WGN No More?

[Butcher]

 

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This feels different to me, though. Paying to watch/support the team is purely elective. I have to pay taxes, buy groceries, pay rent, etc. Choosing to pay for season tickets and buy Cubs merchandise is obviously not in the same category. If there was a movie that was funded by a far-right organization, I would absolutely not watch that movie. Is this any different? I don't ever order Papa John's (and not just because it's disgusting pizza), but because of the racist shitbag who runs the company. Should I continue to support the Cubs because I grew up going to games, my kids grew up going to games, it's a huge part of who I am and ignore the inconvenient truth of who owns the team? Well...that's what I have to consider now. Because it isn't an innocuous choice to me anymore. Do I rob myself and my kids of the experience of going to ballgames in the summer because I don't want the Ricketts family to have any more of my money?

 

Fuck the Ricketts for making me even have to think about this shit. Baseball is supposed to be one of my escapes from the political hellscape that exists today; not part of it.

So I don't know if this makes it better or worse for you Butch, but just for perspective, say you get cable or satellite now, some of your bill is going to Fox News as well as multiple Sinclair channels. (And also MSNBC and Food Network and ESPN and so forth.)  Unless they screw it up the Cubs channel will get per subscriber fees to the cable/sat system that carries it as a whole, not subscribers to the channel itself.  I don't know what impact that might have on a decision to support the team in general, but again, just for perspective on it being Sinclair as opposed someone else.        

 

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Well...I don't know what that changes for me, if anything. It's the active choice that they decided to partner with Sinclair over whatever other options they had. They obviously know who Sinclair is and what they do and that didn't deter them (perhaps it was even a selling point for Joe/Todd?). Sinclair isn't just an organization with a conservative bent -- they're far worse. It's troubling to me that the team I grew up watching and loving and living and dying with is now partnered with an entity like Sinclair.