The liberal media's mistreatment of Bobby Knight
The guy won championships! So why do we have to be reminded he was a jerk? And what does all this have to do with Donald Trump?
I’m not one to speak ill of the dead. And I’m not sure that you folks who subscribe to this newsletter are looking for commentary about college basketball. So apologies in advance for what I’m about to say.
Bobby Knight was a huge jerk.
If you know anything about college basketball, you probably know this. You probably know about the time he threw a chair across the court during a game. You probably knew about the time he assaulted a policeman in Puerto Rico. Or the time he choked one of his Indiana University players on the practice court. Or how he got fired from IU for manhandling a non-basketball student even after he had been put on notice for his behavior.
He was a bully.
Even his friends knew he was a bully. ESPN’s Jay Bilas loved Knight and his obit for the man acknowledged the coach’s … complications. “Knight knew he had made significant mistakes, and I know he regretted them. He just had a difficult time admitting that and apologizing publicly.”
Too bad. That makes him a jerk. A prideful jerk.
But I wouldn’t say this, but Claremont’s American Mind newsletter arrived in my inbox this afternoon, and apparently the folks there think it’s unfair and even a bit unmanly for reporters to have noticed that Bobby Knight was a huge jerk.
Bucknell University’s Alexander Riley writes:
Legendary Indiana college basketball coach Bobby Knight died last week. The response of the media was to attack him in the same way they attacked him while he was alive.
NPR’s Scott Simon, for example, reminded us Bobby Knight “was no teddy bear.” (Teddy bears are the preferred male model in NPR world.) Simon ends his critique of Knight by noting that his intensity would have been forgivable if he’d been doing something important with his life instead of just coaching college ball.
Of course, Simon wasn’t holding up teddy bears as preferred male models. He was just saying that Bobby Knight was a huge jerk — his defining characteristic, famously so — without saying Bobby Knight was a huge jerk because Bobby Knight is dead and it’s NPR.
Riley:
A few decades ago, our media culture was capable of treating Knight more fairly, or at least they let him speak for himself and noted his achievements. 60 Minutes, for example, did a feature on him in 1980 that is worth a look, mostly because it lets Knight talk about what he’s doing and lays off the vapid moral pontificating.
People interested in improving, Knight said, prefer criticism to compliments. “Praise makes us lazy,” in Knight’s view.
[Snip]
In denigrating Knight, our media culture demonstrates its vicious misandry. Our culture, in its short-sighted failure to comprehend just what they have done to build all we have, hates traditional men. It is becoming impossible to build more men like Bobby Knight, and we will all suffer for that.
But of course, the problem with Knight wasn’t just that he criticized people. It’s that he physically assaulted them. And when he crossed lines or humiliated others, he was incapable of acknowledging his error or making amends.
And then Riley — and Claremont by extension — wants us to think that noticing these things, that judging these things, is somehow “anti-men.” Why do we have to criticize the choking? Why can’t we just acknowledge his championships and move on?
“Masculine aggression is one thing,” Riley writes, “but there’s a lot more associated with that personality type: the single-minded commitment, the expertise, the assertive leadership.”
I live in Lawrence, Kansas. The home of the University of Kansas. Bill Self, the head coach of the basketball team here, has a great many faults. I’m not always a fan. But also: As far as I know, he won two national championships here without choking a player. I’m sure he is aggressive in practices, I’m sure he yells a lot. But there are lines.
The folks who would have you believe that bullying aggression is the only way to get things done ignore all the many times those things get done without the bullying aggression.
Claremont, of course, is one of the intellectual nerve centers of Trumpism. They’re the folks who provided the brainpower for Trump’s attempted coup. And they’re home to folks like Michael Anton, who — as my former colleague Damon Linker pointed out in the New York Times this week — increasingly argue for a Caesar to push American democracy aside in favor of strongman rule.
Riley’s lament for huge jerk Bobby Knight is all part of the same project. Claremont, it seems, wants government of, for and by the huge jerks.
Photo: Claremont’s American Mind newsletter.