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Tuesday Morning Blogger
It is a weekly ritual of mine to, while eating my lunch on Tuesday mornings, log on to ESPN.com (no link for reasons I will expound upon later) and read Gregg Easterbrook's column "Tuesday Morning Quarterback". The column is always insanely long, clocking in at approximately 6500 words, with lots of pop culture nonsense and science-geek commentary to go along with his coverage of the past weekend in football.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I log on today only to find a short note on ESPN's Page 2 that says Tuesday Morning Quarterback will no longer be on ESPN.com. There had to be an explanation, since I was under the impression that Easterbrook was one of ESPN's most popular columnists.
After a bit of digging, I discovered this article, which reveals some sort of scandal that erupted last week over an entry in an Easterbrook blog item in The New Republic where he made some anti-semitic comments.
To which I have to say: Screw you ESPN. I don't condone anti-semitism, but these comments were made in a totally different venue, one that isn't exactly Good Morning America as far as public awareness goes. In fact, I'd wager that 99.9% of Tuesday Morning Quarterback readers were like me in that they did not hear even a tiny murmur about this "atrocious controversy". Just because it's on the internet where billions of people have access to it doesn't mean that billions of people read it.
So because of these comments on a site I've never read, which some on Slate are now saying are more of a case of bad wording than rampant anti-semitism, I can no longer read my favorite weekly football column. Were the comments in the context of football like Rush Limbaugh's? No. Were the comments in an ESPN-sponsored venue? No. Were the comments read by the vast majority of ESPN.com readers? No. Did they cause a public outcry? No. Screw you ESPN.com.
UPDATE
Because by ESPN.com's logic, anything posted on the internet is read by everyone, I will make the following offer to Gregg Easterbrook, who I'm sure is reading this post: If you'd like to continue writing Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns, I would be more than happy to post them on my site. I will even copy-edit them, add comma splices to match my own writing, and add photos taken from the internet. Sure you won't get paid, but your voice will still be heard! (and my traffic will increase thousandfold)
Comments
Maybe I missed the anti-semitic nature of his blog post. He's pointing out that two people are Jewish, and that we (Jews) should be sensitive to the issue he raised.
Posted by: rkc at October 22, 2003 7:48 PM
An even more disturbing addendum to this is that not only did ESPN cancel his column, but they removed his archives and altered the search engine so that any search for his name or title of his column is redirected to the ESPN.com Page 2 homepage. Are they trying to pretend he never existed? Am I wrong to be outraged by this? Rachel, this is your area of expertise, what's your take on all this?
Posted by: Chris Hill Festival at October 22, 2003 8:27 PM
King Kauffman wrote a good opinion piece on this for salon.com
Posted by: anon at October 23, 2003 7:21 PM
I saw that one. It was good.
Posted by: Chris Hill Festival at October 23, 2003 8:52 PM
Posted by: Brian at October 24, 2003 4:46 PM
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