By Brian Carnell

Thursday, January 13, 2000

I was shocked today when reading the latest issue of |The Nation| not to see at least an editorial lambasting the horrible way Atlanta Braves' pitcher John Rocker has been treated over the past couple weeks. Rocker, of course, gave an interview to Sports Illustrated filled with attacks on foreigners, minorities and homosexuals. Major League Baseball ordered Rocker to undergo psychological testing, but oddly enough not a peep of protest was heard from any Leftist organization or group (unless you want to count the Player's Union as being on the Left).

The only thing The Nation did was one of Calvin Trillin's annoying little poems about Rocker. It is interesting how the people who usually whine and moan whenever employers fire or discipline employees for their political or social beliefs disappear when the discipline is directed at people who hold views diametrically opposed to the Left.

Imagine, for example, that Rocker in his Sports Illustrated interview had decided to emulate NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and suggested he no longer wanted to appear on the field during the singing of the national anthem, and as a result Bud Selig had ordered psychological testing for Rocker. Is there really any doubt that magazines like The Nation would immediately run to Rocker's defense and talk about the horrors of corporate suppression of free speech (in fact Abdul-Rauf had many left-liberal defenders when the NBA suspended him). Instead the general consensus seems to be that Major League Baseball is doing a good thing by disciplining Rocker for his private conversation with a reporter during baseball's off-season.

That's fine, but remember folks that you can't have it both ways. You can't applaud baseball for taking action against Rocker and then turn around and say an employer who might discipline or fire a worker because of his Left views and activism is overstepping the bounds of the employer-employee relationship.

This reminds me of an anecdote that David Horowitz has repeated several times (though I have never seem Navasky confirm or deny this episode):

I had the occasion to raise this issue, on a talk show, with Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation and author of a book on the McCarthy period that established him in the controversy as the most articulate defender of the Old Left. When I asked Navasky if he would have similar objections to a blacklist of Nazis, he said, "The difference is the Nazi Party was illegal. The Communist Party was legal."

It is this sort of double standard that undermines the Left's claim to be a defender of human rights per se, rather than just its particular world view.

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