker 7well that's right and on top of that the question we used to ask george you know used to ask steinbrenner when are you going to stop playing this song and the question had been well when the wars are over well the wars are over now we're not fighting you know we're fighting in now but back then it was iraq and afghanistan and those wars are over but god bless america is still there it has now become it's embedded now now there's no reason to do it except that that's what we do and you know you're 100 right when you're thinking about how the cosmetics of the sport shifted i mean 9-11 is is 100 the epicenter of all of this and what i found fascinating about it you know when you're starting to look at this perfect storm is that you did have a perfect storm literally a perfect storm you had you know you had a terrorist attack which which created and aroused the nationalism of of americans while at the same time you were you know getting more and more and more of you had a new generation of athletes who was paying attention and a new generation of citizen who was paying attention because of the virality of social media so now people are seeing things all and it's all happening at the same time and now the the moment you've got the flags and the flyovers and the cops and the singing of the national anthem and the you know the the surprise homecomings at halftime and the the the american flag the size of the of the entire football field pre-game is happening at the exact same time that the athlete is becoming a little bit more politically aware and all of this falls under the umbrella of 9-11 to answer your question yes the flag belonged has always belonged to the military and the nfl and the military have been essentially partners since the 1960s but the way that they ramped this up the way that they connected it and and you know normally you would get the super bowl like you were talking about the bunting at the all-star game in the world series in baseball well you would get the you would get a shot of our of our you know naval stations or our military bases around the world you'd only get that on the super bowl just for the nfl to show the globalness of the sport to say see everybody's watching this now it was weekly every week there was some shot of a military base in iraq or afghanistan or somewhere and so the embedding of this is happening at the exact same time you have fans saying we don't want politics in our sports and what they're really saying is we don't want black politics in our sports we don't want so the so at the the exact same time that you're ramping up the politics as a sign of patriotism you're also tamping down the the the voice of the guys who were playing these games and these two things obviously blew up you know in the in the teens with you know obviously trayvon martin and ferguson and then later cap
Speaker 6i was thinking about the fact that god bless america stuck around because i was thinking about post 2020 yeah i guess it's around there remember when them boys had uh roger goodell held hostage in his own basement remember that he sat down he made that video he talked about systemic racism and everything else looking like he ain't slept in three days um but what they did after that was they put a lot of stuff on the field the it takes all of us the end racism you know all those symbols on the field and then i think it was last season was the first one where they decided to take end racism off of the field and of course that raised a bit of a social media stink but i haven't thought about it was like, nah, I'm surprised they kept it out there as long as they did. I think it probably served the purpose for a period of time. But then I said to myself, I don't think anybody even sees it anymore, right? Like after a while, it just kind of blends into the background. Like I noticed that when they had all the symbols during the bubble in the NBA in 2020, and they had Black Lives Matter on the floor and all of that. And then after a while, it was like, oh, this is a decision that was made to get through this week. But like, that's gone now. Like, I get it, right? Obviously, we have gotten the point about God bless America and all of those things. They never stopped. But I wonder, like when you're at a stadium and they play God bless America, or even the national anthem, it's not like it swells up the whole stadium and everybody's like, hell yeah, America.
Speaker 7It's just something we do. Yeah, I mean, it's. Everyone's numb to it. Well, and I think that's sort of the interesting part of this conversation is that by the time you get to 25 years, it's a generational thing now. No one knows any different. If you're the core demographic of who the NFL is trying to sell this sport to, they don't know any different. They probably don't even know why they're singing it. They don't know why it's there. Because there's no before to the before and after, where there is for us. We remember it not being there. So it is jarring to us and normal for them. And I think that when you look at it from the standpoint of the messaging, sooner or later, the messaging doesn't even need a message. It's just there. I mean, like, for example, one thing that we were talking about, we're talking about the American flag. 9-11 was also the beginning of the flag, lapel, the little mini lapel, you know, the lapel flag. And if you notice, there's not a politician that walks around without one of those now. It just becomes embedded. These are the things that are part of the selling of a politician. And if you don't have one of them on, it's a news cycle. You're un-American. You're not patriotic. I mean, it's become part of the uniform. And you're right. I mean, the speed of all of this, and it'll be very, very interesting to see how history treats these things. Because yes, 9-11, it's the watershed event. But, you know, 2020 is not just pandemic, but it's also George Floyd. It's all of these things happening all at the same time. And now you are looking at how are we selling the sport? Roger Goodell is scrambling in 2020, running for his life in 2020. And it wasn't because, oh, well, people are just desensitized. To 9-11, it was because of the George Floyd stuff and because of all the stuff that had been percolating at the exact same time. So now what you've got in terms of your signaling and your messaging, I used to laugh at it. You and I used to talk about this, right? I mean, it takes all of us in the end zone.
Speaker 6To do what?
Speaker 7I mean, so everyone is sort of tiptoeing around all of this symbolizing. And I think what makes it really interesting as a conversation is, is that if you were born in 2004, you're 22, 23 years old, right? 2000, whatever, how old you are. You're 2002, a year after 9-11. You're 24 now. It doesn't have the same punch. It doesn't have the same value. It doesn't mean the same thing in terms of symbolizing. Because the symbol doesn't need any value anymore. Because it's all you know.
Speaker 6Yeah. Imagine trying to explain freedom fries to those people. Right. Like I was actually thinking about this when not too long ago, the whole woke one thing was going around. AOC saying that woke one was crazy. And you know, sometimes it was, but they were crazy. Um, but if you thought woke one was crazy, baby, if you had been here in 2001, the 9-11 response. And for those of you who might be too young to know freedom fries, we got mad at France. I forget what, France did that made people mad. And in the cafeteria at Congress, they stopped calling them French fries and started calling them freedom fries, freedom fries.
Speaker 7That really happened. And, and while you're at it, just go Google the Dixie chicks and Phil Donahue and Ashley Banfield and anybody who questioned anything that went against whatever the United States government company line was at the time. I mean, I was having this conversation with a friend of mine not to get too far off topic. The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine, and I was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what to say about, you know, the great Colin Powell, and where this was going in terms of foreign policy and how this man disgraced himself. He's a hero, he's a legend. And that time period changed how we view everything. And, and the things that just became embedded, that just became, that have never gone away. That's the piece of this that I find most interesting, is that the pressure that was placed on anybody who said, wait a minute, this doesn't seem right. Or maybe it's all gone a little too far. Maybe we can pull this back. I remember listening to people in baseball, and they were saying the same thing you were saying. Why do we still play God Bless America? Why? It's been 15 years, right? And it's been a while. And the reason is because nobody wanted to be the one to stop doing it.
Speaker 6No, ain't nobody, ain't nobody gonna be the person to get in there and make the suggestion.
Speaker 7I ain't gonna be no news cycle. They didn't want, they didn't need that, right? And so, so what you're really talking about, you're not talking about patriotism, you're talking about fear. You know, like, really, let's start, instead of giving it these labels, let's actually parse what we're really talking about. Are we talking about patriotism? No, we're talking about conformity. We're talking about fear. We're talking about stepping out of line. We're talking about the price of stepping out of line. None of this has anything to do with patriotism. In fact, it's the antithesis of patriotism.
Speaker 6Yeah. Like, imagine being the person in the meeting. They're like, hey, man, so we need to do something to, like, shorten up the time of the games. What do you think we should do? And somebody raised their hand. I think we should stop singing God Bless America. All right, cool. So what do you think we should do? You're immediately moving off that idea.
Speaker 7And they looked at that dude and they said, pack your shit.
Speaker 6Yeah, yeah. They're like, huh.
Speaker 7Huh. So now we know who you are. Yeah, yep. That's all it is. Enemy camp stuff. I mean, and it's true. All those things. When you think about where the culture went and what became standard, it wasn't just the sipping of the water going in through security or the fact that active military can go, you know, go cut the line first. And all of these things sort of shifted our viewpoint to the point now where when you think about what sports looks like, it broke down. It broke down so quickly across, you know, the racial lines, because you had the labor protesting. And you had management trying to profit. But you also had business underneath it, which was the fans were being manipulated by all of these symbols, because the military was charging the sports teams. And it wasn't even partisan. It was just two Republicans, the late John McCain and Jeff Flake, who were like, wait a minute. You guys are making money off of this. The Milwaukee Brewers, you guys are charging the National Guard $80,000 to sing the national anthem at a Brewers game. And yet, the power of those symbols was so great that even when it had been exposed as a fraud, that all this flag flyover patriotism, go USA stuff, was a fraud. Even then, the public didn't care. Because to your point, it was comforting. And that the symbol mattered more than the meeting behind the symbol. Symbol didn't have to have any meaning anymore.
Speaker 6And the government barely thinks it's a fraud, because they firmly believe that the next great American warrior is watching these games and watching these signals, I mean, symbols, and will then sign up. That's why you get all this advertisement for enlisting in the military during these games. Now, I have to be honest with you. It ain't been very many times in my life that I've been watching football with somebody and thought to myself, yo, man, this motherfucker might be Rambo. It's not, you know, like, that's, that's just not I don't, I don't
Speaker 7don't forget Pat Tillman, right?
Speaker 6Yeah, I see. I see. Tillman, to me is a fascinating case. Because where while I may disagree with where Tillman was coming from, it's hard not to respect it. Right? Fine, then I'll just go over there myself. How about that? Dies, we find out that he was killed by friendly fire, his family and everybody else was lied to about this. And they stand anywhere they can to get somebody to hear how things didn't go like it was presented to the world that they went and we still don't care. And still don't care.
Speaker 7And he is look,
Speaker 6they retired his number in Arizona. I went to the Hoover Dam. My last trip in Vegas. And I think it's the Pat Tillman bridge, right? Like, he's the one guy that's a statue out there, right? It's really hard. It's really hard. to say anything bad about him because strictly on principle and the willingness to lay it out there you can make no argument against it and he was used and he was manipulated and that still didn't make people mad no
Speaker 7100 and that's why when you go back and look at that time period and i'm it's going to be very interesting to see how it survives how it gets you know the further away you get from history the less accurate it gets right so um it will be very interesting to see how that how that time period is is reflected upon and how it's interpreted and reinterpreted and and reinterpreted again for for future generations but if you were there if you were there as i was absolutely there um as a professional as a grown-up um you felt the sea change a lot of the stuff that we're talking about now you felt the sea change a lot of the stuff that we're talking about now was foundational then um and the the speed in which you could see how quickly people would get in line i mean the fact that pat tillman went from american hero to american hero but this time american hero because he was a dissident because his family were dissidents and he was the dissident going things over here are messed up like the stuff that he was saying about what was happening over there i mean that is that is its own story and and i just like i said i remember anybody who spoke up i mean you were in major trouble if you spoke your mind in this country during that time period like the stuff that he was saying about what was happening over there i mean you were in major trouble if you spoke your mind in this country during that time period That's actually what it looked like. And when people go to Ground Zero, not anymore, but when they were going to Ground Zero, this is what it looked like. When you go look at the Capitol, this is what it looked like. Not the Capitol, when you look at the Pentagon, it's what it looked like. And when we walked into Yankee Stadium, they told us that there were snipers on the roof, that there were snipers in the lights. There were snipers in the buildings across the street. And that George Bush was going to walk across there, you felt it, because you were scared. And you were rightfully scared, because nobody knew what was going to happen next. I remember when we were walking into the bodega two hours after the towers collapsed, I was surrounded by a whole bunch of first responders, all caked up in debris and everything, and they were all doing their shifts. And they were talking about how there was a. There was a fear that the gas mains were going to go up, and that the city was vulnerable enough right now that there could be secondary attacks. People didn't know. And you found out what mattered to you during that time. I was at all those games, and believe me, when Ronan Tynan came out and started singing the long version to God Bless America, absolutely you felt it. You discovered that this really mattered. Like that who you were. It actually mattered. And I don't think there are very many moments in anybody's life where you have to question who you are and what you stand for. And I remember we drove to Chicago for that first series. And I'm sitting there, because nobody wanted to get on an airplane. And we're at a truck stop in Indiana. We're going to use the bathroom, sitting there in the urinal. Dude, redneck dude is standing next to me. In Indiana. In Indiana. And he looks at me and he goes, you doing okay? That man would have never said a word to me. Today, before, there's one moment in the history of my life where that would have happened, and he actually meant it. We're on the same side today. This was six days after the towers.
Speaker 6You know? Now, do you think there's anything that could happen now that could do that again? Where we are so partitioned now. I think in large part as a result of the effect that all this internet has had on us. Could it happen again? I don't know. Like, could sports be even viewed as that unifying force again? Is it possible?
Speaker 7Well, it's possible, because we don't know what's coming. You know? I mean, if somebody blows up the White House tomorrow from some missile site in Europe or the Middle East or wherever, yeah, we'll see how people respond. But the discourse, the way that we treat each other right now makes it very, very unlikely because of the exploitation of it. There is no, not only it doesn't feel like there's commonality, it feels like it's just, you know, that everything that happened is another step in the manipulation. That's all. And the reason why I say that is because we had a global pandemic where people were dying daily. Everybody knows someone who died from COVID and still couldn't come together on that. Like, were you a new people? I mean, I know a couple of people who died in the towers. Everybody knows somebody who died of COVID. You know? And that didn't bring people together. Sports didn't bring COVID together. You know, COVID didn't bring, you know, sports didn't bring people together during COVID.
Speaker 6You know, and I've always wondered if there was a way when people came back or sports came back, but it was with no crowd, right? So there's no. There was no associated visual. There was nothing that allowed for, like, a sharing of energy, right? Or anything that, like, made.
Speaker 7You mean empty stadiums with cardboard cutouts?
Speaker 6Yeah. Oh, wow, man. I forgot about the cardboard cutouts. Or, like, in Japan, where they ordered all the sex dolls. Or it was Korea. I can't remember which. But they ordered all the sex dolls. And I'm surprised there was any of those left. I thought them things would have been flew off the shelves. There's somebody mad than a motherfucker. You was wasting all that good, all that good freak on a goddamn car. On the stadium. That ain't nobody here.
Speaker 7Yeah, but I think it's also important to remember that, you know, there was a moment at Yankee Stadium when President Bush threw out that first pitch because people were scared. They were literally scared for their lives. Let's not forget that in addition to 9-11, in addition to 9-11, you had the anthrax scare where anthrax was going through the mail. People were opening up their mail, shaking their mail at arm's length. And then you had the D.C. sniper happening at the. At the same time. Randomly killing people. And no one knew if those things were connected or not. Try, you know, people were afraid to go get gas, thinking you're going to be randomly assassinated. At the same time you saw the towers fall. America hadn't dealt with anything like that. This was a Pearl Harbor level event where, for the first time, Americans were like, wait a minute. I'm in danger in my own home, in my own community. You never saw anything like that.
Speaker 6Hey, man, D.C. sniper, the wildest shit in all time. Wildest, wildest thing that ever happened. And biggest surprise of my lifetime, boy. I was like, hey, man, white folks can't blame this on us. There was somebody. They can't blame this on us. Right? No way.
Speaker 7There was somebody with a military grade weapon shooting people. Out the trunk of his car.
Speaker 6But we ain't even know it was the trunk of the car at the time.
Speaker 7Didn't even. Exactly. Didn't even know how.
Speaker 6They didn't know where it was coming from. This dude was just smoking people, pumping gas. And every day they sent that same black man out there, Moose. They sent Moose out there every day to tell us that he ain't know nothing that we didn't know. Every day. And he had to sit about there every day because it was. People were shook, man. Shook. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7It was real. And the point is, is that nobody knew if this stuff was related or not. Right. So that's why you got. So George Bush walking out there trying to do the presidential thing of saying, I'm not afraid. Of course, then he went and told everyone to go shopping. But at that moment, at that moment, everybody felt that because everyone needed. That's what leadership was all about. Everybody, even though it was completely symbolic or whatever, but at that moment, in that moment, it was like, okay. Could somebody tell us we're going to be all right? And sports did that.
Speaker 6Howard Bryant, check him out. Check out Kings and Pawns, which does not exactly talk about these themes, but you can get a full dissident, which I'm sure is available. We'll find books that sold that will talk about a lot of things that we have talked about here in this show. But Kings and Pawns is also a beast. But man, I appreciate you. No, thank you. All right, man. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this four days a week. Ryan Brumley handled things behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail. Line 323-596-7767. Remember, follow The Right Time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us. Give us five stars. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.
Speaker 1Someone once said everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I did. Mike Tyson. Oh, well. Mike Tyson and Boost are here to tell you that your mobile plan is punching you in the mouth with prices that can knock you out. That's a low blow. Totally. No, Mike. You got to switch to Boost with a plan that's $25 a month forever.
Speaker 8Boost Mobile. What's your plan? With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans, develop a trip itinerary with daily updates, or create a prioritized schedule so you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at ChatGPT.com.
Speaker 2Did you know Texans who switch to Kin say they saved around $1,100 a year on home insurance? You could finally take that week off, You know the one we're talking about.
Speaker 3There should not be a single law enforcement agency that has not had a chance We have body cameras. - It's real. - Black farmers have been under attack. This is the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools.
Speaker 4And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm former U.S. Listen to Whatever It Takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
PodcastTranscript AI