You know the old joke.  I went to the fights, and a hockey game broke out.  Today it's more like I was watching a left-wing political rally, and an NBA game broke out.

It is impossible to watch a sporting event these days without being lectured by the players, owners, leagues, and networks.  What American sports needs is a good dose of Ricky Gervais, like when he roasted Hollywood during the Golden Globes for its nonstop politicking.

I'm no Ricky Gervais, and this is more of a rant than humor but here it goes.

Dear professional athletes:

You are remarkably talented at dribbling a basketball or throwing a football or baseball, but at your young age, you most likely know very little about life and history, especially the nuances of race relations in America, capitalism, global warming, or whatever else you're prattling on about.  You're in no position to lecture anyone about anything, except maybe how to dunk a basketball.

But hey, the great thing about America is that it is your right to speak out if you want, even if you're a fool.  But please do this on your own time and not at work.  Please stop annoying the hell out of the paying customers.  One final tip, if I may: Your rants about how you've been disadvantaged by growing up in horrible America will come off as more genuine if you aren't posing in front of your Bentleys when you're doing them.

Dear sports leagues and team-owners:

Stop treating your fans and customers as if they are racist, homophobic, uneducated rubes with little or no moral character.  How rude.  That is a horrible way to treat a paying customer.  You're in no position to lecture anyone on anything.  If anything, it is your team or league that has a history of racism and cutting deals with human rights–abusers like China, not your fans.  Also, please stop shoving a communist front organization down our throats on players' uniforms and playing fields.  And oh, by the way, saying all lives matter isn't racist, but disavowing those who say it is.

The tradition of playing "The Star Spangled Banner" before athletic events started during World War I as an act of patriotism.  Since you have no will to prevent your players from disgracing the National Anthem, just stop playing it.  I'd rather not have the anthem played if by playing it, we have to stand by and watch as millionaire players do the equivalent of giving America the finger during it.

Stop changing your names and traditions just because some two-bit activists tell you to.  The Washington Football Team is a stupid moniker.  One clue to the clueless: The activists represent themselves, not those whom they say they speak for.  If you really give a damn about American Indians, send some of the proceeds from your TV contracts to help with the poverty, poor educational system, and the lack of proper medical facilities, and to stop substance abuse that happens on reservations.  How does eliminating words and symbols like Indians, braves, squaws, tomahawks help them?  It just pushes them farther on the margins of American consciences.

Dear sports networks:

Watch your own broadcasts sometime.  The quality sinks lower each year along with the morality.  You're in no position to lecture anyone about anything.

Your sporting broadcasts are supposed to be entertaining.  Stop firing your on-air talent when they say things like all lives matter or harassing them when they make a joke about women being a distraction to hockey players in the NHL bubble.  Are we to pretend that men have not been distracted by women since the dawn of time?  It's called biology.  Look it up sometime, and not on Wikipedia.

Here's a tip for you.  Go to YouTube and watch Harry Caray broadcasting an old White Sox game.  At times he was clearly drunk on air, butchered the players' names, talked about their ethnicities as well as good-looking women in the stands.  Everyone loved Harry Caray because he was entertaining and fun to listen to.  There is nothing fun about the new generation of sports broadcasters, who sound like an old Pravda TV announcer telling us the virtues of Leonid Brezhnev.

American sports fans are being pushed around.  If they are pushed any farther, we will have an Atlas Shrugged moment on our hands.