Former sportscaster Sage Steele has a lot of explainin’ to do
By Mike Leonard
Unfit for duty
Indiana University graduate Sage Steele made a name for herself as a sports broadcaster and earned an anchor spot on ESPN for her talents in talking about sports and with sports figures.
As her career progressed, her fame turned toward notoriety for fighting with the folks at ESPN, particularly about the company’s mandate for personnel to get a Covid vaccine during the onrushing pandemic. Then she took the vaccine, apologized for potentially putting others in harm’s way, and sued ESPN for forcing her apology and violating her free speech.
Then she compared the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk to the murder of George Floyd and called on the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball and all major sports to honor Kirk in the same way they paid tribute to Floyd. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd. Chauvin knelt on the Minneapolis man’s neck for more than nine minutes after detaining him for attempting to cash a counterfeit $20 bill. Steele dismissed talk of police over-reaction and called Floyd a “career criminal.”
She also has pursued legal action against the entertainment industry giant, Creative Artists Agency, claiming they misrepresented her.
And, with no sense of irony, she once questioned why President Barack Obama chose to identify as Black when he had a Black father and white mother – just like her. Why shouldn’t Obama be just like her? Shouldn’t we all … be just like her?
She prefers the term, biracial. No harm in either point of view. But scorn for those who don’t share her views is not an attractive or beneficial trait.
Michael Rushton, a professor emeritus in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU, recently wrote a column about people who regard themselves as not just having a career but a “personal brand.” People including Sage Steele. In his Substack column, “Arm’s Length,” he referred to the IU trustee as “being an outspoken MAGA, the sort who ‘tells it like it is’ whatever Donald Trump thinks it is.”
Does this sound like a person who should serve as a member of the IU Board of Trustees to you?
When Indiana Gov. Mike Braun engineered a legislative coup at the Indiana statehouse, singled out IU and stripped the university of its three trustees elected by IU graduates and installed Steele in one of the newly vacated spots, she entered the top tier of university governance and pledged to represent the highest values of the institution.
“Where do I go to get permission to waterboard this man?
Her personal brand was well-known, but it still shocked observers from coast to coast when, after watching doctor, scientist and infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci testify before Congress recently, Steele had something truly outrageous and to say. Something that played beyond her base.
The 53-year-old former sportscaster posted the following on the social media site, X. “Where do I go to get permission to waterboard this man? As he hangs upside by his toes, of course. Anyone wanna join me?”
Waterboarding is an extreme form of torture that violates the Geneva Conventions and international human rights laws. It is illegal to the civilized world and categorized as a war crime. A crime against humanity. It simulates, to the victim, the sensation of imminent death by drowning, which can be fatal or inflict lifelong physical and psychological damage.
Not only is Steele’s call to waterboard appear to be a violation of the user agreement for the social medium, X, which bans encouraging violence including, a-hem, war crimes. Steele’s glib and sophomoric remarks flout the dignity which the IU board of trustees are expected to exhibit.
“I find it appalling that ANY responsible person would say such a thing about anyone, but especially a person whose public statements reflect on the institution she has been appointed to help govern.”
Randall Tobias, a former chairman of the IU Board of Trustees issued the following statement: “I want to go on record that I find it appalling that ANY responsible person would say such a thing about anyone, but especially a person whose public statements reflect on the institution she has been appointed to help govern,” he wrote. “It is in my view a statement that is both reprehensible and abhorrent and should not stand unchallenged by those who care about the standards and values of Indiana University and those charged with leading it.”
Tobias has additional reason to be offended. A former President and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co., a major maker of pharmaceuticals, Tobias helped shape and implement President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief side-by-side with Fauci, the medical director, to save an estimated 25-26 million lives worldwide.
As Fauci followed the developing science of understanding and managing the effects of the unique COVID-19 coronavirus and pandemic, he was loudly criticized by the likes of loud people like Steele, who latches onto every crackpot theory out there as the REAL reason we practiced social distancing, wore masks and tried to limit the transmission of the deadly disease. Following the science means the actual research of the kind published in places such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – research that suggested that an estimated 14.4 to 19.8 million deaths were prevented worldwide by preventive measures and fast-tracked vaccines – nearly a million lives in the U.S. alone.
Waterboard that man!
Steele knows best. Blame someone of some sort of malfeasance with no rational idea of what they could have done better. Steele seems to have bought into the idea that if we just did nothing, herd immunity would make us all safe. It’s not clear whether she supports injecting disinfectants into our lungs or taking a simple malaria drug, which could be found in the President’s escapist tool bag.
IU is a Research One institution in the top tier of American universities. But with her remarks, she sneers at research and cheers Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Trump appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, who also is a science-denier. Whether she has a roadkill bear in her freezer is immaterial.
Occupying a seat on the IU Board of Trustees is no place for Sage Steele to be. She’s poisoned that well, calling her every move into question, and indicting the other trustees and the institution itself as unworthy of trust. Not that they aren’t doing that anyway.
Her own “hire me” site on Facebook says, “She is a dynamic host, an eloquent Master of Ceremonies, and an impactful speaker (her italics), who takes pride in leading with kindness and grace.”
Advocating waterboarding, in jest or not, is full stop territory. Anti science, anti vaccine, anti-education. Read the fine print before accepting the kindness and grace part. She checks all the boxes.
On her Facebook page, she describes herself as an “Army brat.” No argument there.
“What is clear is that Steele’s tweet has once again positioned her at the center of a cultural and political flashpoint – one that intertwines the worlds of sports, media, and national debate over race and politics,” website writer Randy Oliver wrote after Steele’s latest verbal photo op.
She can be as biased, self-important and repugnant as she wants in her life as a brand. But serving as a trustee and therefore, spokesperson for IU, is not her calling.
She is unfit for duty.
Leave a Reply