A a J myself, someone who lived with @Hoosierhawk for 2 years in college, and someone who lifted him up in a chair during Hava Nagila at his wedding, let me be very clear in my answer to you:
Yes, he is.
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Shit, there I go posting during business hours again. I hope I don’t get on a Zoom in a Miami basketball shirt today. Oops, too late.
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=>Come on…
“Indiana = super racist because the KKK was big there.”
Ah yes, the classic historical logic: a bad thing happened somewhere once, therefore that place is permanently defined by it forever. By that standard, Germany is still run by Nazis and Massachusetts is a hotbed of Puritan witch trials.
Yes, the KKK did have a huge presence in Indiana in the 1920s. That’s not a secret. In fact, historians estimate around 250,000–300,000 Hoosiers joined during the peak of the second Klan. But here’s the part people conveniently leave out: the Klan collapsed spectacularly and quickly after its Indiana leader, D.C. Stephenson, was convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer in 1925. The scandal exposed corruption across the state government and caused membership to crater almost overnight. Within a few years the Indiana Klan was basically politically dead.
And while we’re at it, the “Indiana is still known as one of the most racist states” claim is doing a lot of heavy lifting without evidence. Modern measures—demographics, civil rights law, voting patterns, hate-crime statistics, and economic mobility—don’t magically single Indiana out as some uniquely racist outlier.
What the history actually shows is something much less convenient for internet hot takes:
• The Klan briefly gained influence during a nationwide surge in the 1920s.
• Its Indiana leadership imploded in scandal.
• The movement collapsed politically.
So yes, Indiana had a dark chapter. So did basically every state in the country at one point or another. Pretending one state is uniquely defined by a century-old extremist movement says more about the person making the claim than it does about the state.
But sure—if we’re judging places solely by their worst moment in the 1920s, I guess we should all start referring to Chicago as “Al Capone’s crime capital” and Tennessee as “the state that tried to ban teaching evolution.”
History is a little more complicated than a one-line insult.
It defies logic to claim that a man is “motivated by Jew Hatred” when he dedicated a large portion of an entire broadcast to (1) speaking with a Jewish guest he explicitly described as a “legend,” and (2) discussing the “anniversary of the horrific Hamas massacre of Jews.” Those actions are fundamentally incompatible with the accusation you’re trying to make.
The only hate I want to discuss on hawktalk today is that directed to Athens. Georgia, Greece, Ohio: take your pick and hate them all.
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One of my fraternity brothers at Miami was a rabbi in Fort Wayne and described it as incredibly anti-Semitic and racist. He received threats to himself and his family. This was around ten years ago. You can assail me all you want but facts are facts.
As far as Dakich goes…. let me share this. I had a football coach who ran on the field during a scrimmage and called me as stupid fucking Jew. Weeks later he punished me for missing a practice on Yom Kippur.
When I raised this in a Port Chester Facebook group the other head coach claimed that the same coach once spent a class on the Holocaust. It was a weak argument. Hemingway was a well known Jew Hater but I read he employed Jews to protect his money. So what.
Before our epic NCAA hockey win versus Michigan in 2010, I spent 2 hours at a Hooters in Fort Wayne. I felt very welcomed.
@RedHawkBandMan and I basically met at the bottom of a mosh pit in the crowd after we won the game and have now been friends for 15+ years.
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=>If we’re going to talk about “empirical evidence,” I’ll add my own anecdote to the pile. I grew up in Cincinnati, but my entire family is from nearby Batesville, Indiana. Between my cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and plenty of people in that community, I can honestly say that in my 52 years I’ve never personally heard anyone make an antisemitic remark.
But here’s the point: that anecdote doesn’t prove anything either. My experience doesn’t prove that Indiana is free of antisemitism any more than your fraternity brother’s experience proves that it’s uniquely defined by it. Individual stories—yours or mine—simply aren’t the same thing as broad empirical evidence.
The same logic applies to Dan Dakich. One person’s negative experience, or even a handful of them, doesn’t automatically establish that someone is a Nazi or motivated by hatred of Jews. That’s a very serious accusation, and it requires something stronger than anecdote and inference.
None of that is to dismiss what your fraternity brother went through or the ugly story you shared about your coach—both of those are obviously awful if they happened as described. But using isolated experiences to label an entire state, or to assign motives to someone you dislike, is a leap in logic.
In short: anecdotes can illustrate a point, but they don’t prove sweeping conclusions. If we’re going to accuse people of something as serious as antisemitism, the standard of proof should be a lot higher than that.
I’m not looking to win a debate. I am simply sharing my opinions and I will continue to do so. Everything I wrote about Port Chester is exactly what happened. I have no need to embellish.
Goering had a Jewish doctor that he protected. He was still a war criminal.
=>Real Nazis hate the RedHawks.
Hate for the Indiana Turnpike is also acceptable for anyone traveling from Chicagoland to Athens or Cleveland in the next week.
Dude, I HATE the Indiana Turnpike!
Great rest stops though.
God help me… Dakich is suddenly growing on me.