HBO Sports Documentary Blames Reagan for Racial Tension that Scarred Larry Bird
Catching up with an HBO sports documentary which ran several times in
March: 'Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals,' painted
Boston Celtics basketball star Larry Bird as the victim of a racist
national milieu exacerbated by President Ronald Reagan - a formulation
which relied on the expert assessment of a journalist who a few years
ago contended that if only Senator Ted Kennedy hadn't killed her, he
"would have brought comfort...in her old age" to Mary Jo Kopechne. Over
video zooming in on Reagan at his Oval Office desk, HBO's narrator
intoned:
But as Magic enjoyed his image as a crossover star, it was Bird, the one-time great white hope, who had further emerged as the polarizing racial figure due in part to that era's increasingly conservative political climate.
Then,
the Boston Globe's Charles Pierce argued "the triumph of the movement"
that supposedly "rolled back" civil rights "took place in the 1980s" and
that caused "sublimated frustration" amongst black Americans "and I
think one of the ways it got sublimated was into basketball" with Bird
catching those "lingering resentments." On screen as Pierce spoke, this
New York Times headline:
STUDY SAYS BLACKS HAVE LOST
GROUND
Finds Reagan's Policies Have Hurt the Poor and Imperil
Emerging Middle Class
Followed by a Washington Post headline: "56% Say President Is a Racist."
AUDIO:
MP3
clip.
Hat tip to the persistent Tony Cocco, a Bay Stater who
alerted us to the slam on Reagan and followed up with a reminder after
he saw the documentary air again.
Pierce is infamous for his
2003 Globe Magazine tribute to Ted Kennedy in which he ludicrously postulated: "If she had lived, Mary Jo
Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a
legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old
age."
Also, from a few months ago: "Nine Days Before Election, Boston Globe's Pierce
Ridiculed Notion Brown Could Win."
From the HBO documentary:
ARSENIO HALL: Has the "N" word ever been used by a white person to describe Ervin? I doubt it.
NARRATOR: But as Magic enjoyed his image as a crossover star, it was Bird, the one-time great white hope, who had further emerged as the polarizing racial figure due in part to that era's increasingly conservative political climate. [on screen: zoom in on Reagan]
CHARLES PIERCE, BOSTON GLOBE: The rolling back, institutionally, of the achievements of the civil rights movement were going on apace from about 1975 on, but the triumph of the movement that rolled them back took place in the 1980s. And I think there was people who were very aware in the black community of what was going on, and I think there was a lot of sublimated frustration. And I think one of the ways it got sublimated was into basketball. And I think Larry, through no fault of his own, was the receptacle within which the lingering resentments somehow floated.
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
