TMS president defends prayer with 'political correctness' remark
Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage used a couple of trite phrases to defend the prayer Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson delivered before Saturday night's Sprint Cup Series race at Texas.
While starting his prayer with "We got here via Bibles and guns" Robertson, who endorsed Ted Cruz earlier this year, prayed for "a Jesus man in the White House. He gave the prayer because his family's company, Duck Commander, was the title sponsor of the race.
Here's what Gossage had to say about Robertson's prayer to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“He said what he felt and believed and there are a lot of people that agree with him and a lot that disagree with him,” Gossage said. “Nowadays, you cannot say what you think because of political correctness. So I guess everyone has a right to free speech or nobody does.
“Bruce Springsteen cancels his show in North Carolina on his viewpoints [on that state’s controversial ‘bathroom law’], and a lot of people agreed with him and a lot of people disagree with him. I defend Bruce Springsteen’s rights to take his position and, if you do that, then you’ve got to defend everybody else’s too.”
Before dipping a toe into the murky and shifting realm that is "political correctness," it's necessary to point out that Robertson's prayer has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech. As anyone with a basic understanding of civics knows, freedom of speech relates to the protection from government punishment of specific remarks. Not from criticism of people or companies. Invoking "freedom of speech" when it comes to what happened Saturday night is not only tired, but inapplicable.
Besides, it's not about NASCAR and those associated with it going outside whatever the bounds of "political correctness" are but being apolitical in the appropriate settings. And Robertson's prayer was the second time in a matter of weeks that self-serving political agendas were associated with the sport.
Many non-NASCAR fans took notice of NASCAR CEO Brian France's "personal, private" and very public endorsement of Trump following the second race of the season. While France, like Robertson and every other private citizen, has the right to support any candidate he so chooses, it can be hard to separate the actions of a private citizen from the company he runs as his public presence at the endorsement is due entirely to the family company.
Which brings us back to Saturday night. Most pre-race prayers call for the safety of all those involved, whether it's the track safety workers, team members or the drivers themselves hurtling around an oval at nearly 200 MPH inches from each other. The safety of everyone involved in the traveling spectacle that is NASCAR is something everyone can endorse. No rational human wants to see another get hurt.
Robertson's prayer had no call for safety or any mention of the four-hour race that was set to take place following his remarks. Instead, it was an incredibly specific set of appeals.
Those appeals were made public and possible because of NASCAR and Texas Motor Speedway's platform, which is why the track and the sanctioning body should deserve most of the attention when discussing the situation. As we noted Saturday, Robertson's beliefs, especially regarding his views towards homosexuality, are no secret. It's hard to finger point at the guy with the TMS-branded megaphone when those in charge of the megaphone are aware of his background and have no problem handing it over anyway (despite not reportedly expecting political remarks).
NASCAR Vice President Steve O'Donnell said Monday that pre-race ceremony roles are primarily the responsibility of tracks. Via NASCAR Talk:
“Those are, for lack of a better term, track assets, so those are usually sold as part of their race entitlement,” O’Donnell told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Monday. “In this case, ‘Duck Dynasty,’ I think, had every position, the pace car driver, waving the green flag, the invocation, the anthem. All of those are usually track assets.
“We do have a group in (Los Angeles) who does work with the tracks to try and bring celebrities in whenever possible. We saw a huge group come in to (Auto Club Speedway), so from time to time, if the tracks don’t have that position filled, we’ll try to work with them. In this case, Texas had that as part of their race entitlement.”
However, it's still NASCAR's sport, and it's a sport that's now had two of the three biggest mainstream stories involving Texas Motor Speedway over the past five seasons involve the people and companies associated with sponsoring the race rather than the racing itself. In 2013, TMS inked the NRA to be the title-sponsor of this same race. That sponsorship, four months after the school shooting that left 26 dead in Newtown, Connecticut, put NASCAR squarely in the crosshairs of the gun rights debate.
NASCAR didn't need to be anywhere near that conversation just like it doesn't need to be anywhere near prayerful calls for a specific president. But here it is, and the stereotypes that many outside of the racing world have of the sport and those who follow it can unfortunately be way-too-easily applied again.
NASCAR (a sport with 86 percent of fans over 34 and 94 percent who are white) has attempted to broaden its appeal as wide as possible and subsequently distance itself from those stereotypes with its diversity efforts, expansion into other countries, a wide range of Fortune 500 sponsors and a public disassociation with the Confederate flag.
The 2016 season has seen a the closest finish in Daytona 500 history and another race decided by less than a fender. Yet two of the season's most attention-getting stories have had little to do with cars or the people that drive them and way too much to do with poltical statements. It's as confounding as it is disappointing.
- - - - - - -
Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
