Hour 2: Carl Douglas On Kenosha
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz- 1,282 views
- 26 Aug 2020
Dan Le Batard and Stugotz talk to Carl Douglas. Plus, will an NBA boycott instigate social change, Paul George stuffed the criticism in your face, NBA owners need to do their part to speak up and much more.
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Most vehicles, most locations. This is the down labor part show with this got Sparkasse. Christine, we interrupted you. Please continue. And finally, Dan, I hope you're sitting down. McDonald's is set to debut all new spicy chicken nuggets.
Christine, I don't like how much you're enjoying.
You don't get joy from anything the way you do. It's an evil cackle. It's unfair. You're a nice woman. It's I'm beginning to get hurt by these.
I'm sorry. The pizza story also made me laugh to listen to that as well. The more you heard him OK, the more willing I'll be to take one off. So now you're at two mistakes. We went from three to two just because you poked the bear and you heard him. He's hurt. All right.
So now you know what the rules are around here, Christine? The more you hurt me, the mistakes get eliminated, erased from your record. So I love you. Dan, get out of here.
Christine, I'm serious with you. And don't worry, you never have to worry about him sitting down.
Oh, I really it for me, I don't I don't even understand what that joke means.
Means you're not active because look at you. Oh, leave the fat jokes around here to Christine. OK, so I want to get into some of what it is that Chris Mannix is saying, where he's around the players at the NBA bubble and he is talking to them.
And they seem to be giving off a whole lot of is this worth it, the last 48 hours have apparently been pretty crushing in the bubble where these black guys who have powers in their communities, in our communities, these black guys who are at the top of the athletic food chain, are feeling the pressure of instigating change, of demanding change, of activating change.
And they feel like they're literally in a bubble sealed off from what it is that's happening in Wisconsin while wearing uniforms that are cashing a whole lot of money for a whole lot of people that have social justice messages. But none of those messages would be as strong as simply boycotting. And it's a disaster scenario for ESPN, for TNT, for the NBA. It's not something that sports fans would want, but it's now being discussed in the bubble, the idea of canceling games and a whole lot of people right now who are sowing division, who take Lapps victory laps around division, the same people have been telling you how bad the ratings are for the NBA because they've soaked it in social message, are now saying that if you boycott, all you're hurting is those people who care about you and it the people who are watching.
So the ratings are down because this feels a little weird. We're in a weird time. Sports exploded with the last stance. People wanted ratings, wanted ratings were easy to get on. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning golfing. And now the ratings are down on the NBA because they're playing a bunch of 1:00 PM games and people are at work and people have taken a victory lap around that. And so the same people who do not care about George Floyd dying or don't care about the way he died or don't care about the protests spawned by the way he died, aren't watching the NBA anyway, because many of them have an undercurrent of I don't like black people and the ones I'm scared of the most are powerful black people.
And so I'm not watching that sport. I don't. But I'm going to threaten not to watch that sport because of all the social media, social justice stuff those guys are doing if they took away the games. It would get everyone's attention and it would also look, as we already do, divided on every front, but that's where we started. We started with Stephen Jackson, who physically looks like George Floyd, calls him family, bringing everyone's attention to this by saying, I'm headed to Minneapolis here because of how wrong this is, because the cycle is a couple of days behind.
Right. This video was this weekend and people started to get upset about it. And now the video has made its way viral in a way that's indisputably awful. Anybody watching? I mean, you could sit there and make arguments about obey the police or don't go to your car or all that stuff. You can make those arguments in bad faith. You can make those arguments if you want to be intellectually dishonest and disguise your racism. But if you're a human being, an unarmed black man was shot in the back and we all saw it many times in front of people who loved him.
And it is simply heartbreaking to watch, no matter what your politics are, when you discuss ways that players could have an impact and help inside or outside of the bubble, don't you think the boycotting of games is probably as much as they could do, regardless of where they are inside or outside of that bubble, boycotting, taking away others, saying I'm not like taking away the money is the way that you hurt the power. Our country is weakened right now being held up by Netflix and Google and Apple and Amazon and Facebook.
Five companies holding up our entire economy. You start taking away money from people. You will absolutely get their attention.
Right. But they have their attention. They're just taking away money from themselves and partners. Right. Partners that have obviously been sacrificed.
Yes, Mike. But that's the nature of the sacrifice. Like, that's what Colin Kaepernick did. Like, that's why they're conflicted in the bubble. What do we do?
It's not just simply this is where Principal Colin Kaepernick didn't take I mean, I guess he did, because the NFL found itself in a place where it had to reshape itself and win people back because the anthem protests did have a quantifiable took away the NFL's money in a way that made the NFL clamped down on all kneeling in a way that put pressure on all the employees.
Yeah. To not kneel, no doubt.
But this is a much more supportive structure. So I understand what they can do inside that bubble. Their options are limited. Inside that bubble, they can. Chris Paul, his postgame press conference after his incredible performance, giving voice to what's happening right now. Doc Rivers, that stuff is super powerful and really your options are limited. We can either do those postgame press conferences and use this platform or we can take the games away. I'm not really sure what the end game is, though, with the taking the games away, I'm not sure what that accomplishes.
Do you think more people go out marching to the streets because they marched for months? I don't think they stopped marching because the NBA is on. I'm saying they stop marching because maybe that's really hard to maintain for months and months.
It's the threat of taking away the NBA game. Don't you think that gets the owners of the NBA teams to have a shot at winning an NBA championship here who can really instigate and help with change? Because they know people, I guess, use a powerful tool to instigate even more change the owners, but the owners in the NBA are aligned with the players.
In a way, the NFL owners are not aligned with the players. But it is the difference, Mike, between words in a bubble and actions outside it where we can all see, oh, wait a minute, the principle here being protected is costing everyone actual dollars, like when we when we around here went after LeBron James because he protected the dollars on China. It's the very nature of the difference between principle E and principle p a l money. And what are you willing to have it cost you in order to believe in the things that you believe in?
Right.
I'm just asking what you think has a greater impact taking the games entirely or having an NBA finals where you have all these social justice messages and you use that plan. But I don't I don't think it's entirely Mike.
I think I think it's actually as far as boycotts go and this is a serious thing we're talking about here, because once you start with the boycotting of sponsors and money, you get into a hugely dangerous area.
I think the happy medium for the NBA is not we're going to cancel the rest of the season, it's we're going to stop right now what we're doing, this cash register for two games, three games, two days, three days, we're going to stop. So instead of this these Briona Taylor press conferences, Brianna Taylor, where Tobias Harris is just not answering questions, he's just talking about Brianna Taylor instead of the press conference instead of the sound that Doc Rivers.
No, we're going to stop the moneymaking for everybody for a second. So you guys pay attention to the important thing here. The thing that's a message on our uniform that we believe in so much that we're going to speak truth to power by costing people money on this. If you missed any of the show, you can listen to all three hours of the day on Libertador plus our Miami only hour and the big suey on demand in the ESPN at and subscribe to Libertador Friends podcast network featuring SBT sessions, stupidity and mystery.
Great. Please rate and subscribe. New episodes are posted every week, wherever you get your podcast and it's time for Straight Talk. It is brought to you by Straight Talk Wireless.
Well, here's some straight talk for you guys. There is a voice in sports radio, and I didn't think this could happen in the modern age with so many people dining at the same sports radio trough. But he is getting very popular because of the way he does a sports radio show, which is groundbreaking and trendsetting and different from, you know, some of the cookie cutters out there. And we've interviewed him a couple of times now and he gets better each time.
So if you want to check out a rising star in sports radio, the big city is where you should end up. One of the things that Dugouts was saying, and this is totally fair, he was saying it during the break because I do believe we've arrived in a new place in 2020 with social media where the attack on the athlete is different than it used to be. Where we're in your comment section, when you're Paul George and you've shot less than 25 percent for three games, first guy to be that poor, 10 shots a game since Cousy.
And then the next thing you know, he's disabling his Instagram comment and then we're attacking him as, oh, look how weak, insensitive you are. You can't handle some comments. And then he kind of stuffs it in your face last night under an enormous amount of pressure, OK, with people saying him and James Harden are the only guys who can't do it during the playoffs. Those are the only two we're hitting with that now, right in basketball.
Those are the two hours of Chris Paul, Chris Paul two. OK, that's Chris Paul's team. Totally overachievers and is a lot better than any of us expected because it has Chris Paul. Yes, we will rip Chris Paul from merely being two two. We win. That's a series for the critic right there, James Harden and Chris Paul. One of you needs to lose. We're going to pound one of you. I could decide which one I want to lose more.
Yeah, one of you is going to lose.
But Paul George, that's got to be a very human thing anyone can understand. And it's part of the reason that athletes have a confidence in what they do that makes any confidence that you have in anything. You do pale by comparison because they have to be so good sculpting that skill to get to the top of the Hall of Fame type career that Paul George has had, most of us would crumble under the pressure of so much laughter in our face about how we do our job.
But I was thinking about this last night because, listen, for those of you who don't and most of you don't really know, Dan, Dan is as compassionate a person as I've ever met. He really does not want to hurt anyone's feelings. It's just the way he is. This is a show as a show. We have made fun of Paul, George, including Dan, we rarely do that and rarely do that that way where we're piling on with somebody on, hey, you stink.
And that was born of those heat rivalries where all the soap opera stuff, where he got involved with a stripper that you saw with Damian Lillard allegedly reported the catfish incident with a kissy face.
Yes, but when you hear and we've had discussions in the past about anxiety and depression and I'm like, hey, for millions of dollars, sign me up. When you hear Paul George say, hey, I'm inside the bubble and the criticism has been so loud that I've experienced depression and anxiety leading up to last night's game, I'm wondering how that makes you feel.
Yeah, it makes me feel bad of how we turn these guys perpetually into non-human entertainment vessels that are meant to make us laugh. But we should celebrate what he did last night when he sticks it in our laughing faces where they go up three, two in that series. They, you know, had one of those statement games that got to love so much. And he specifically was the guy who dominated the game. We weren't talking about Luka anymore. That was not a conversation from yesterday.
Luca wasn't very good. He will get to skate on that one because he you know, he made a shot the game before. But Paul George, under the greatest duress so far we've seen in the postseason, told everybody to bleep off and did it in, you know, the way that athletes best flex their muscles when their Hall of Famers.
He did something that no other player in the history of the NBA has done, including Michael Jordan, in a playoff game, I mean, thirty five point to twenty five minutes or less. And Paul George is the guy who's impressive for sure. There's no disputing it. It's just more fun to do pandemic playoff picture.
Can you guys keep singing his praises so I can feel better about myself? Because I felt pretty terrible when that news came across. I embrace being funny for me.
I bring this up where I'm one minute removed from saying I can't decide who I want to lose more in the first round. James Harden or Chris Paul.
I think you're covered because if, say, if Chris Paul advances, you always have the result of eight against James Harden.
Doesn't really get it really. And he's going to lose the next round anyway.
I can't believe what a magical series that is for simply the hater like you got. The hater needs to be what the hater is going to be furious when OKC Houston gets boycotted. Damn you guys taking away my pleasure of assassinating your character because you're stronger than anyone I've ever met. But you look weak and I will pound on you. I am the hater. I'm still not coming around, Gary. I still don't come around on James Harden's game. I don't like it.
But interesting development. I think I like Chris Paul now. I think I like him because of his leadership. I think the OKC thing is weird, a weird point in his career and I think it's actually a really cool story. I'm rooting for Chris Paul right now when I used to not like him at all.
Hmm. I'd like to see him in the NBA finals.
There's an easy way out to all of this. You just these playoffs, this isn't the real playoffs. This is a bubble. This isn't actually the playoffs. Do it in front of fans. Do it when it counts. Do it in the real playoffs. This isn't real.
Unless unless one of us really unless Chris Paul or James Harden wins the championship, then we're still going to be.
It doesn't count. OK, very good. So the hater will always win. Beautiful.
Mike Ryan, please turn up this music a little bit, because I believe that everyone in America starts singing this song when it comes on the radio. I believe nobody sits this out. Kung Fu Fighting.
And you know who sings it? Carl Douglas. Carl Douglas will join us here momentarily. But first, we interrupted you with Kung Fu Fighting. Our sincerest apologies to Christine Lacy.
And finally, KFC has announced plans to remove its iconic it's finger lickin good slogan in response to the covid-19 pandemic. Oh, wow.
That's a crusher Batard show. Put it on the pole. Gismo, are you sad that finger lickin good is gone as a slogan because of the pandemic?
I think everyone is. I also at some point would like to discuss finger foods like what do we do with that moving forward?
OK, so Carl Douglas is going to join us now. But before we do that, just real quick, Christine, do you sing out loud in your car to Kung Fu Fighting? Yes, thank you, Carl Douglas, how about you? Will you stop and start kung fu fighting in traffic if Kung Fu Fighting comes on your radio every single time?
Absolutely. I could see a car totally. I think everyone does that. Put it on the pole avatar. So does everyone in America. Stop and sing Kung Fu Fighting. We love going to Carl Douglas on legal matters. And just for his voice, he's an important voice. You know him perhaps around here as a friend of the show and the O.J. Simpson, the star somehow of the O.J. Simpson documentary that won an Oscar for ESPN. Carl, thank you for joining us.
I'm curious what you make specifically of what is happening right now in Wisconsin and the turmoil being revisited because it had gotten quiet there for a while. They had first of all, thank you and thank you for having me on your show and for giving me this platform, man. I've been in this space for 40 years, man. And last night I just stopped and talked to my law partner, Jomon Hicks, about what is going on. What can this man say?
It is tragic that another black man has died. I told you it's not going to stop. Police misconduct is not getting worse. It's just being televised. It's because police officers are afraid of black men. I think they're afraid. They're afraid because there's a war Europe mentality that they have. You saw the tanks running through Mosul last night. There's a warrior mentality. And until it changes to a guardian mentality where we protect and we serve, that's only when there's going to be a cultural shift to make a difference.
The color of your skin when you walk out of the house is a threat, period. The color of black and brown skin is a danger to white police officers. Unfortunately, I can count on one hand the number of times I've sued a black officer for shooting a black person or a black officer for beating up a black person, because there is that humanity that is missing from Kenosha. It's because of fear. And it's ironic because take a black was not the object of the police call.
He was he was helping two women who were the ones that were arguing that cops held onto his shirt with one arm. He wasn't so afraid to hold on to a shirt. And then he fired seven times at point blank. You're supposed to fire and we assess the need to use deadly force. It is a privilege that police officers have the responsibility to exercise deadly force, but only when it's necessary, imminent and absolutely causal. And any fair minded American, even in the Republican Party, could see that that was not reasonable.
You told us when we talked to you about George Floyd that the reason that one was different is because he narrated his own death and we had to watch it for eight minutes. To me, this felt the same Carl, because killing someone in front of their loved ones, I didn't make a whole lot of differences between the two acts. To me, they felt equally heartbreaking. If I was left speechless even last night, and I've seen the video countless times, and I daresay if Jacob Blake had been white, he would not be paralyzed today.
And I daresay if the officer had been black, Jacob Blake would not be paralyzed today. That is a terrible indictment on our country and on our law enforcement. But it is fair.
Carl, how hard is it to shock you into speechlessness regarding these videos, given that you go back through Rodney King era? Your your law firm has been the, you know, a chief civil rights law firm for four decades.
And the irony is, the irony is good people that there were four that were charged with striking Rodney King and there were 15 other officers that were there that watched that never reported the abuse. That's the culture that we're fighting against. The code of silence is the greatest impediment to justice known to man today. Carl Douglas is in charge of fixing the police department and preventing this stuff from happening, moving forward, what's the first thing Congress does? How do you fix it?
I fire, I don't fire, but I try to change the culture, and it is the fundamentals do got the warrior culture leads to an us versus them mentality and that is not going to prevail. I wouldn't talk about the funding the police, but I would reimagine the use of police funds because cops are trained killers. They are not mental health experts. So if someone calls because my father or my son is having a mental health crisis, we should call a psychiatric evaluation team, not a trained killer.
Cops tell you they are not social workers. I say believe them they're not. So we imagine some of those funds going so that social services can respond and there can be more humanity. And still in our communities, you are a sports fan.
The NBA players at the moment are considering whether or not all options on the table, according to Kyle Lowry in a text to Jay Williams considering a boycott. Your thoughts? There are what? I am torn, Dan, because I am here all day watching for playoff basketball games at night and I am loving it, man, I'm staying home, watching television, typing on my computer during their in time out and breaks. But America has to listen and these young brothers have a voice and money talks, brother.
So always follow the money. And if you want to be influential you got to practice some good trouble. Suspending the NBA finals on day one would be good trouble. It would shake the world, but the point would be clear. Carl, always exceptional talking to you, thank you for stopping by, we we love your voice in every way, sir.
Always. And please, this is such an important time. You're doing great work. And next time. Next time.
It's so good, man. It's. Well, I want to, though, he says, zoom, zoom, zoom, and boom, boom, you can honestly do voice work.
Great. Maybe we should have him voice some stuff for us. Yeah, I've been thinking about it. We should. Why not? Well, the old man carries a lot of weight on him and we can't just push Poppy out, but have a supplemental, a supplemental voice on our show.
I love his voice. I just love his voice in every way. Not just that he sings a song. The great storyteller love that.
He loves his own voice.
Do you want him to voice the message? I mean, there it is. I'm trying to get more interns, as always. Draft kings. People tell the people who got to about draft king drafting the leader. And one day, fantasy sports is giving away up to one hundred million dollars of prizes.
Use me. I'm a joke, Mike. I got all excited about a hundred million dollars. All right. Well, actually, put some money into that saying it's your money. Let me see if I have. Little light to them, I hope, and by light, I mean, I love it, you just pulled out thirty five dollars. You saw that. Oh, OK, I'll leave.
A dollar is a dollar. Now, I put a dollar on the on the console here because I made a mistake last segment or Flamm or whatever, someone wrote this poorly and it's wrong. I'm not blaming anyone, but someone owes some money.
When you had a sentence to say correctly, you could have read it before you started. It's a sponsored segment. It's a good point. All right, so I guess you could have just said Nick McMullen's been fired. I mean, it's pretty interesting after an extension.
After signing an extension. I did. So that's why he's lost. It's why Christine Lacy has taken this from someone, a sentence of news here. She had the sponsor had to deliver it without clunky ness and he couldn't do it. I mean, listen, someone felt the need to add that, you know, after the playoff series lost the Heat, they had no Sabonis. By the way, Oladipo was not 100 percent and they were in every game in the fourth quarter on their stupid firing.
But anyway I owe money.
Yeah something's going on. Want some reporting done that's weird. Yeah, that you would extend someone and then fire them when they overachieved all season and none of us expected to see them playing well.
But if someone doesn't like them, forseen one of the things that I wanted to talk about as it related to everything happening in basketball, because we've been talking about this boycott possibility that is being bandied around the bubble. One of the things. That has been a recurring theme for the last four years. Is the idea that black people have told us again and again and again, hey, you can't just keep demanding the advocacy and the voice from black people, white people also have to lend their voice.
One of the reasons that movement felt different five months ago, four months ago, is because all of these protests had a whole lot of young white people behind them. And so in that vein, I would say to you, Stargardt's, as you or me say to Yanase or LeBron, hey, this can't be about VanVleet. If there's going to be leadership on this front when it comes to social justice, the big stars have to be out there advocating for this stuff.
I would say to you the audience as a television and radio partner to the NBA. ONA's. Owners feel free to really listen to your players here, because if you cost yourself the money of a week's worth of games, if you lead instead of followed the way the NFL did and we all see, oh, wait, the owners, these billionaires, they're willing never mind putting it on LeBron and Jonathan. Oh, wait. All of those white owners are willing.
We can't put Michael Jordan in here because his team's never in the playoffs. But all of those white owners. Hey, all you guys do in those Black Lives Matter commercials, you've all shown that your players, you respect the bodies that are making you money in that sport. Be a great message. If you want to take it out a step further, you could stop putting the pressure. We can stop putting the pressure on the players to do it.
And above them, the white voices with the real money and power costing themselves money for principle. That is a place you can help. While Jerry Jones is at the microphone still saying, hey, can we figure out a compromise on this flag thing? Right.
I think about some of the owners of the teams we're talking about the Lakers, the Bucs close to where it actually happened, where this latest one actually happened, the Boston Celtics.
Imagine, as they have these social justice messages on their uniforms in the NBA, shows you again and again that they demand on being a progressive leader as they do the right things, as it comes to pandemic testing and not only help the communities, but help the research with money. If you want to lead with your money, the players right now have a cause and are talking about boycotting and they're talking about costing the owners money. And if the owners were in line with that voice and what we heard was owners saying the principle of this matters, we will not have black bodies anymore in the street shot seven times in the back when they're unarmed.
The owners can also cost themselves money here in standing for something, take it off the players and say, now, my team's not playing to the authority or the commissioner can do it or the commissioner.
And again, I say this is someone this is a conflict of interest. I want my sports just like Carl Douglas. I'm sure the owners do, too. But if you want to lead, hey, here's your chance to lead.