All the posturing against racial inequality by NBA social justice warriors sounds like nothing more than baseless talk. On Tuesday, the Miami Heat suspended Meyers Leonard indefinitely for an anti-Semitic slur on the Twitch stream video game Call of Duty.
This hypocrisy came as the NBA earned heaps of bad press for taking money from China while it brutalizes Muslims and Hong Kong citizens.
While playing Call of Duty, Leonard was heard disparaging Jewish people: "Fucking cowards. Don't fucking snipe at me you kike bitch."
The Heat quickly handed out an indefinite suspension to Leonard, a marginal player who has been in the NBA since 2012. He suffered a shoulder injury this season and played in just three games before undergoing season-surgery last month.
"The Miami Heat vehemently condemns the use of any form of hate speech," the Heat statement reads. "The words used by Meyers Leonard were wrong and we will not tolerate hateful language from anyone associated with our franchise. To hear it from a Miami Heat player is especially disappointing and hurtful to all those who work here, as well as the larger South Florida, Miami Heat and NBA communities.”
The NBA is investigating Leonard, according to Jason Owens of Yahoo Sports. However, if anyone in the media is calling out the NBA for its growing record of hypocrisy on race, they're doing it very quietly. If not invisibly.
Twitch, an online gaming and streaming platform, has cancelled Leonard, with this statement by Jacob Wolf of Dot Esports: "We do not allow the use of hateful slurs on Twitch. The safety of our community is our top priority, and per our guidelines we reserve the right to suspend any account for conduct that we determine to be inappropriate, harmful or puts our community at risk."
Two of Leonard’s gaming sponsors, ORIGINPC and SCUF Gaming, ended their associations with him, too.
Last year, Leonard drew controversy for confessing to “white privilege.” He said the Black Lives Matter movement is real pain, not fake news, and he denigrated anyone who says “all lives matter”: "And there’s plenty of people around the United States of America and around the world who say, ‘Yeah, well, f— that, All Lives Matter.’ No, that’s bulls—. Have some sympathy. Learn. Educate. Flip on the TV. Do some research. All lives can’t matter until Black lives matter.”
No wonder Jewish lives didn’t matter as much to Leonard when he used the derogatory term “kike.” He later did the perp talk, on Instagram: "I am deeply sorry for using an anti-Semitic slur during a livestream yesterday. While I didn't know what the word meant at the time, my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong."
While the NBA played its games in the Orlando bubble last year, Leonard drew attention for standing during the national anthem. He tweeted that he “stood against bigotry, racism, and hate.”
That claim looks extremely hollow now, though the media aren't connecting all the dots.
