Hayley F. Gallagher, Caroline Wright, and Jeffrey W. Kassing
Introduction
On June 26, 2019, US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to admonish USWNT co- captain Megan Rapinoe. He implored her to win the tournament and to “never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team” (Das, 2019, ¶ 10). His tweets were apparently offered in response to a viral video that had surfaced a few days earlier. In the video, released by EightbyEight magazine, Rapinoe was asked on camera – while she was preparing for a pre- tournament photoshoot with teammates – if she was excited about the prospect of going to the White House.
Looking down as she laced up her cleats, Rapinoe responded by letting out a
“tsk” before saying without looking up, “I’m not going to the f***ing White House.” The moment occurred several months before the World Cup. However, it emerged during the tournament, provoking the public rebuke from President Trump and a media frenzy that could have derailed the USWNT’s pursuit of the championship. A day after Trump’s tweets on the evening before the much- anticipated quarterfinal matchup against France, Rapinoe appeared alongside coach Jill Ellis at a press conference. She said, “I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House, with the exception of the expletive” – entertainingly adding “My mom would be very upset about that”
(Das, 2019). She then elaborated:
But I think obviously answering with a lot of passion, considering how much time and effort and pride we take in the platform that we have, and using it for good, and for leaving the game in a better place and hopefully the world in a better place— I don’t think that I would want to go and I would encourage my teammates to think hard about lending that platform or having that co- opted by an administration that doesn’t feel the same way and fight for the same things we fight for (¶ 3).
A request from Rapinoe to forego any further questions on the topic followed and the press conference shifted to the impending match. Rapinoe’s justification
directly referenced the high- profile status the team had achieved in their pursuit of a second consecutive World Cup title and sought to place her earlier comment within the ongoing activism efforts team members had undertaken with regard to pay equity for women athletes and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights.
As the tournament played out, Rapinoe took center stage leading the USWNT to victory with two goals in the quarterfinal against France and another in the final against the Netherlands. Later that same year, she received the Ballon d’Or (Golden Ball) award for the best female soccer player of the season. Accusations, however, ensued from pundits and fans who claimed that her activism instead of her on- field performances determined the outcome of the accolade (RT, 2019).
Despite some criticism, others celebrated her legacy of activism that included campaigning for prisoners’ rights on behalf of her brother who had been in and out of jail, becoming the first white American athlete to kneel during the national anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, and opposing U.S. Soccer’s gendered pay structure – all of which led Rapinoe to characterize herself as a walking protest (Kuper, 2019).
Against the backdrop of Rapinoe’s continuous activism, this chapter considers the public’s reaction to her flippant comment about not going to the White House. This involved examining a conversation that emerged on the social news website Reddit regarding Rapinoe’s comment. Remarks from that conversa-tion, which ranged from derogatory to supportive, represented a snapshot of fan opinions of Rapinoe as an athlete and potential activist. Those comments were analyzed using a grounded theory approach and produced several notable themes.
The American tradition of having championship teams visit the White House began with the Washington Senators baseball team in 1925 when they visited Calvin Coolidge. The first NBA champions visited the White House in 1963 – when the Boston Celtics met John F. Kennedy. The first collegiate champions (i.e., Indiana University men’s basketball team) met with Gerald Ford in 1976.
Interestingly, the first Super Bowl champions did not appear at the White House until Jimmy Carter extended an invitation in 1980 to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
That same city’s hockey team (i.e., the Pittsburgh Penguins) became the first Stanley Cup champions to be welcomed to the White House by George H. W.
Bush in 1991. The tradition became more consistent and routine during Reagan’s presidency and now includes about a dozen professional, collegiate, and national team visits annually (Neumann, 2016).
The visit represents a collective, national, and symbolic acknowledgment of sporting success for championship teams. But increasingly it has been construed as an endorsement of a given administration, which in turn casts athletes who eschew invitations as partisan actors. Refusals from athletes across sports and championship teams are not uncommon and are not necessarily politically motiv-ated (Bembry, 2018; Neumann, 2016). Athletes who have dismissed invitations include sporting legends like NBA greats Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and the NFL’s Tom Brady – all of whom avoided having their absences politicized
by providing little or no comment. In contrast, other athletes have publicly disclosed their political standpoints. For example, NFL Ravens center Matt Brik, an avowed Catholic and pro- life activist, rejected an invitation from the Obama administration due to its support for Planned Parenthood (Bembry, 2018), whereas Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle cited Donald Trump’s div-isive rhetoric as the reason he refused to be part of his World Series championship team’s visit (Bumbaca, 2019). Thus, Rapinoe’s dismissive statement positions her as an athlete activist contesting a well- established albeit routinely challenged American tradition.
Literature review
Although both sports professionals and fans often claim that sport should be apolitical (Thiel, Villanova, Toms, Thing, & Dolan, 2016), the position of sport within American society makes such a proposition impossible. Sport is not simply a neutral pastime enjoyed by a small portion of the population. Indeed, sport is one of the largest industries in America with approximately six out of every ten Americans self- identifying as sports fans (Jones, 2015). While it is in the interest of those who benefit from sport to maintain the veneer of being apolitical in order to appeal to as broad a viewership as possible (McAllister, 1998), claiming a neutral position also can be read as political (Thiel et al., 2016). In attempting to shroud this reality, professionals and fans alike ignore the very real political influence sport exerts over millions of Americans (Houlihan, 1994; Sage, 1998).
To wit, a Senate investigation found that the U.S. Department of Defense had spent over $10 million across 22 contrasts with professional sports leagues to pro-mote the military (Everett, 2015), the effect of which can be seen in a study that found a positive relationship between sport fandom and support for the military (Thorson & Serazio, 2018).
Despite some fans preferring to keep politics out of sport (Cavalier & Newhall, 2018; Thorson & Serazio, 2018), athletes often resist the decoupling of sport and politics when they recognize that their status enables them to promote pro- social and progressive outlooks (Kaufman & Wolff, 2010). Accordingly, athlete activism has a long history in America ranging from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick (Brown & Brison, 2018). Yet athlete activism and the politiciza-tion of sport tend to be met with mixed reacpoliticiza-tions from fans. For example, U.S.
Soccer’s effort to show support for marriage equality and the LGBTQ commu-nity through a public campaign created an outcry among fans who believed that sport and politics should be kept separate (Cavalier & Newhall, 2018). Some fans also believed that sports stars were unqualified to speak about politics and that they violated the sanctity of sport when they chose to do so, while others complimented athletes for exercising their right to political expression and acting as positive influences (Serazio & Thorson, 2020). This ambivalence surfaced when some fans reported feeling that athlete activism was incompatible with sport, while others encouraged it (Frederick, Sanderson, & Schlereth, 2017).
Consequently, there is a lack of consistency regarding fan perspectives on athlete activism, wavering between an uncompromising view that contends sport and politics should remain independent and a more pragmatic one that recognizes the prospect of athletes using their status and popularity to affect change.
A range of factors may influence how fans frame athlete involvement in pol-itics. Media consumers identify with celebrities when they feel they share similar-ities (Soukup, 2006), and this may extend to activism. One’s political alignment also appears to exert some influence regarding how fans perceive athlete activism.
In fact, there is evidence to suggest that fan identification and media consumption decreased when fans perceived that athletes criticized presidents they supported or backed positions they found troubling (Mudrick, Sauder, & Davies, 2019).
Similarly, fans who reported higher levels of patriotism and nationalism were more likely to respond negatively to athlete activism (Smith, 2019). Additionally, fans may overlook militarized nationalism in sport but react negatively to leftist politics that they believe will upset the status quo (Serazio & Thorson, 2020). All of this suggests that fan reactions to athlete activism vary considerably and differ according to targets of identification. To better understand the phenomenon of athlete activism and the specific construction of Rapinoe’s politicized stance on attending a White House victory celebration, we pose the following research questions:
R1: What themes emerge from consideration of fan discourse about Megan Rapinoe?
R2: What implications arise from the ways fans frame and discuss athlete activism?
Methodology
Reddit is a social news website generating on average over one billion unique vis-itors per month (Statista, 2019). The website allows users to post links, articles, images, videos, or text within topic- based communities called subreddits. Users comment on posts within subreddits, thereby building a discussion on a given topic. The popularity of the website combined with few barriers to access attracts a diverse population of users. A robust conversation about Rapinoe’s intention to decline an invitation to the White House developed after a news article on the topic appeared on site. The shared article, written by Kathryn Krawcyzk, appeared on the webpage of The Week – a magazine that covers a variety of current events from various political viewpoints – and included an embedded video of Rapinoe voicing her original White House comment (Krawczyk, 2019). This work considered that conversation as a representative public dialogue that, in turn, constituted a purposive sample of individual comments for analysis (N = 506).
Grounded theory served as the analytical tool used to uncover the thematic content of the conversation examined (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This entailed the first two authors reviewing the texts independently and repeatedly until themes emerged from the data, then conferring about relevant content until reaching
consensus on the major thematic content and exemplar texts representing each emergent theme. This process continued until categories became exhaustive and data reached saturation. The third author provided a secondary review of emer-gent categories and the affiliated exemplars to further validate their composition.
Results
Four major themes emerged from fan comments: discrediting, resistance, patri-otism, and general support. Discrediting involved attempts to insult or discredit either Megan Rapinoe, the USWNT, or their activism. Resistance entailed opposition to President Trump, his administration, and the Republican party.
Patriotism concerned debate about whether Rapinoe’s comment and her pre-vious activism exhibited patriotism. General support implied endorsement of Rapinoe’s position and her action with succinct and encouraging comments.
Discrediting
Discrediting involved showing obvious disgust for Rapinoe and her actions and challenging her relevancy and the significance of the USWNT as public figures. It also involved questioning her credibility as a successful athlete and devaluing ath-lete activism as something akin to slacktivism (Morozov, 2009). People conveyed general disgust for and absolute disparagement of Rapinoe, suggesting that her comment should not surprise anyone because “she’s trashy” while declaring “what a loser.” Additionally, comments directed at Rapinoe specifically included insults and proclamations about her relevancy (e.g., “No one cares, you irrelevant nar-cissistic athlete”), often tinged with a degree of sarcasm (e.g., “the president of the united states and his staff will be devastated to learn someone from the women’s soccer team won’t visit the white house”) that bled into commentary about women’s sports broadly. For example, one comment asserted that “No one cares. Female sports are awful,” before suggesting that empty WNBA arenas con-firm that no one “watches this trash.” The conflation of irrelevance and women’s sport participation reflected historically ingrained discourses of sexism and mis-ogyny inherent in sport (Hall, 1988; Messner, 1988). Commenters weaponized these tropes as part of a superficial exercise designed to trivialize her comments and invalidate their cultural reach.
Discrediting also occurred when people emphasized athletic achievement, thereby depoliticizing the context. Comments like “Seriously, pretty obnoxious and presumptuous. Win first, then get invited, then worry about it” and “Have to win first and she’s been playing like ass” seemed to suggest that activism would be irrelevant if not tethered to success and achievement. Comments such as these revealed discourse rooted in the “stick to sports” mantra that works to bifurcate sport and politics (Thiel et al., 2016).
Additionally, posters discredited Rapinoe’s activism by undermining its nov-elty. For example, one commenter suggested that Rapinoe’s stance on not going
to the White House was “boring” as it merely made her one of many athletes and celebrities who do not like Trump “just like the majority of Americans”— asking instead “Why doesn’t she go to the White House and give him a piece of her mind face to face?” The implication being that her posturing was less powerful than if she in fact confronted the president directly. Others panned her effort as childish and naïve (e.g., “Oh wow you want an award for that”). These and other comments framed Rapinoe’s advocacy as a version of slacktivism that makes one feel good but “has zero political or social impact” (Morozov, 2009, ¶ 1).
Resistance
Resistance materialized when commenters positioned themselves as co- participants in the larger resistance movement against President Trump that Rapinoe’s comment seemed to invoke. Accordingly, they described her as an
“American hero” and as “a great example of the proper American spirit.” This association manifested along three tangents. The first consisted of general attacks against Trump like one that claimed he had made “the office a farce” and that as such actually going to the White House was “an insult as long as he occupies it.”
The second tangent entailed comments about impeaching Trump. For instance, one post suggested that Rapinoe “should do a running knee slide on the white house [sic] lawn and rip off her shirt with ‘impeach Trump’ in big letters on her sports bra.” Beyond outwardly echoing repeated calls to impeach Trump, this comment also references specific and general soccer knowledge by intertextually linking a customary goal celebration (i.e., the knee slide) with the now infamous goal celebration that marked the USWNT victory in the 1999 World Cup when Brandi Chastain removed her shirt to celebrate triumphantly in a sports bra. For soccer aficionados, the specific imagery summoned amplifies the pertinence of the suggested action, certainly in comparison to interpretations less informed readers may have drawn.
The final tangent referenced accusations about Trump’s infidelity and sexual misconduct. For example, one contributor suggested that Rapinoe “would be sexually assaulted or raped by the President” if she attended the White House celebration because “The POTUS [President of the United States] is literally a rapist.” Another reasoned that Rapinoe would not want to go “because she isn’t a fan of fast food on fancy platters, or a fan of rapist sociopath traitorous liars.”
While the initial claim of this comment joked about a previous team’s visit that became newsworthy because the fit athletes received the fast food that President Trump apparently favored, the latter part provided a strident and utter indict-ment of his character. Thus, participants in the discussion framed Rapinoe as representative of the larger opposition to his presidency, affirmed through charges that as a morally dubious character, he had devalued the office and therefore deserved to be impeached. From this vantage point, a clear cohort of posters positioned themselves as part of the resistance that Rapinoe had captured with her comment.
Patriotism
With regard to patriotism, some comments alluded to Rapinoe’s previous activism vis- à- vis kneeling during the national anthem. For example, one comment queried, “Doesn’t she kneel during the anthem while representing the country?” before suggesting that “Cognitive dissonance is required with this one.” Statements like these put Rapinoe’s more recent comment on a timeline of activism punctuated by seemingly unpatriotic acts that people associated with disrespect for the flag, country, military, and veterans. For instance, commen-tary like, “If you want to kneel before the flag, don’t show up” intimated that protesting the anthem would disqualify someone from a White House visit for not behaving “like a patriot.” Her recent comment, then, denoted a continu-ation of her unpatriotic tenor as “an America hater plain and simple” for some contributors.
In contrast, others construed her comment and previous behavior as quite patriotic due to the fact that they perceived President Trump as “the most un- American POTUS we’ve ever had” – making her behavior “a great representa-tion of America.” Aligning with remarks that situated Rapinoe as emblematic of the larger resistance to Trump, these posts framed such actions as truly patriotic.
Other contributors sought to bring some clarity and logic to the patriotism tug- of- war. For instance, one asked fellow readers to understand that hating the President did not equate to hating the country, before asking them to consider a simple premise: “Going to the white house is a reward because it’s an honor to meet the president. If you don’t consider meeting the president an honor, why would you go?” This question and similar posts (re)positioned Rapinoe’s comments as justi-fied and reasonable. Thus, contributors framed Rapinoe’s behavior in response to how they conceptualized her previous activism, how they construed patriotism, and how they understood and deployed cultural interpretations of President Trump, the office of the presidency, the national anthem, and the role of dissent.
General support
This last group of comments showed direct support for Rapinoe and her actions without further explanation or justification. They were voiced as simple, straight-forward affirmations (e.g., “Good”), but also as more direct and enthusiastic assertions (i.e., “We support her!!!!”). Accordingly, they resembled the gen-eral positive grouping of comments previously identified from fans debating US Soccer’s foray into supporting marriage equality (Cavalier & Newhall, 2018).
Like those comments, these tended to exist as single posts that drew little in the way of replies or feedback. They also were the least nuanced in comparison to the other types of comments shared (Cavalier & Newhall, 2018). While not triggering reaction individually, collectively they did infer a degree of unre-strained endorsement of Rapinoe and her activism.
Discussion
Holistically the Reddit conversation about Megan Rapinoe’s White House comments evolved along several themes. Accompanying the simple and clear- cut supportive comments was discourse about credibility, resistance, and patri-otism. Part of the discourse actively sought to discredit Rapinoe by dismissing her relevancy specifically as a public figure, trivializing women’s sport generally, and construing athlete activism as ineffectual and unpopular. Comments forwarding these premises ranged from outright attacks on Rapinoe’s character to posts that infantilized her efforts as derivative and impotent. In contrast, the resistance
Holistically the Reddit conversation about Megan Rapinoe’s White House comments evolved along several themes. Accompanying the simple and clear- cut supportive comments was discourse about credibility, resistance, and patri-otism. Part of the discourse actively sought to discredit Rapinoe by dismissing her relevancy specifically as a public figure, trivializing women’s sport generally, and construing athlete activism as ineffectual and unpopular. Comments forwarding these premises ranged from outright attacks on Rapinoe’s character to posts that infantilized her efforts as derivative and impotent. In contrast, the resistance