The Jemele Hill situation

[bapo!]

I'm kind of fascinated by the Jamele Hill stuff this week. Tweets that Trump is a white supremacist. Trump's spokeswoman calls the accusation 'a fireable offense.' ESPN tries to pull her off the air on Thursday but can't get anybody to fill in. Clay Travis is outraged! Deadspin is angry, but for different reasons!

This was inevitable. ESPN loosened the reigns on its talent and let everybody speak more freely. Which of course dragged ESPN into the muck of the culture wars. Accusations or SJWdom and cuckery abounded. Now we're here. If you speak openly, you're going to offend somebody. Hill and ESPN knew that already and should have been prepared for this.

I haven't seen any talk here about it, and I'd like to know what you guys think.

[tennbengal]

You do know Trump is a racist, right?

I don't see why she should have to hide that observation. I wonder if you are trying to draw some kind of weird equivalence between the trolling clay Travis does on behalf of the rot that is fox and white supremacist views and those that call it out. I reject that view.

[tennbengal]

I guess we are back at a point where calling out racism is somehow gauche?

[Johnny Carwash]

Apropos of anything else, the response from the WH being anything other than "She is entitled to her opinion" is beyond fucked.

[tennbengal]

I mean, fox spent eight years calling Obama whatever they could call him, and Johnny is right, the White House quite rightly ignored it.

This crew is, of course, quite different.

Authoritarian is as authoritarian does.

[rass]

Trump repeatedly called Obama racist. Let me know when they ask Sanders about that.

Hi bapo!!

You spelled her name wrong.

[rass]

Oh, and while ESPN could have handled this better, they also could have handled it much worse.

[bapo!]

You do know Trump is a racist, right?

I don't see why she should have to hide that observation. I wonder if you are trying to draw some kind of weird equivalence between the trolling clay Travis does on behalf of the rot that is fox and white supremacist views and those that call it out. I reject that view.

We're on the same side here, Bengal. I think that Hill should be allowed to say whatever she wants. But sometimes that means that there's going to be blowback, especially in this climate. That doesn't mean that she should stop doing it. (Unless her bosses at ESPN tell her to, I guess.)

(And don't mistake my interest in a story as equivocating both sides. I'm just trying to get you guys to talk.)

[DaveInSeattle]

I posted this in the "Racism" thread...but its too good not to go here as well:

https://twitter.com/curlycomedy/status/ ... 0511414272

[Joe K]

ESPN tries to pull her off the air on Thursday but can't get anybody to fill in.

To add context, the network wanted to replace her with another black ESPN TV personality. But everyone they asked refused. And purportedly Michael Smith would've refused to do the show if they pulled her. That's because ESPN's other black journalists know damn well that everything she said is true. ESPN is lucky they didn't act more forcefully against her or they would've pissed off a lot of their other employees. People there have already grumbled about how they brought back Hank Williams so immediately after Obama left office, after he was previously let go for comparing Obama to Hitler.

[Shirley]

I honestly don't blame ESPN if they sought to punish an employee for calling the president a white supremacist. They are a media company that is ostensibly apolitical and their TV personalities - just like anyone else in entertainment - risk getting in trouble if they say or do something controversial. (And it doesn't have to be wrong to be controversial.)

I think even Jamele Hill knows this and apologized appropriately. She didn't apologize for her views, just the manner in which she made her view known such that it reflected on her job.

[mister d]

Republicans buy sneakers too.

[Joe K]

I certainly wouldn't call ESPN "apolitical." Plenty of their stories and TV pieces have political overtones. But they do care about sponsors' feelings and unfortunately saying that Trump is a white supremacist, a statement which there are mountains of evidence to support, risks angering rich sponsors.

It is funny to me now that I think of it that ESPN "debate" personalities have been encouraged to say inflammatory and at times baseless things about athletes' character, but making a very well supported statement critical of Trump is considered to cross the line. Oh, well.

[rass]

Aaaaaaannnd...


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 1943003136

[mister d]

So weird that ESPN timidly throwing gasoline on this one didn't work.

[Moreta]

Hill was correct. ESPN can discipline her however they choose, but there would be backlash either way. I would posit that the backlash (both internally and publicly) for pulling her from the air would be worse, as it should be, but that's their call.

I agree that the real travesty here was the advocacy of Hill's firing coming from the White House. WTF is going on? Jayzus.

I have friends that are personal friends of Hill's (we're from the same small town after all) and I am pleased that she seems to be getting a lot of support, if not from her employers. I don't always agree with her, but I respect her. Even moreso now that she's done nothing to back down or delete her comment.

[mister d]

If at any point we finally correct ourselves, this is going to be a major black(pun) mark on ESPN's legacy.

[degenerasian]

I think Hill is right too and am glad she isn't backing down or deleting the tweet. It shows her strong character.

However, ESPN has set the bar. They fired Limbaugh, Schilling and a tennis guy who said guerrilla tactics. Sehorn wrote today that upon hire he was warned to curtail his political opinions.

[mister d]

However, ESPN has set the bar.

It doesn't work like that. You aren't allowed to say "our policy is that employees must remain apolitical and will be reprimanded when they don't" and then expect that to be your shield against any backlash for selective application of that policy.

[brian]

However, ESPN has set the bar.

It doesn't work like that. You aren't allowed to say "our policy is that employees must remain apolitical and will be reprimanded when they don't" and then expect that to be your shield against any backlash for selective application of that policy.

Also, Schilling got like 20 or so warnings and suspensions before he was ultimately fired, a fact the alt-right mouth breathers conveniently forget.

[degenerasian]

However, ESPN has set the bar.

It doesn't work like that. You aren't allowed to say "our policy is that employees must remain apolitical and will be reprimanded when they don't" and then expect that to be your shield against any backlash for selective application of that policy.

Isn't that how all corporations work? They use their fine print as a shield. Every HR department deals with this on a daily basis.

[Joe K]

However, ESPN has set the bar.

It doesn't work like that. You aren't allowed to say "our policy is that employees must remain apolitical and will be reprimanded when they don't" and then expect that to be your shield against any backlash for selective application of that policy.

Also, Schilling got like 20 or so warnings and suspensions before he was ultimately fired, a fact the alt-right mouth breathers conveniently forget.

Yup. His termination for a hateful post about trans people came after, among other things, he made hateful posts comparing Muslims to Nazis.

[mister d]

Isn't that how all corporations work?

C'mon, man. How many corporations have called him out under their actual company name, let alone allowed employees to speak freely?

[degenerasian]

Isn't that how all corporations work?

C'mon, man. How many corporations have called him out under their actual company name, let alone allowed employees to speak freely?

True.

I'm on your side, I'm just bringing up that it could be deemed that ESPN is inconsistent by this polarized country. I hope they keep her and she fires off more bullets.

[rass]

Maybe degen should use a different font color (white?) for his devil's advocate posts.

[Nonlinear FC]

Just a major point of clarification, before this goes off the rails: There's a massive difference between dude/dudette toiling away at American Company X, that has nothing to do with the media or employing public figures, and what's going on here.

There's a completely different set of rules and issues that come up for people on the air, or that represent a company (organization of any kind) as a spokesperson.

The lines between what is acceptable and what is grounds for punishment is extremely blurry for on air personalities. You pretty much can't write a policy that wouldn't be pretty quickly scuppered in any formal legal proceedings.

Think of those confidentiality warnings that people (mostly lawyers) tack on at the end of emails. Those are mostly scare tactics. If you fling an email out there, it's very hard to say later that the receiver was bound by some legally binding agreement not to share it. That would require the receiver to have agreed already that they are bound to non-disclosure.

I say all of this to say, a company like ESPN might have a policy that says on air folks need to be apolitical when not on air. Their ability to actually enforce this is pretty much arbitrary and would open them up to a lawsuit if it eventually ended in terminating a contract. As stated, Schilling was told multiple times to knock it off.

Unless Hill had been warned formally multiple times about her off-air comments, ESPN would absolutely be inviting a law suit.

[Johnnie]

I agree, top to bottom, with Magary:

Jemele Hill got a rap on the knuckles from ESPN this week for stating the obvious, which is that President Trump is a white supremacist. I find it amusing that Trump is the rudest, grossest man on the planet and yet ESPN is sitting here saying that Jemele Hill is the one being inappropriate, and that calling an extremist an extremist is somehow a worse act of extremism. This is how we got into this fucking mess. It is not only dumb to demand everyone stay in their lane while a fucking madman runs the country, it’s irresponsible. It’s like putting a bomb in a room and telling everyone there that only three people, including David Brooks, are allowed to talk about what to do with it.

Everyone is supposed to be polite while the pussygrabber burns democracy to the fucking ground. This is how Steve Bannon gets invited onto national television instead of thrown down a fucking laundry chute. Trump’s rise was fueled almost exclusively by racism, imagined double standards, and people being too fucking polite—and too scared of losing money—to state the obvious about both him and his yahoo supporters. Right and wrong are treated as equal viewpoints instead of, you know, right and wrong. So fuck ESPN for caving in.

https://twitter.com/greghoward88/status ... 1639238656

And i agree with everything stated here as well.

ESPN is greater than the personalities that make it up. (See: firings, acting like the NFL) ESPN needs to appeal to a wide audience. (Republicans by shoes, as stated.) The largest audience it needs to appeal to are males, mostly white, who love seeing arguments and conflict. (Jerry Springer crowd) If any personality steps out of line with that, then boom, controversy. (How dare black personalities and athletes have opinions in a time in which debate is embraced and social media changed the game! They need to be quiet and know their place! - as alluded to, plus acknowledged with this tweet)

Simultaneously, ESPN is losing subscribers because Millenials are evil, errr, their product is trash, so losing money isn't an option. And these same Millenials are tired of their cable bills being constantly faceraped by bullshit fees. So when there's an opportunity to scapegoat, bam! But blaming the consumer and employees is easy...[Url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cbs-chief-leslie-moonves-takes-shots-at-disney-espn-fox-at-investor-conference-1039014]let's see what Les Moonves says... [/]

[degenerasian]

Maybe degen should use a different font color (white?) for his devil's advocate posts.

I always look at both sides of the issue and worry about things (the other side) I probably shouldn't.

[Gunpowder]

ESPN is losing views because there's other shit to look at. 10+ years ago, there wasn't.

[DSafetyGuy]

Technology makes it so you don't have to wait for Sportscenter to see highlights. You watch them on your laptop/phone/tablet. Sportscenter was forced to change.

ESPN does a terrible job with their selective punishment. It is clear that they have no established policy, which makes it seem like they play favorites, so anyone who wants to act aggrieved can easily do so (just like a football league we know).

ESPN did a lot of this to themselves by responding to the "liberal bias" trolling. They call attention to the trolling by responding which, in turn, makes people believe they are "defending their liberal bias". Isn't there an old saying about what happens with you get down in the mud with your enemy?

[sancarlos]

Funny to remember the days when I was excited to have Sportcenter come on so I could learn who won all the games!

[Ryan]

So I guess the thought experiment is "what if 1995 Keith Olbermann had the known persona of 2017 Keith Olbermann?"

[DaveInSeattle]

Good thing CNN had Clay Travis on to really cut to the chase of the whole situation:

Fox Sports analyst Clay Travis left CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin astonished on Friday afternoon after repeatedly preaching a crude and very unusual sentiment: “I believe in only two things completely: the First Amendment and boobs.”

Travis was on the network to speak about ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who entered the Trump administration’s line of fire after recently calling the president and his supporters “white supremacists” on Twitter. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, called the tweet a “fireable offense.”

Travis has sharply criticized ESPN in recent days for what he perceives as taking a “leftist” slant, and he continued to take shots at the network during his CNN appearance. But the segment was quickly sidetracked when Travis first noted his “belief” in “boobs” and the First Amendment.

[mister d]

That's just so embarrassing.

[brian]

Mystifying that Travis and Barstool are feuding because they're made for each other.

[Johnnie]

Here's the video:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZFAxE4H88C/

[DSafetyGuy]

I wonder what the mother of his lice-infected children thinks of his comments today.

[rass]

https://twitter.com/espnpubliced/status ... 4563582976

[Joe K]

Mystifying that Travis and Barstool are feuding because they're made for each other.

DBAP, bro. DBAP.

I believe the feud started after Travis tried and failed to get Barstool to hire him, so now he tries to claim that they're also too PC. I get that there is an audience for race-baiting white supremacists, but does anyone over the age of 22 actually buy into Travis' fake "alpha male" shtick?

[Joe K]

Bumping this thread in light of Trump calling black NFL players "sons of bitches."

Jemele Hill was really out of line when she called him a white supremacist!

ETA:
https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/9 ... 1300380672