The larger world

 Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke at the Democratic National Convention the other night, and of course that got the Stick To Sports crowd all in a lather. The usual suspects trotted out all the usual words, a lot of them beginning and ending with "woke" and "left-wing extremist."

Well, yes, Steve Kerr is woke, which the usual suspects regard as some dark thing, but which the Blob has always considered better than the alternative, which is being asleep. Also, it's not as if Kerr has ever been shy about speaking on matters that didn't involve where Klay Thompson's shooting touch went and why Draymond Green is such an incorrigible butthead.

But a sports guy is supposed to be a sports guy always, and so if Kerr's political allegiances have always been an open book, having him declare those allegiances at a political party's convention made some people queasy. That's because some people think sports guys shouldn't color outside the lines, those lines being the ones that proscribe a basketball floor or baseball diamond or football field.

Which I've always thought was sort of odd.

No one, so far as I know, thinks it's out of bounds for anyone in any profession other than sports or entertainment to weigh in on political matters. It's a free country, first of all, and second of all it's a country in which everyone has a say, at least ideally. But when a Steve Kerr or LeBron James or George Clooney does it, the pushback is immediate: "What does a basketball coach/player/actor know about (fill in the blank)?"

As if a basketball coach/player/actor were incapable of knowing about anything but the pick-and-roll and learning his or her lines. If Joe Plumber or Mildred Bank Clerk is allowed to have an opinion about immigration or gun control or the price of bubble gum in Addis Ababa, why shouldn't they?

(Of course, where the usual suspects are concerned, this only applies to coaches/athletes/entertainers who take political positions to the left of Vlad the Impaler. If you're right-wingers like hooper Enos Kanter, nominal swimmer Riley Gaines or nominal rock star Kid Rock, you can spout all the political opinions you like and the usual suspects won't say boo about it.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, it's a curious thing, this notion that athletes and entertainers exist in a sort of vacuum untethered to the larger world. And it's especially curious when it's Steve Kerr, who found out all he ever wanted to know about the larger world on the day his diplomat father was murdered by the PLO when Steve was in college.

And then there's Magic Johnson -- who's been a businessman and entrepreneur far longer than he was a basketball player, but who was subjected to the same old "What does a basketball player know?" claptrap when he praised Michelle and Barack Obama's DNC speeches on the Magic Formerly Twitter Machine.

The culprit this time was Jason Whitlock, once a decent journalist but now just another crotchety Trump Moonie shouting at clouds on the interwhatsis.

"We should ask not what a basketball player can do for politics, but ask what politics can do for basketball," he snarked on his own Magic Formerly Twitter account.

Or maybe ask why a man who hasn't played basketball in 30 years is still being invalidated for it. By, hello, a former sportswriter.

As if we know anything about anything.