#ESPN’s definition of ‘social activist’ doesn’t make any sense

Legend has it, when Don King was asked about the allegations filed against him, he said, “Allegations? I don’t even know the alligators!”

That’s why I can’t figure exactly what distinguishes a “social activist” from a social inactivist, other that inactivist is not a word.

But I’ve come to learn what it now takes to be anointed a “social activist.” All you need is one media outlet to bestow that title and, Voila! You’re a social activist.

ESPN last week sent an alert that its “Rachel Nichols sat down with Portland’s Carmelo Anthony to discuss his journey back to the NBA and his ongoing social activism.”

That’s interesting given, based on what I’ve seen, Anthony’s most visible social activism was flashing that three-to-the-head street-gang rubout sign after scoring a 3, a gesture that quickly and mindlessly spread throughout basketball.

Prior to that, Anthony appeared in a locally produced and distributed video, starring a since-incarcerated gang leader warning the folks of Baltimore not to “snitch” to the cops or you and your family will be at peril of retaliation, perhaps even three to the head.

But if ESPN says he’s a social activist it must be true. ESPN fired veteran tennis analyst Doug Adler for being a racist after he praised Venus Williams’ effective “guerilla tactics.” So ESPN doesn’t get social activism issues wrong.

In 2013, star Vikings running back Adrian Peterson played the day after his infant son was murdered by his mother’s boyfriend.

The next year Peterson was charged with felonious assault on a child — and suspended by the NFL — for beating his 4-year-old son so viciously that even childcare workers were appalled. From their report:

“Peterson’s son had pushed another one of Peterson’s children off of a motorbike video game. As punishment, Peterson grabbed a tree branch — which he consistently referred to as a “switch” — removed the leaves and struck the child repeatedly.

The beating allegedly resulted in numerous injuries to the child, including cuts and bruises to the child’s back, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the child’s hands.

“Peterson then texted the boy’s mother, saying that one wound in particular would make her “mad at me about his leg. I got kinda good wit [sic] the tail end of the switch.”

Then there were tamer moments, such as his arrest in a nightclub and for ignoring piles of parking tickets.

Peterson, now with the Washington Football Team, recently was asked if he plans to “take a knee” during the national anthem. He said he does, to protest social injustice.

Then there’s the on-going tale of former A’s catcher and current Mets signee Bruce Maxwell, the first MLB player to take a knee during the anthem. He soon was out of MLB and playing in Mexico, thus the math became straight edition for the media, starting with an interview on ESPN:

Maxwell was dumped because he dared demonstrate his social activism. He was, according to ESPN, a victim of systemic white racism.

That Maxwell next summoned a food delivery to his home then held a gun to the head of the woman delivering his food never made the cut. How he escaped prison for that is stunning.

But he’s a social activist because TV says so!

It’s now blast-and-trot or whiff-and-shrug

As of Friday, the A’s had struck out 192 times in 19 games and the White Sox 182 times in 19 games. Such stats once defied the limits of MLB possibility and ineptitude.

And it’s even worse than the numbers indicate. MLB this season is using the DH in all games — to stimulate offense. And many of this season’s strikeout totals are from seven-inning games.

By the way, among the three home runs hit by the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts on Thursday, only once did he near first base by the time it cleared the wall. On the other two he stood and posed.

See ya at the Yoenis Cespedes Dance Studio & Driving Range!

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If TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy isn’t an NBA shill with a rotten sense of history, he played one last week.

In a rationalization to the outer limits, he defended the NBA’s continuing huge business partnerships with totalitarian, near-slave labor-enriched communist Red China, with this:

“We committed genocide against Native Americans. We have enslaved, lynched and incarcerated blacks over 400 years. Women couldn’t vote for 140 years. Using abuses elsewhere to try to distract from our own poor record on human rights is dishonest.”

Of course, the abuses committed by America and Americans Van Gundy wrote of were written in the past tense. The loss of even minimal rights in Red China is worsening to the extent that pro-democracy newspapers in Hong Kong are being forced to close, their editors arrested.

But Van Gundy is good with all that and apparently supports its continuance — given that we used to be very bad, too.

Not much ‘student’ in athletes

Why is that it none of our business what’s done with taxpayers’ money on behalf of funding big-time college sports?

Pay the athletes? When will colleges be forced to be accountable for the student-athletes they recruit then disperse, so many of them uneducated?

Adam “Pacman” Jones last week reminded the public he’s a 36-year-old semi-literate “gangsta” who matriculated through his junior year at West Virginia University. How was a recidivist, anti-social creep advanced by WVU if not for football-first priorities? Why shouldn’t state schools answer to taxpayers?

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Sniff. Do you smell Third World rubber and glue?

Heavily recruited QB Jake Garcia has played for four high schools over the past four years. Three have been in California, his latest is in Valdosta, Ga.

Would it be wrong to wonder if there is be a sneaker company or two in there, somewhere?

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I still don’t quite understand TV’s computerized golf shot trackers. The colorized line that follows the ball in the air often shows the ball hit straight down the middle.

Then the ball’s shown burying itself in the deep rough, 25 yards from the fairway.