Bob Kravitz Schools Colin Cowherd On Indianapolis' Supposed Racism

I've been pondering how to react to Colin Cowherd's unloading on Hoosiers for being racists because either they lack the disposable dollars to spend on Pacers tickets because of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, or they've simply lost their enthusiasm for the Pacers and the NBA in general. The Star's Bob Kravitz, perhaps the only decent columnist still employed by the Star, does a decent job putting Cowherd in his place today.

Perhaps you missed it, Cowherd, an ESPN talk show host, went off on Indianapolis residents earlier this week for being a bunch of racists because attendance at Pacers game is so low. "There's no other explanation why people don't go to Pacers games," Cowherd said. "What we're saying is Indianapolis punishes the Pacers more than they punish the Colts for indiscretions off the field or off the court, and a lot of that is racial." Here's Kravitz' opening response to Cowherd's cow pile:

This was in 1999-2000, back before Indianapolis became a racist town. The Indiana Pacers, playing their first season at Conseco Fieldhouse, sold out every game.

This was in 2004-05, the season of The Brawl, but still well before Indy turned virulently racist. The Pacers averaged 16,994 fans per game and had more than 13,000 full season ticket holders or season-ticket-holder equivalents.

This was in 2008, before Indy’s latent, simmering racism reared its ugly head. The city, and the state, helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, the first time Indiana had gone for a Democratic presidential nominee in decades.

Since then, we’ve become a bunch of hood-wearing, cross-burning racists who simply won’t show up to Pacers games because we don’t like black people. Or so it has been suggested by Colin Cowherd, an ESPN talk-show host who is generally the smartest guy out there and has always been extraordinarily kind to me. (So I’ll repay his kindness by trashing his argument. Shows you what kind of guy I am.) . . .

Kravitz then goes on to recount the Pacers sordid history. Missing from his analysis, however, is the $43.5 million Indianapolis taxpayers have been forced to subsidize the team at the expense of public safety and other more deserving public expenditures over the past four years because the team's billionaire owner claims the franchise is bleeding tens of millions of dollars annually. I could add that Indianapolis has also elected an African-American to represent it in Congress since 1996, but I digress.

There must be something in the water they're drinking at ESPN to cause these delusional rants. Last December, ESPN analyst Rob Parker went off on Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin, III for being a cornball brother because he had a white girlfriend and was rumored to be a Republican. It's fascinating how silent the mainstream media has been after one its favorite leftist NBC stars, Alec Baldwin, allegedly went on a racist rant against a photographer for the New York Post, calling him a coon, a drug dealer and a crackhead for no other apparent reason than he's black.