Monday, July 27, 2015
Gannett Columnists Worry About A Handful Of Confederate Flag Wavers While Brickyard 400 Dies
Like many NASCAR and IMS fans, I stopped attending the Brickyard 400 several years ago after faithfully attending every race for many years after the inaugural race in 1994. In its hey day, Brickyard 400 crowds rivaled attendance at the Indianapolis 500 in its banner years. By the time I stopped attending, motor sports fan interest in the race had already started to wane. I was looking for stories discussing attendance figures for this year's race in the local news media and came up short. Instead, I found two columns written by Indianapolis Star columnists Gregg Doyel and Suzette Hackney, neither of whom know their ass from first base about auto racing, whose sole purpose in covering this year's race was to find any evidence to support caricaturing NASCAR fans as a bunch of white supremacist, Confederate flag-waving bigots. The kowtowing of NASCAR and IMS officials to the political correctness police as of late probably hasn't helped matters and only served to offend many among its most loyal fan base.
Judging from some of the highlights of the race and the video above a race fan posted to YouTube of the start of this year's race, there were probably fewer people at the track this year than in attendance at a regular season Colts game at Lucas Oil Stadium. A conservative estimate would be 50,000, while IMS officials would probably argue there were closer to 75,000 there. The truth is probably somewhere in between. What can't be argued is that interest in the race is rapidly declining from the earlier years when 200,000 plus fans regularly showed up on race day. The local media did a lot of hyping and cheerleading for the IMS to help bolster interest in this year's race, focusing on the fact local favorite Jeff Gordon was racing his final race at the track this year before he heads into retirement. Gordon won the inaugural race in 1994 and four others along the way, but yesterday he crashed early in the race and finished next to last, perhaps a sign of where this race's future is headed.
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10 comments:
I gave up my good Paddock Penthouse tix last year. The on-track action is now awful ever since NASCAR came up with the "Car of Tomorrow" for the 2008 season and its "Gen 6" fix last year, and the Goodyear tire debacle of a few years ago which turned the 400 into a pit stop contest. Sure there is passing and such in the back but once the car gets out front there is no getting around that lead car. Hence on the restarts they go 5 wide then run into one another going into turn 1. That 9 inch spoiler didn't help matters at all.
They got lucky this year with the late in the day start. One light rain shower would be the end of the day at that late of time.
This confederate flag nonsense cracks me up. I grew up in Indiana and lived in the South for a number of years. The South is no more racist than any other part of the country. In total, it's probably LESS racist. Southern neighborhoods are far more segregated than those in Indiana, for example. This tempest in a teapot is ridiculous. It's just another way the real haters convince themselves that they are not what it is so obvious to the rest of us that they really are....and that goes for the gays, too.
As for the race, it's pathetic, but since the IMS is now a taxpayer funded facility (in affect, I have a vested interest) I am openly rooting for it to fail.
Gary: cow towing? that should be kowtowing (unless you did mean pulling cattle).
And, 8:57 anonymous: did you really mean to say that Southern neighborhoods are far more segregated than those in Indiana?)
My bad. Duly noted.
Southern neighborhoods are far more segregated is proof that the South is not more racist? Better just wave your flag to demonstrate your intelligence.
It would be interesting to see the job descriptions that landed these two losers in Indianapolis and also to know the names of the fools who decided to pay them money to shrink circulation. Racism is a dead horse. Blacks are the only folks who ever wish to talk about it as if group identity has any useful result other than to further segregate them.
It is absolutely hilarious to see the Indy Star denigrated to the point of a supermarket tabloid. If the Confederate flag is the best they can do at "digging up a story" Lord help this paper. What a crappy rag.
Take down the Stars and Stripes. It supported slavery far longer than Stars and Bars (four score and nine years by my reckoning) plus killed the Natives and interred the Japanese along the west coast during the war to end fascism, WWII.
Of the three Brickyards I've attended, this was the least bad. That is faint praise.
The Scar, a conflagate rag of Hackneyed expression, can do no better than nihilist narratives about the Confederate Flag...
I believe that anything "Indy 500/Speedway/Brickyard" is on the social death skids. I am convinced the Georges and the Hullmans hold the same belief. Why else would they hire "rent a civic leader Mark Miles", and then engage our foolish Republican State Legislators (led by the more foolish Brian Bosma), and solicit our foolish, disconnected Mike Pence to sign a bill making Hoosiers responsible for upgrading that outdated, dying facility with the equally outdated, dying sport?
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