«
»

TMQ to the Bench

Saturday, October 18th, 2003

This is just silly.

ESPN has fired Gregg Easterbrook and terminated his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column because of the dumb comments he wrote about Jews, moviemaking and violence on his blog hosted at The New Republic. Worse, and weirder, ESPN has effectively erased Easterbrook from its website altogether.

This smells like it came straight from the top. Easterbrook, after all, was harshest on Disney big cheese Michael Eisner. Disney owns ESPN.

Easterbrook’s post was regrettable. An otherwise brilliant guy bought in it a full value the tired line about how an R-rated movie might provoke more Columbines. Bringing the faiths of the moviemakers into the picture was a non-sequitor, a non-sequitor to an otherwise poorly thought-out post, and I suspect he tossed in the money-loving Jews angle while on an angry rant roll.

But it was one post, and he apologized (yes, I too thought the apology was weak, and didn’t address the crappy parts of the post not related to Jew-baiting).

Still, TMQ is the best sports column going. Give the guy a break.

I also fear what this might do to Easterbrook’s career. The man is one of the most versatile minds around — in addition to TNR, he’s written for Wired, Reason, The Atlantic Monthly, and just about everywhere else, on topics diverse as God and science, space, global warming, and energy.

We lose if we let hypersensitivity rob us of a considerable intellect like Easterbrook’s.

Digg it |  reddit |  del.icio.us |  Fark

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2003 at 2:47 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

17 Responses to “TMQ to the Bench”

  1. #1 |  Danny D. Vito |  October 18th, 2003 at 3:55 pm

    That sucks.

    TMQ rules.

  2. #2 |  lingosphere daily |  October 18th, 2003 at 4:00 pm

    TMQ – Fired?

    Just read on Little Green Footballs that ESPN’s Gregg Easterbrook has been fired… This comes in the wake of comments that Easterbrook made about Jewish sports executives “liking money” over other things. He had recently apologized in that the column…

  3. #3 |  Tony |  October 18th, 2003 at 5:51 pm

    Your fear about Easterbrook’s career may be inferred as an admission to the power of the “Jewish-controlled” media and their ability to quash Easterbrook.

  4. #4 |  Anonymous |  October 18th, 2003 at 7:04 pm

    totally disagree that his is the best sports column going. Sportsguy has him, and every other sportswriter, beat by a long shot. sports are boring as hell to read about. his column bored the hell out of me. and the fact that he wrote for the new republic? even more of a reason not to have any respect for him. oh yeah and the anti-semitic stuff? it is old news that the left is racist against JEws. it goes without saying.

  5. #5 |  toshiro888 |  October 18th, 2003 at 9:48 pm

    Anonymous:
    I wouldn’t characterize Easterbrook as “left.” And again, even though I’m now known as the blog “anti-Semite,” why is it legitimate to criticize Cubans, Armenians, Greeks, and all whites in general, but not the Jewish ethnicity? Why is that area velvet-roped out of bounds? I just don’t know, but have my theories.

    Tony, if it is politically incorrect to say that many powerful people in the media are members of the Hebrew rite then is it also off-limits to say that the NBA is dominated by blacks? Sorry, I won’t go for that. I think Gregg’s point is laughable vis-a-vis any correlation between movie violence and real-life violence, but to cut off discussion of an important issue because somebody dared say “Jew” is just assinine.

  6. #6 |  Anonymous |  October 18th, 2003 at 11:22 pm

    i didnt say anything about legitimacy. i just stated the facts

  7. #7 |  paul |  October 19th, 2003 at 3:51 am

    I think the fact that he got fired from ESPN acctually proved his statement about Jews is correct.

    Let’s face it folks…the Jews DO run the media.
    He told the truth and now he’s gone.

    hummm….wonder why..

    However,then again, we do need to draw a line relative to free speach now dont we.
    you can’t go on TV and start ranting about “nigger this..”or “fucking Kike that” or “goddamn Slopes..Booger..chink..spear-chucker..(this is fun)…Yid..Porch Monkey…Heeb..Etc., without expecting negative back-lash.

  8. #8 |  raj |  October 19th, 2003 at 8:43 am

    Paul, one of the Jews that Easterbrook identified by name, Michael Eisner, runs Disney. Disney owns ESPN.

    I know nothing about Easterbrook, but it seems to me that this is merely another indication of the danger of media concentration. Particularly concentration of media of the broadcast/cable sort, which is regulated by government.

  9. #9 |  Chris |  October 19th, 2003 at 11:00 am

    Anyone in the public spotlight making stupid racist comments SHOULD lose their job just for being stupid. I believe in freedom of speech as much as any libertarian, but also belive in finding the best time and place to use it, and know that freedom comes with responsibility.

  10. #10 |  John T. Kennedy |  October 19th, 2003 at 1:05 pm

    How are we being robbed of Eatterbrook’s considerable intellect? Someone else can hire him if they want to. And nobody’s going to stop him from blogging.

    If you feel that writers must be immune from consequences for pissing off their bosses then boycott ESPN. Or Disney.

  11. #11 |  Off Wing Opinion |  October 20th, 2003 at 9:56 am

    Recap On The Easterbrook Firing

    For those of you who actually have a life on weekends, the big news in the Blogosphere over the past

  12. #12 |  calvin |  October 22nd, 2003 at 1:50 am

    Bring back TMQ!
    took some time to read it all
    bought dictionary

  13. #13 |  Dennis |  October 23rd, 2003 at 12:52 pm

    Paul, do you really think if you publicly slammed your boss like that you would still have a job?

  14. #14 |  Duane |  October 23rd, 2003 at 1:44 pm

    I was a regular reader of the column. Although I didn’t agree with some of his views that he mixed in with the football content, it was well written and funny. Does anybody know the exact line about Jews that was written as I can’t even go back and look at the archive of columns since espn shut him down. The general idea I have was that he wrote something to the effect of rich Jewish owners not wanting to spend money. Now you can either take the statement at face value or you can make a broad assumption that he was trying to point out a Jewish stereotype which obviously anybody that reacted negatively to the line did. I think you have to give him the benefit of the doubt there. Anyway could somebody post that “racially sensitive” line from the column?

  15. #15 |  Ben |  October 24th, 2003 at 9:10 am

    For a summary of what happened, check out http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57964-2003Oct21.html.

  16. #16 |  Anonymous |  October 24th, 2003 at 9:33 am

    The post was actually on his blog page for The New Republic. Now, I think that all this stems from the Limbaugh thing, but Rush said plenty of stuff on his radio show that wouldn’t have flown on ESPN. Easterbrook said what he said on a site unafilliated with ESPN. Why yank the chain on a guy for saying something outside of his work for you, then apologising for it? They didn’t even post an explination on espn.com as to why.

  17. #17 |  forums play free casino games online |  September 28th, 2005 at 6:56 pm

    Take your time to take a look at some relevant information about win …