ESPN Caught Using Extremely Dishonest Tactic to Smear Ex-Host Who Now Works at Fox News
Oftentimes, leftists’ favorite response to a conservative comment is to scream about “context” at the top of their lungs.
The meaning, obviously, is that whatever point is being made is missing those ever-important missing contextual facts.
Another bit of obviousness: As conservatism has wizened up to this new post-“fact check” landscape, those opportunities for “missing context” accusations have rapidly dried up.
So what are those on the left to do now?
Apparently, if they can’t weaponize it, they are content with just nuking the entire concept of “missing context” altogether — and a dishonest smear attack from ESPN on Wednesday is a pretty blatant example of that new mindset.
To set this up, Wednesday night was the network’s annual ESPY Awards telecast.
If you had no clue, that’s quite alright, as the ESPYs might be the one award show in existence with less clout than the Grammys.
But if you did happen to catch the ESPYs, you likely saw a fairly innocuous (if not eye-rollingly obnoxious) video clip touting how great the U.S. Women’s National Team has been in terms of both its dominance on the soccer field and its championing of equal pay.
The women received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, which honors a “member or group in the sporting world who makes a difference far beyond the field of play, impacting the world in indelible ways,” according to ESPN.
It was a classic bathroom break segment, but if you did stick around to watch it, you might have noticed Will Cain, a Fox News contributor, being targeted in the clip.
It’s worth pointing out that Cain worked for ESPN for years, oftentimes as the Disney-owned network’s “token” conservative.
It’s also worth pointing out that this smear attempt against Cain was — you guessed it — missing some ever-crucial context.
Here’s part of the clip in question, as shared by conservative pundit Greg Price on Twitter:
ESPN just smeared @willcain as a sexist at the ESPYs.
When airing a video honoring the U.S. women’s soccer team for their equal pay lawsuit, they included out of context remarks from an ESPN segment he did four years ago.
They didn’t include his full remarks because he… pic.twitter.com/1U2XvagJQW
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 13, 2023
“I think equal pay is a ridiculous concept in and of itself,” Cain said in the actual ESPYs clip, hilariously while he was clearly on ESPN’s flagship morning show, “First Take.”
Cain continued: “Soccer, for better or worse, on the men’s side, across this globe, is much more popular than the women’s [soccer.]”
After viewers are told that women’s soccer players “get that argument all the time,” the clip cuts to Cain again, but this time Price included the full context of Cain’s remarks.
“Nobody wants to hear or know — tell you why it’s like this,” Cain said. “Now there’s two things.
“First of all, when you talk about the bonus difference between the men’s team and the women’s team, between what a winner, if it had been the U.S. men, would get in the World Cup, and the women, the women got a pool, or got paid out from a pool, of $30 million from the women’s World Cup. The men would draw from a pool of $400 million, OK? $400 million, $30 million.
“Why is that? It’s because the men’s World Cup generates $6 billion in revenue. The women’s World Cup generates $131 million in revenue.
“If you want to talk about pay disparity, the women’s World Cup players get paid out 20 percent of the total revenue. The men get paid out 7 percent.”
It was around this point that Cain made the remarks seen at the ESPYs, and it’s pretty shocking how brazen the sports network was with its duplicitous video editing.
“And by the way, I think equal pay is a ridiculous concept in and of itself,” he said, again. “If the women generate more revenue, they should get paid more than the men. Don’t strive for getting the same, strive for getting what you’re worth, and if you’re worth more, then get more.”
Boy, that added context sure changes Cain’s original comment, eh?
As for the other part, where Cain suggests men’s soccer is more popular than women’s soccer (which it is), that comment wasn’t missing too much context in and of itself, but certainly reads differently when you look at what he was saying before.
It’s still true.
Still unpopular.
Full context.
Full truth. (Watch below) https://t.co/6AnibFWOdH— Will Cain (@willcain) July 13, 2023
Namely, Will Cain was saying that women should strive to get what they’re worth, not compare their worth to what the men are getting — and that’s frankly a far more empowering statement than what traditional “equal pay” advocates are spewing.
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