Atlanta Team Will Have Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Mask Country Star Sing National Anthem Before NLCS Game 6

The Atlanta major league baseball team has hired anti-vaccine and anti-mask country singer Travis Tritt to sing the national anthem before tonight's NLCS Game 6 against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Tritt has proudly refused to perform in any venue with safety protocols against the coronavirus such as masks, proof of vaccination, or negative coronavirus tests. Earlier this month, he cancelled concerts in Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, and Kentucky because of the venues' public health requirements.

This is trying to divide people. This is trying to shame people. This is trying to basically discriminate against people they don't feel are clean enough to be a part of enjoying a concert like that.

Tritt described himself as "a huge defender of basic human rights and liberty for all". He believes he is standing up against "the squelching" of freedom. He even quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in his August press release.

Fox's Tucker Carlson called Tritt "a credit to country music" and praised him for being "willing to lose money" based on his beliefs. However, Carlson is not willing to lose even one penny by leaving Fox  (and his multi-million dollar contract) for having far stricter vaccine requirements than the less restrictive government mandates he condemns nightly on his show.

Numerous hypocritical Fox hosts, including Carlson, have praised other people for quitting their jobs rather than submit to the "tyranny" of these "Jim Crow" vaccine mandate while refusing to quit their own jobs. They have also repeatedly lied on air that Fox has no vaccine mandate. But the the Fox mandate memos have been published online (the network even has a vaccine passport program).

The state of Georgia requires all children to receive multiple vaccinations "to protect them from any of 16 serious diseases" before attending school. Neither Tritt nor Carlson nor any other anti-vaxxer seems to be frothing at the mouth about all of that "tyranny", however.

The Atlanta baseball team's willingness to give its seal of approval to someone with anti-science and pro-death beliefs seems at odd with the fact that they were one of the first major league teams to open free vaccination clinics in its stadium. They also have first-hand knowledge of the devastating impact of COVID-19. First baseman Freddie Freeman contracted the virus last summer and suffered so badly he said he prayed to God, "please don't take me".

The Atlanta team supports the racist actions of its fans. While the team stopped handing out free foam tomahawks before games, it has remained utterly silent about the anti-Indigenous racism seen and heard in its stadium during each game. (Actually, that's not true. They encouraged fans to chop and chant in April 2021.) 

Sheryl Ring points out that the chop is often "used by racists to denigrate Indigenous people outside of the sports context".

That the Tomahawk Chop is racist is a fact. Indigenous people overwhelmingly consider it a slur, and we are obligated to defer to their judgment because this is an issue about them. . . .

There will be those of you who consider this "cancel culture" or "wokeness" or the like. That's interesting, however, seeing as I get more death and rape threats from posting about the tomahawk chop than I have from all of my other articles and posts combined, and that's saying something seeing as I'm a trans woman with a public platform. But frankly, Indigenous people have been protesting against the tomahawk chop for its entire existence. . . .

You don't honor a culture by donning a caricature of their identity like a costume for a few hours. But then, no racist ever believed themselves to be anything but beneficent anyway.

Ring also blasts MLB (my emphasis):

[L]et's be honest: it's the year 2021. Anyone who is doing or defending the tomahawk chop knows what profoundly harmful effects it has on Native and Indigenous people and wants to either perpetuate those harms or simply doesn't care. It's that apathy which is always, as writer J.M. Dilliard notes, the greater evil. . . .

It is absolutely galling that Major League Baseball will on the one hand remove the All-Star Game from Atlanta because of Georgia's new voter suppression law, and then on the other hand ignore that same team urging its fans to engage in racist cosplay. MLB could ban the chant tomorrow.

On Thursday, two days ago, all 30 major league baseball teams tweeted their support for Spirit Day, which raises awareness of the many bullying-related suicides of LGBTQ+ children. Here is the tweet from the Red Sox:

Today we’re going purple in honor of #SpiritDay, as we take a stand against bullying & show our support for LGBTQIA+ youth everywhere. pic.twitter.com/0NJBn3BpGo

— Red Sox (@RedSox) October 21, 2021

Two teams, Atlanta and Texas, deliberately removed any reference to LGBTQ+ persons before posting their tweets. Texas did not even include the link to the GLAAD Spirit Day website. 

Judging by the similarity of the team's tweets, each club was given a template and guidelines on what to say. But Atlanta and Texas chose instead to cater to their homophobic and hate-filled fans, not wanting to annoy or provoke them, rather than make a small performative gesture of tolerance to another group of human beings.