{"id":14592,"date":"2022-11-22T09:47:31","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T14:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/?p=14592"},"modified":"2024-08-30T11:22:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T15:22:14","slug":"researchers-explore-the-racial-and-gender-politics-of-barstool-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/news\/researchers-explore-the-racial-and-gender-politics-of-barstool-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers explore the racial and gender politics of Barstool Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kingston, R.I.<\/strong> — Nov. 22, 2022 — In just 20 years, Barstool Sports has grown from a small fantasy sports and gambling blog to a digital media and lifestyle behemoth that boasts $200 million in annual revenue. It\u2019s also a means of mainstreaming racial exclusion and white-male dominance in a way that parallels the recent resurgence of white nationalism in the U.S., according to research by two University of Rhode Island professors.<\/p>\n

In an article published in the Sociology of Sport Journal<\/a><\/em>, professors Kyle Kusz and Matthew Hodler<\/a> argue that Barstool creates a \u201csafe space for young white men\u201d in which they can \u201cfeel free to do \u2018whatever the f\u2014 they want\u2019 without guilt, constraint, apology, or penalty.\u201d That exercise of white prerogative, the researchers say, bears similarity to the ways in which groups like the Proud Boys seek to defend white men from \u201csocial justice warriors\u201d and \u201cwoke mobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kusz, a professor of English and gender and women\u2019s studies, and Hodler, an assistant professor of communication studies and sports media, are not the first to call out Barstool\u2019s racial and gender politics. But many prior critiques, Kusz says, have been directed specifically at David Portnoy, the company\u2019s founder and figurehead, who has appeared in pictures with a person in blackface and made racially charged comments about former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Kusz and Hodler wanted to look at Barstool as an entity rather than just at Portnoy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to go a little deeper than these isolated instances,\u201d Kusz said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to offer a more systemic critique of how racial logics operate within Barstool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hodler says the article was, in part, an effort to take a close look at a media company that\u2019s popular among some of his students, particularly those in his sports media classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of our students liking Barstool seemingly uncritically,\u201d Hodler said. \u201cWe were curious, as I think any good instructor should be, about what our students were interested in. We had seen these stories in Media Matters and The New York Times talking about racism and sexism at Barstool, but we wanted to look at \u2018the how\u2019\u2014exactly how these racial politics work through the site and through the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kusz and Hodler focused their critique on a 15-part documentary video series broadcast on Barstool\u2019s website and YouTube channel. The series is a useful means of understanding Barstool, the researchers say, because it\u2019s the company\u2019s own representation of its origins and a projection of how it would like to be perceived. Despite Barstool\u2019s assertions that it\u2019s apolitical, the documentary series seems to wear its association with the political right on its sleeve. Portnoy is introduced in the series\u2019 first episode through an audio clip of Tucker Carlson, the bombastic Fox News pundit often accused of trafficking in white nationalist ideas.<\/p>\n

The series goes on to document a booze-soaked tour of college football powerhouses in the American South dubbed the \u201cDixie Tour\u201d\u2014which took place at a time when many were protesting the continued use of Confederate symbols in American public life. Barstool\u2019s Dixie Tour footage repeatedly showed conspicuously all-white crowds coupled with soundtracks featuring Black hip-hop artists\u2014an effort to \u201cto embrace Black culture without Black people,\u201d the researchers write. In doing so, Barstool is able feign racial colorblindness while simultaneously associating its brand with Confederate symbolism.<\/p>\n

Another installment of Barstool\u2019s series chronicles what became known as \u201cHowitzergate,\u201d an incident in which Portnoy posted a picture on his blog of Tom Brady\u2019s naked son with a comment about his genitals. Portnoy removed the image at the request of the Massachusetts Attorney General\u2019s office but continued to defend the post as merely a joke. The documentary episode relentlessly lauds Portnoy\u2019s defiance in the face of controversy and authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe State in that story is represented through this woman prosecutor,\u201d Kusz said, \u201cas a feminizing and feminist force who is portrayed as trying to take the fun away from these white guys who are just trying to have a laugh with their bros\u2014even though that fun was through the sexualization of a two-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kusz points out that this logic parallels a popular right-wing belief, as Senator Rick Scott puts it, that there is a \u201cmilitant left [who] now controls the entire federal government, the news media, academia, Hollywood, and most corporate boardrooms \u2013 but they want more. They are redefining America and silencing their opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only does Barstool consistently produce all-white social worlds where white men acting like \u2018bros\u2019 run the show, but Barstool\u2019s use of humor as a shield mirrors groups like the Proud Boys, \u201cwho use ironic and satirical humor to draw aggrieved whites to their projects,\u201d Kusz and Hodler write. At the same time, the documentary\u2019s lionization of Portnoy\u2019s defiance also bears similarity to the Proud Boys, who \u201cimagine themselves as rebellious, countercultural \u2018disruptors\u2019\u201d crusading against political correctness.<\/p>\n

All of this, the researchers conclude, helps create an unspoken link between Barstool and the far-right ideologies espoused by more overtly political groups like the Proud Boys. Kusz and Hodler say they realize that their analysis may put them at odds with legions of fans who see no such racial politics in what Barstool does.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason I think a lot of people have a hard time seeing Barstool as this purveyor of white supremacy is that the logics of racial segregation are so normal to most white people, especially white people who grow up in upper middle-class places,\u201d Kusz said. \u201cBut, after talking with students about Barstool, it became clear to us that many didn\u2019t seem to recognize how the company consistently creates racially segregated spaces organized around satisfying some young white men\u2019s desire to feel like big men.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers hope the piece will help people to see the way in which far-right ideas and values are seeping into mainstream media spaces, including those of sport media. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new paper, URI researchers argue that Barstool Sports helps to normalize racial exclusion and white male dominance in ways that parallel the rise of the alt-right in the U.S. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4688,"featured_media":14593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[340,7,360],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-spotlights","category-news","category-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4688"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14592"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14852,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14592\/revisions\/14852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}