Tony Dungy’s latest anti-LGBTQ remark proof some really should … – San Francisco Chronicle
The problem with you liberal woke types is that you have no sense of humor.
You’re piling on Tony Dungy because he has been passing along anti-LGBTQ misinformation to his Twitter followers. Nothing worse than you over-reactors, not being able to take a joke!
Last week, Dungy tweeted a response to a Minnesota state lawmaker discussing whether to put tampons in men’s restrooms for the convenience of transgender folks who use the men’s room.
“That’s nothing,” Dungy tweeted. “Some school districts are putting litter boxes in the school bathrooms for the students who identify as cats. Very important to address every student’s needs.”
He deleted the tweet after about seven hours, with no explanation or apology.
Let me give everyone a little lesson in humor. Any time someone says, “That’s nothing,” a phrase often accompanied by the hooking of one’s thumbs in their suspenders, chances are he or she is about to deliver a zingy, hilarious topper to what was just said.
We should rebuke Dungy for plagiarism, however. He stole his litter-box joke from far-right, gay-bashing online mythology. It’s a very popular “joke” in that crowd, and so hilarious that millions who have heard it claim to believe it to be true. That widespread, misguided, ignorant acceptance of hate disinformation is dangerous, of course, but you gotta hand it to those folks for trying to bring a little laughter into this serious world.
It’s so unfair to characterize anti-LGBTQ extremists as lacking a sense of humor. Take Andy Wommack, for instance. This strident anti-gay Christian evangelist has a huge audience, at least in part because of his close personal friendships and working relationship with famous TV football talking heads like Tony Dungy and James Brown. Both Dungy and Brown are annual speakers at Wommack’s big televised shindig.
We’re not straying from sports here, by the way. Wommack is an NFL insider — he staunchly defended Jon Gruden against claims that the then-Raiders coach was racist, sexist and homophobic. The day after Wommack’s all-knowing tirade on behalf of his pal, emails were released clearly showing Gruden to be racist, sexist and homophobic. I bet Wommack got a good laugh over how Coach Gruden had put one over on him.
Laughter is the best medicine, and here’s an example of classic right-wing fundamentalist humor: In a podcast, Dungy’s bestie Wommack cited statistics showing that transgender kids have a much higher suicide rate than do so-called straight kids.
“So homosexuality is three times worse than smoking,” Wommack said, winding up for the killer punch line. “We ought to put a label across their foreheads: ‘This could be hazardous to your health.’”
Come on, give it up for a truly funny fellow, making a point of hurting people for his own entertainment — and thus doing his part to help make that statistic come true.
Of course, a good joke is something to share, and Dungy’s “joke” was shared by at least 20 conservative political candidates and elected officials. Like Dungy, they did not present it as a joke — that would spoil the joke!
But back to Dungy and his double career as a football analyst and spreader of hateful humor. Dungy bases his beliefs, which include strong opposition to same-sex marriage and a distaste for gay players in the NFL, on his and others’ interpretation of the Bible. Which is why he can’t stick to sports and instead started publicly speaking out against marriage equality when he was still coaching the Colts back in 2006, or against NBA player Jason Collins coming out in 2013, and against Michael Sam getting a chance to play in the NFL after he came out in 2014.
Some people in sports, like Tim Hardaway, in his reflections about his past hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, make an effort and outgrow those sentiments when they have them. Not Coach Dungy. He was in a hurry to move on to speaking at the “March for Life” on Friday, moving into dictating women’s choices in health care.
All because Dungy claims to be a man of faith, as they say. He expressed on Twitter that Damar Hamlin’s injury on the football field was part of “God’s plan.” When Hamlin began to recover, Dungy tweeted, “As I walked this morning I thanked God for how He has watched over Damar Hamlin. I couldn’t help but think of Romans 8:28 and God working through a tragedy to help unify us.
“Over the last week I think we have realized that life is too important to let differences separate us.”
Then came Dungy’s litter-box tweet. Now that’s funny.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com