Floyd Mayweather in Kyrie Irving’s Corner on Mandates

CLAY: I talked about some of the politics of vaccine mandates and how it has created some strange bedfellows. One of the most outspoken groups that has had a lot of different celebrities standing up and saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t really agree with the concept of the government mandating a covid vaccine.” A lot of athletes, a lot of comedians, and a lot of entertainers in general have been willing to speak out against the prevailing hegemony that exists on the left-wing, woke culture in particular.

I saw this yesterday. Floyd Mayweather, who is maybe the most successful boxer of his generation, posted a video supporting Kyrie Irving. Kyrie Irving is an NBA player who has refused to get vaccinated. Listen to what Floyd Mayweather said, and then I want to share with you some of the attacks that are occurring based on comments like these.

MAYWEATHER: America is land of the free: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and — supposedly — freedom to choose. Never be controlled by money. I respect you for having some integrity and being your own man. A free mind makes his own choices, and a slave mind follows the crowd. Stand for something or fall for anything.

One man can lead a revolution to stand up and fight for what’s right. One choice, one word, one action can change the world. It’s crazy how people hate you for being a leader. I hope your actions encourage many others to stand up and say, “Enough is enough.” Respect to you, Kyrie, and power to the people.

CLAY: Okay. So that’s Floyd Mayweather. Here’s what he also said: “Choice is defined as an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. America gave us the choice to take the vaccine or not take the vaccine. As time moves on, that choice is gradually being stripped from us.”

And what’s interesting is the number of people who claim that they are all for free expression and outspoken political opinions, who — as soon as someone says anything other than embracing the prevailing woke orthodox in the world of athletics or entertainment — turn it into an opportunity to call them sellouts or racists or Uncle Toms. Deadspin, which is a website mostly bereft of all functional intelligence…

It used to be a fun, zany, irreverent place for sports fans to go hang out. They had an article that they published in the last day or so, and the headline is: “Kyrie Irving and Dave Chappelle are being used as black pawns on a white chessboard.”  Now, that doesn’t really make sense ’cause a “white chessboard”? There’s black and white pieces, and there’s black and white squares on the chessboard, too.

What’s really kind of fascinating is look at how quickly Kyrie Irving, Dave Chappelle — you just heard from Floyd Mayweather — these are prominent black athletes and celebrities who are speaking out against in the case of Dave Chappelle the idea of protected treatment for people who are transgender. In the case of Kyrie Irving, it’s against the New York City vaccine mandates, which he is refusing to comply with and thereby makes him ineligible to play.

In the case of Floyd Mayweather, he’s singing the praises of Kyrie Irving for being willing to make those choices. But don’t mistake what’s going on here. The same people who have lionized Colin Kaepernick for years for taking a knee are now denigrating to the high heavens athletes who don’t have the same opinion as them when it comes to the covid vaccine. And, by the way, these athletes aren’t saying, “Don’t take the vaccine if you decide it’s the right choice for you.”

They’re just saying mandates are wrong, and I know there’s this desire to label everybody out there who doesn’t believe in mandates as anti-vax, right? That’s the new insult that everybody gets tossed on them. I don’t believe in getting my young kids vaccinated for covid, because covid is not a risk to them. That doesn’t make me anti-vax. I’m certainly in favor of measles, mumps, rubella.

As many of you out there listening right now, my kids are vaccinated. I’m opposed to unnecessary mandatory vaccines, but I’m not opposed to you — if you desire and believe that it makes the most sense for your health — being able to go make that choice yourself. There is a fundamental — and, by the way, that goes for masks. That goes for social distance. All these different covid-related mandates really, to me, come down to choice and risk analysis within the context of your own age.

A 4-year-old and an 84-year-old do not have the same risk for covid. The 84-year-old, I think, probably should get the covid vaccine. The 4-year-old should not. That’s simply risk analysis. It’s not being anti-vax. It’s being intelligent enough to understand that a one-size-fits-all policy for 330 million people in the United States doesn’t make sense.

It also doesn’t consider all of you out there like me who’ve already had covid and have natural immunity now as a result of having had covid. My kids? It doesn’t make sense for them to get vaccinated based on the data. They’re under far more risk from far less dangerous things.

They’re way more likely to die in a traffic accident or get murdered or die of the seasonal flu. Being a parent is about teaching your kids how to deal with risk. It’s one of the most important things we teach our kids — and if you are teaching them that they are in danger from covid, frankly, you’re not listening to the data at all.