Tt proposed comment aug 23, 2017

quote=213669

BulldogBuckeye posted at 09:22:58 AM on Aug 23, 2017:

ESPN removing the scheduled play by play announcer from an upcoming University of Virginia football game in Charlottesville, a gentleman named Robert Lee (apparently of Asian descent) might be the most sickening and ridiculous PC move of all time. I mean.....this is flat out scary.

When I saw that story yesterday, I thought that it was a creative fake news story because I could not find a known media org that reported it.

But now CNN Media and the NY Times are reporting the story.

From the CNN Media story, I can see the resemblance that might cause problems. Both men are wearing jackets.

Robert Lee and Robert E. Lee

From the NY Times story:

“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name,” ESPN said in a statement. “In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue.”

???

ESPN had planned for Mr. Lee to be in the announcer’s booth for the Virginia Cavaliers’ first game of the season, against the College of William and Mary, which will be broadcast on the ACC Network. Mr. Lee will instead announce Youngstown State’s game against the University of Pittsburgh, which will appear on the same network.

From the CNN Media story:

The website Outkick the Coverage broke the story -- with a headline invoking a popular conservative nickname for ESPN, "MSESPN," which derides the network as the sports equivalent of the liberal talk shows on MSNBC.

Aug 22, 2017 - outkickthecoverage.com - MSESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Named Robert Lee Off UVa Game To Avoid Offending Idiots

deadspin.com story

The story was first reported by the reliably idiotic Clay Travis on his personal blog.

more

http://deadspin.com/welp-espn-shot-itself-in-the-dick-1798338890

this issue is now the top story listed at mediagazer.com as of 10:30 a.m. on wed, aug 23, 2017.

http://mediagazer.com/170823/p7#a170823p7

espn tried to avoid controversy, but all it did was create something worse. nobody knows what espn was expecting if robert lee broadcast the uva game.

from the second deadspin story:

ESPN was afraid that someone might notice Lee was calling the game, and then ... what? That part—the exact outcome ESPN was trying to avoid—is painfully unclear.

As USA Today noted after speaking with an ESPN spokesperson, the network “feared Robert Lee, a young, new play-by-play announcer assigned to the Virginia-William & Mary game on opening weekend would show up in Twitter memes and posts on Web sites like Awful Announcing or Deadspin.”

That can be interpreted a few different ways, but even in the flack’s version, it was ESPN that first decided Lee calling a game in Charlottesville could be a potential issue; it was ESPN that initially approached Lee about it; and it was ESPN that switched broadcast teams even though Lee didn’t feel that it would be an issue.

This is dumb. As. Shit. Afraid this might “show up ... on Deadspin,” were they? What would have been nothing but a quirky screengrab (or more likely nothing—no one was going to notice, and even if they did they wouldn’t have cared, and even if they pretended to care it would have been forgotten by kickoff) is now a full-blown media controversy in the right-wing chudosphere, and ESPN finds itself rightly criticized by everyone on all sides of the political spectrum.

Someone had the idea of switching Lee off the UVa game not because they thought it would be offensive, but because of the prospect of some hypothetical viewer being offended by seeing an Asian-American broadcaster with a hyper-common name similar to that of the Confederate general.

Whether this hypothetical viewer exists or not (they don’t) is almost beside the point; true corporate cowardice requires a bland, compulsive aversion to controversy so strong that it loses touch with reality. And as so often happens, the blowback winds up being much, much worse than the nonexistent scenario ESPN hoped to avoid.

I think ESPN deserves all the scorn it’s going to receive. This type of performative leftism is red meat for, among others, the disingenuous right.

Nice work, ESPN: You did more harm to this cause than even you thought you were capable of.

Bizarre action by ESPN, but ultimately, it matters to me not. We have been without ESPN TV in our home since we dropped full cable TV back in the mid to late aughts. At least 10 years without the cable "news" channels, the alleged weather channel, espn, etc.

I won't pay for any sports coverage for TV/internet. I'm convinced that if Amazon Prime and Netflix get too expensive, that we could function fine with only over-the-air, the free Roku channels, and a DVD player. Even better, rid ourselves of all TVs, which only waste life in an entertaining way.

ESPN's follow up statement may make things worse while ESPN attempts to explain its bizarre thinking.

https://mobile.twitter.com/yashar/status/900219648473522178