Item: President Biden’s first speech to a mask-wearing Congress draws 26.9 million viewers, a 44 percent drop from the approximately 47.7 million who tuned in to former President Trump’s first address to members of the House and Senate in 2017.

Item: The Academy Awards plunge to a record low, attracting only 9.85 million viewers, a 58 percent drop from last year’s ceremony, which previously set a record as the lowest-rated Oscars.

Item: NBA viewership once again plunges, down from last season’s all-time low. Coming into the 2020-21 season, NBA games on ABC - the league’s most important partner - were down 45 percent since 2011-12.

To get a handle on why ratings are tanking, NBA and network executives would be wise to range outside of their corporate big-city office suites to get feedback from rural and mainstreet Americans. What they find may not be pleasant which is why border/immigration czar VP Kamala Harris is avoiding the southern border like the plague and why the administration forbids the press from using cameras to show the crisis conditions.

Fox News host Sean Hannity made sense of the Democrats’ dilemma in a recent monologue that ripped the sports and entertainment industries for becoming “divisive platforms” for the far-left agenda and the liberal’s “holier than thou ideology.” He said Americans are fed up with being talked down to, mocked and being lectured to by Hollywood elites and professional athletes who use their platforms to voice their political beliefs.

The fact that millions of Americans chose to tune out President Biden’s first address to Congress last week shouldn’t surprise us. Biden isn’t exactly JFK when it comes to charisma, tone and substance.

Just as in his inaugural address, Biden pleaded for national unity, but nothing in his message pointed in that direction. Instead he chose to zero in on the sweeping $6 trillion government spending agenda which is loaded with proposals like the Green New Deal. Liberals have hidden their own massive spending projects in generalized categories like “infrastructure.”

In contrast to the liberal wish list of government spending, Sen. Tim Scott, a rising star in the Republican Party, followed Biden’s speech with a calmly articulated message of hope and opportunity that is solution-oriented to address current problems. Pledging a “common sense and common ground” approach, his policy agenda concentrated on empowering Americans rather than bloated big government.

The South Carolina Republican told how he overcame bad grades and a poor childhood to become a county official, state legislator, congressman and, ultimately, a U.S. senator.

He began his speech by saying that Biden “seems like a good man,” but argued that his policies were divisive. Failing to require schools to reopen promptly and weakening our southern border were two of the pressing issues which require immediate attention.

“Our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes. We need policies and progress that bring us closer together,” Scott said. “But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart.”

A powerful moment came when South Carolina’s junior senator acknowledged the need for significant police reform but argued that America is not a racist country and that it’s wrong to try to use the nation’s painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

Instead of healing the nation, Scott said that Biden has taken a sharp left turn by pushing the $6 trillion in spending proposals which can only be supported by hiking taxes.

Black lawmakers like Sen. Scott and Rep. Byron Donalds, another rising star in the Republican Party, are used to taking flak from the left, but the attacks have become more vicious since Biden took office. While Scott’s speech received high marks across the nation, commentators at the liberal networks like CNN and CNBC launched an immediate assault. Some social media platforms, including Twitter, even allowed a racially charged and despicable epithet “Uncle Tim” to remain online for 12 hours.

After Scott was chosen to deliver the Republican Party’s response to Biden’s speech to a joint session of Congress, The Washington Post published an article questioning Scott’s family history of going from a childhood picking cotton to the halls of Congress.

Donalds, who thankfully represents my own district, slammed the article, stating that it was insulting and made him throw up. He argued that the liberal media would never go after a Democrat’s background, but if you’re a Republican - especially a black Republican - they continue to nitpick for not measuring up.

To Donalds and many conservatives, the hit pieces on Scott were bigoted and disgusting.

Every fair-minded American citizen should feel the same, especially the liberal Democratic politicians and their toadies in the media, show business and professional sports who are quick to pull out a racism card whenever it fits their leftist ideology.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.