In vaccination battles, pro athletes become proxy players
Associated PressLOS ANGELES — The pandemic-era saga of tennis star Novak Djokovic in Australia this week is but one of many: Pro athletes who have refused to be vaccinated have been put at center court in a larger contest — as famous faces who are becoming proxy players in the accelerating worldwide cultural battles over COVID jabs. “We live in a world where we’ve moved really far away from a central set of facts,” Lebowitz says. “The kind of issues where they aren’t really influential are the traditional wedge issues,” Harvey says. “Those identities are not stripped away in these situations.” The stance of Djokovic might similarly resonate in the Serbian athlete’s home country, given its role in European conflicts of the 20th century. “Nowadays, if you don’t take a side, people don’t think you don’t have a spine.” And while athletes don’t necessarily feel the pressure they once might have to constantly think of the children they’re influencing, the expectation that they remain role models for the young remains embedded in the culture — as it has since the years of the earliest sports mega-celebrities like Babe Ruth more than a century ago.
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