racist jeremy lin espn headline poll

*gong*

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/Linsanity-Postgame-Cold-Open/1386272

linsanity lohan

heiglinsanity lohan

i often wish for disciplinary action on cliched writing in a professional setting, and if it takes charges of racism to make it stick, so be it. For constant unambiguous racist pun headlines though, I turn to the Economist.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/02/jeremy-lin-slur-an-honest-mistake-says-fired-espn-editor/1?source=twitter#.T0KA-nJWqvQ

idk I'm willing to believe on some level he didn't 'get what he was doing' because someone who 'got what he was doing' would know that he was gonna lose his job

Bretos tweeted an apology Saturday, writing that: "My wife is Asian, would never intentionally say anything to disrespect her and that community."

sounds like "I get to make offensive comments because I'm married to one/some of my best friends are &c."

*Makes wop joke* - "But my wife is European!"

idk I think it's more like he prob genuinely did not understand that it's as offensive as it is. he prob thought it was like making a germanic pun w/ dirk when really it was like making a hitler pun. idk I think it's hard to believe he really was so intent on sneaking something offensive onto espn that he'd risk his job for it.

haha double idk

yeah that seems pretty plausible... ESPN still should've fired him tho

oh def, people that stupid shouldn't have jobs

His lack of malice seems totally believable, but:
'Federico told the Daily News he understood why he was axed, but added he had used the same phrase "at least 100 times" in past headlines.'

and:
'He said he was particularly remorseful because, like Lin, he considers himself an "outspoken Christian."'

There are subtler crimes going on.

basically you don't have to give him the benefit of the doubt 'maybe he's just stupid' - it is p clear that he is extremely stupid

Maybe it's institutionalized stupidity, though?

I read about this first in the NYT, so I had to guess what the headline said as it was only described in tapdancing fashion.

Bretos tweeted an apology Saturday, writing that: "My wife is Asian, would never intentionally say anything to disrespect her and that community."

sounds like "I get to make offensive comments because I'm married to one/some of my best friends are &c."

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Monday, February 20, 2012 12:30 PM (50 minutes ago)

oh come on man

what?

dayo's right, that is what it sounds like

i am a cynic about this stuff, though

ya but that doesn't rule out that he is fundamentally clueless, also

yeah, but if you're contrite, you're contrite. no need to mention anything beyond that, really

exactly

he wasn't making a pun. it's a very commonly used sports cliche, and i don't see any reason to impugn his sincerity if he says it was unintentional. there's a pretty clear difference between headline writing, where you should obviously be aware of these double meanings (that's more or less your job), and saying something like that in a conversation

well he still probably does not understand the full context of 'the thing he did', remember he is a fundamentally stupid human being

we're talking about the anchor now, right? what has he said that would lead you to believe he's stupid?

I differ w/ kev in that I think it's pretty unlikely he didn't know there was a pun, he just didn't really understand what kinda pun it was.

we're talking about the dude who typed 'chink in the armor'

uh yeah if his wife is asian i'm gonna go ahead and guess he's familiar with that slur

xp no i'm talking about the anchor who said that and was suspended for 30 days

i am totally not defending the headline writer

oh i thought it was the headline writer who had mentioned his asian wife in his apology

...it still seems unnecessary to me

it was the anchor

he wasn't making a pun. it's a very commonly used sports cliche, and i don't see any reason to impugn his sincerity if he says it was unintentional. there's a pretty clear difference between headline writing, where you should obviously be aware of these double meanings (that's more or less your job), and saying something like that in a conversation

― ploppawheelie V (k3vin k.), Monday, February 20, 2012 1:29 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

hey man, initially ,I wasn't too hard on the anchor either, I'm just pointing out that what he tweeted is a standard default position for ppl who make offensive comments to take, or at the very least smells like it, and is sometimes used to hide the ball.

agnostic on this. there's no way to know what either of these dudes was thinking. whether or not the slurs were intentional, both deserve the punishment they got.

i dunno -- i do feel these guys were 'thrown under the bus' (to use a cliche that i would be equally ok with them being punished for.) inadvertent racial slurs are an inevitable consequence in a culture of overused metaphors and "wacky" wordplay. one of these "linsanity" puns is gonna go over the line, just wait.

I'm glad the writer was fired. Deserved imo.

I genuinely feel bad for Max Bretos. I think the suspension is only the network trying to save face and I believe what he is quoted as saying above. He has worked MLS for years and has always come across as a very enthusiastic sports fan who got his dream gig and ran with it.

I was actually glad he stopped doing play-by-play because he was terrible at it, which is also why I surmise he was reading copy when he said it and probably didn't realize exactly what he said until after the fact when it blew up. When he did play-by-play he was constantly stumbling for words and his goal call was just god-awful.

inadvertent racial slurs are an inevitable consequence in a culture of overused metaphors and "wacky" wordplay.

o rly

it says a lot about ESPN in 2012 that the best you can hope for is that they are *just* incredibly stupid

i've said my piece, still think the anchor caught a raw deal

Dave Zirin's take.

No one at ESPN would talk or write about a lesbian athlete and unconsciously put forth that the woman in question would have a “finger in the dike.” If an African-American player was thought of as stingy, it’s doubtful that anyone at the World Wide Leader would describe that person as “niggardly.” They would never brand a member of a football team as a “Redskin” (wait, scratch that last one.)

i like zirin, but implying that these phrases are used equally as frequently in sports journalism is absurd.

again, apologizing for only the anchor here

what's your point?

think kev's point is that it seems plausible enough that the anchor could use a commonly employed sports trope ad lib without any intention to offend, or to even reference nationality/ethnicity.

Headline writer, not so much

my point is that suspending an anchor for using "chink in the armor" off-the-cuff, given the fact that afaik it has no malicious etymology or connotations to speak of, is ridiculous. saying what he did is not racism; it's not even casual racism. and i think it's bullshit that he's becoming a scapegoat for it. the sanctimony all over the internet is unbearable: good guys win, racists lose, rah-rah, meanwhile this guy who did nothing wrong gets suspended

i'm not trying to minimize how this whole ordeal might affect asian-americans. my point is that i don't think bretos had to take the fall for the point to be made

i'm not trying to minimize how this whole ordeal might affect asian-americans.

and yet that is precisely what you are doing

good guys win, racists lose, rah-rah

I don't think the anchor is racist. I think it's insensitive, stupid and worthy of suspension, but the phrase is racist, not the anchor.

Okay, so no TV announcer would ever say "niggardly", even about some white hockey player, just because it's too close to something else. But innocent phrases like "chink in the armor" or "finger in the dike" do become horrible double-entrendres when used with certain contexts. Dude should've been taught that in Broadcasting 101.