"Broadcast giant ESPN has apologised after an offensive and potentially racist headline appeared on one of its websites attached to an article about basketball star Jeremy Lin.
An article about the New York Knicks' Mr Lin was given the headline 'Chink in the Armor' on ESPN's mobile website, but the offensive line was removed within an hour."
Hmm, I'll bet they wouldn't have called Mr. Lin a "chink" if he were a Muslim. Or better yet, an athiest. ESPN is to sports news what MSNBC is to political news; a running sewer.
I hope Mr. Lin shrugs off the insult, as we all should when faced with such ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry. Keep talking, progressives and Marxist fools. The mask is slipping a bit more each day.
CNN is reporting the headline writer has been fired. Good riddance - hard to believe it was inadvertent as headline writers are paid to avoid stuff like this. Career-limiting incompetence at best.
ReplyDeleteSeperately, an ESPN anchor has been suspended for using the same phrase on air. Easier to see this as a slip-up. He claims his wife is Asian and he'd never intentionally make such a crack.
If ESPN took a business decision to slime Lin to appeal to a lefty liberal atheist base, I'd say they kinda failed. Plenty of sackcloth and ashes at ESPN - which is kinda what the left would demand of Fox in the same situation.
Well this is interesting.
ReplyDelete[Fired headline writer] Federico, 28, said he understands why he was axed. "ESPN did what they had to do," he said.
He said he has used the phrase "at least 100 times" in headlines over the years and thought nothing of it when he slapped it on the Lin story.
Federico called Lin one of his heroes - not just because he's a big Knicks fan, but because he feels a kinship with a fellow "outspoken Christian."
"My faith is my life," he said. "I'd love to tell Jeremy what happened and explain that this was an honest mistake."
If Federico is telling the truth, then indeed that was a costly slipup. Like I said, if you're a headline writer, you are paid to avoid snagging yourself and your employer in an imbroglio like this. I don't see ESPN scoring any points with the lefty atheist crowd here. I also don't see a lefty atheist spouting a line like "my faith is my life".
I'd have to say "inadvertent" is the most likely explanation given the evidence I've seen. Federico made two assertions: that he's a Christian himself, and that "chink in the armor" is a common sports metaphor. Both assertions are testable.
Harumph. Lewy has said all there is to say on this affair. Bltzpkstff...gkdjutu...pffft! ... wanders off mumbling to self....
DeleteThread killer! :D
Fine Ari. If you won't argue with me I'll argue with myself. :P
DeleteSeriously - I was thinking - Lin is not the first prominent Chinese ball player. Yao Ming was in the NBA for a long time. He had some run-ins with folks - e.g. Shaq - over ethnic barbs.
If "chink in the armor" is such a common sports metaphor - how come it never got "accidentally" used with Ming? In all that time, never? Really?
And it happens not once, but _three_ times in one week, on one network, with Lin? (There was a third incident on ESPN radio which was reported by CNN).
At this point I'm convinced that it doesn't make sense as an accident. But per my first comments in the thread, it doesn't make sense as intentional, either.
It just doesn't make sense.
Oy ... what's to argue with? I was married to a Korean for a dozen years, and still keep in "distant" touch via our daughter. Heard the "chink" expletive more than once, usually directed at our kid, and I never considered it accidental or inadvertent. Still don't. Fact is my view was & is that it's grounds for a fat lip at the least. No different than the phrase "ni***r in the woodpile" ... also a common phrase once upon a time. Try it today at say, oh, Kercheval & Marlborough in Detroit ... see what it gets you.
ReplyDeleteSomebody might have thought it "cute" or clever, that or they truly are oblivious to just what is an epithet (dumb as a stone?) ... but to make it on air or to print, nah...no f**king accident.
Ari if the guy who wrote the headline was fifty, I'd say you had to be right. The thing is, "chink" is a dated term. Archie Bunker generation. There's probably plenty of 28 year-olds out there who never encountered it "in the wild". I'd say the same thing may be true of other terms from that era (e.g. "gook"). And before there were chinks, there were coolies. Who uses that any more?
DeleteThe problem with chink is that unlike gook, coolie, gaijin or gweilo, it has another common, current and relatively frequent English meaning. So given its status as a somewhat obsolete epithet, with a current homonym, it is inevitably going to be used accidentally.
Which I could buy, if it weren't for the fact that it was three times in one week. Individually they are plausible as accidents; collectively, much harder. And yet who the f**k at ESPN would - or could - put out the call: "get Lin. Call him names. That's an order!" WTF?
This does remind me of the LA Times edict to not use the word "nip," as in "The wind blew putting a nip in the air."
ReplyDeleteHowever, on the heals of Tebow, I think it they needed to be called on it. ESPN has been so hyper-sensitive on the other side that I think it is about time they are held to their own standards.
Lewy, I don't think that "chink" is outmoded. My son (early 30s) is very aware that it's an ethnic slur.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the ESPN staff are tripping all over themselves to apologize is nonsense, and aimed at protecting their careers. The nastiest, most virulent haters I know are progressives...scroungy rats with big teeth and no moral courage. ESPN is chock-full of them. They don't hate Lin because he's of Chinese descent. They hate him, and used an ethnic slur, because he's an outspoken Christian.
It's mind-boggling that they all thought they could get away with it, and a testament to their "media elite" smugness, IMHO.