Even though his primary career right now is dispensing advice on how I should raise my own family? It’s as ridiculous as a fat divorced man telling me how to lose weight and save my marriage.
Has he specifically contacted you? Has he dispensed advice on that subject to you in person? Don’t watch him if you don’t like him. He may be giving advice that other people find useful. The world doesn’t revolve around you.
Eighty years ago the ‘family values’ crowd wanted to live in a world where black people could not rise above the rank of shoe shine boy. The KKK was very pro-family values.
Family values is code for terror of diversity.
Devil’s advocate: what if that advice is “homosexuality is an abomination before God, and those who practice it are evil or in need of special therapy”? If it’s causing that kind of misery, why can’t Condescending Robot care about it and fight against it?
If he provides thoughtful football commentaries, his position on gay marriage is irrelevant. Unless, of course, he starts using that platform to further his political agenda, in which case I’d agree that it was loathsome. If he appears on talk radio shows and talks family values, then bully for him. A talk show is an appropriate venue for that.
To me it’s akin to the network firing Frank Gifford for being caught in bed with a (real) charlatan. I don’t screen my sports commentators based on their politics or their personal lives. And it’s a dangerous and irresponsible mindset to start calling for their heads because we don’t agree with them on an issue completely unrelated to their job.
Oh no! It’s not pit-worthy enough! Clutch the pearls!
Douchebag.
When our patronizing automaton advocates passing laws and amending constitutions to prevent Mr. Dungy (of whose existence I was also blissfully unaware) from disowning his son, you will have made a valid comparison. Until then, not so much. Or, more briefly:
KIDNEYFAIL
So you’d be OK with, eg, David Duke or Fidel Castro calling games for your favorite baseball team? Wouldn’t impede your ability to enjoy the sporting event at all?
If he was talking about Family Values there would be no problem. What he is talking about is marginalizing a portion of society that he finds icky and supporting it with a bogus interpretation of some stupid book written thousands of years ago. In the end no gays will stop doing icky stuff, but they will be marginalized by the portion of society that thinks hate is a family value.
When he goes on Fox News and lectures people about what kinds of relationships or families are or are not morally acceptable, and says that relationships he doesn’t like should not be legal, then he is talking specifically to everyone in the audience, and since when does advocating anti-gay legislation any kind of “advice?”
He doesn’t want to respect privacy, he wants to legislate against it.
He doesn’t get to make himself a policeman for everyone else’s family, then cry about privacy when questions get asked about his own.
I don’t think his fitness to be a football analyst is compromised, and it doesn’t bother me to see him on NFL broadcasts, but I do wish he wasn’t held up as a paragon of virtue. His gay bashing activism really gets glossed over a lot.
I don’t know what happened with his kid, but if he really disowned his own son for being gay, that bespeaks a cruelty, and zealotry and lack of authentic spiritualty that belies his public image.
I don’t know that it’s true, though. It might not be.
You know who else had a son who committed suicide? Hitler’s mom. Tony Dungy, equal to or worse than Hitler’s mom.
If all they are are rumors, then shame on you for believing them and spreading them around.
Dungy’s son was still a teenager.
When did I say I believed them? I said three times that I didn’t know. I was just saying what they are.
My prediction?
[spoiler]The whole thread will devolve into Dio saying “nuh uh” and someone else saying “did too!” until nobody but them even bothers reading it any longer.
Example: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=546508&page=3
[/spoiler]
What am I sayin “nuh uh” about, asshole? If you have a problem with what I’m saying, have the balls to confront me straight on and say why. Don’t be a vagina.
Every single rumor I can find that James was gay was written by a third party who never met the kid and who had a prior hatred for Tony over his religious activism.
Since the person who found the body was his girlfriend, (and 18 seems a bit young for a beard, although not impossible), I’m going to hold off joining in condemnation over a rumor that seems to have no basis beyond the hatred of one group for another.
I have known several outstanding families who have suffered suicides and the idea that teen suicides are always, or even routinely, the result of parental pressure are loathesome falsehoods.
Got evidence? Bring it back. Otherwise, you are simply letting your own antipathy to a particular person clutter up the Pit when we should be excoriating kitten lovers, or something.
I’ve seen no solid evidence for the rumor either. What I can find seems to be of the “I know somebody who went to Jamie’s church” variety.
Dungy doesn’t really bother me that much, but I wish he’ find a better use of his time and expression of his faith than going on Sean Hannity to bash same-sex marriage.
So Tony is using his celebrity to advocate for a position he believes.
Rosie O’Donnell is using her celebrity to advocate a position she believes in.
Same same to me.