The double standard that is obvious in the media these days
Gregory Moore
November 29, 2006
SAN ANTONIO -- Michael Irvin needs to be fired from making very offensive comments a week ago on a radio program.
Somewhere there are some brothers in that line,” Irvin added. “I don’t know who saw what, where. His great, great, great, great grandma ran over in the ‘hood, or something went down.”
Irvin said those words on the Dan Patrick show and now he is apologizing for them now. But he is still employed and that isn’t right. ESPN needs to follow its own protocol structure and can the former wide receiver for not only making insensitive statements about a current player, but they need to use the very logic they used to get rid of Rush Limbaugh a few years ago. The problem is that the Disney Company won’t do it and that sets up a double standard that is astronomical to the viewing public.
There is a double standard in the media world and it is on a racial divide. Whether ESPN wants to believe it or not, accept it or trash it, the prevalence in Bristol is that Irvin can get away with almost anything and nothing catastrophic will happen to him. He is their media darling.
It shouldn’t be that way in that shop or any place where the viewing and listening public is relying on intelligent commentary and opinions as part of their daily diet of news digestion. The public should not have to be subjected to very unscientific, uneducated comments like Irvin’s. What is the difference between what he said and what Jimmy the Greek said? Essentially there is no difference.
This debate has been out in the real world this week and it is indeed disheartening. In an e-mail I received from a colleague, the original sender sounded very irate that my friend didn’t speak out against Irvin’s comments. The e-mail read in part: “If you were on your high horse when Michael Richards spewed racist remarks, I’m sure you’ll give Michael Irvin’s remarks equal time. But, like I was saying, there’s a double standard when something offensive is said by a black man when it concerns a white man or any other ethnic group. Why hasn’t Irvin been fired? What’s the difference between Irvin’s statements and Jimmy the Greek’s?”
Now my friend’s response was a bit over the top but I understand both sides to an extent. After all I wasn’t privy to the whole exchange between the two. Yet I do think that the author of that e-mail has a legitimate question. How can the comments of a Black man about a white athlete not be considered the same type of rhetoric in weight, intonation and passion? What’s the difference if I said a similar comment about Jake Plummer on Fox Sports Radio and got away with it but yet my white counterpart at Sports Byline says the same thing about Lavar Arrington and he gets fired? In my eyes there is no distinction. If my white counterpart gets fired, then I had better be escorted to the parking lot as well.
That is where the escorting of the pink elephant off the premises needs to begin; with the realization that off colored remarks, no matter how ‘colorful’ they may seem to the person making them, has no place in the media or anywhere else. When I hear such humor by my friends and colleagues on the national and local airwaves, I just cringe. I cringe not because it offends me but because the subject matter is so borderline that anything could happen on the airwaves.
The reality of this matter is that there is a double standard in this business and Blacks get a little more leeway than others. If this wasn’t the case, Irvin would have been dismissed and a replacement would have done Monday Night Countdown. It would have been the right thing to do at this time.
Somewhere there are some brothers in that line,” Irvin added. “I don’t know who saw what, where. His great, great, great, great grandma ran over in the ‘hood, or something went down.”
Irvin said those words on the Dan Patrick show and now he is apologizing for them now. But he is still employed and that isn’t right. ESPN needs to follow its own protocol structure and can the former wide receiver for not only making insensitive statements about a current player, but they need to use the very logic they used to get rid of Rush Limbaugh a few years ago. The problem is that the Disney Company won’t do it and that sets up a double standard that is astronomical to the viewing public.
There is a double standard in the media world and it is on a racial divide. Whether ESPN wants to believe it or not, accept it or trash it, the prevalence in Bristol is that Irvin can get away with almost anything and nothing catastrophic will happen to him. He is their media darling.
It shouldn’t be that way in that shop or any place where the viewing and listening public is relying on intelligent commentary and opinions as part of their daily diet of news digestion. The public should not have to be subjected to very unscientific, uneducated comments like Irvin’s. What is the difference between what he said and what Jimmy the Greek said? Essentially there is no difference.
This debate has been out in the real world this week and it is indeed disheartening. In an e-mail I received from a colleague, the original sender sounded very irate that my friend didn’t speak out against Irvin’s comments. The e-mail read in part: “If you were on your high horse when Michael Richards spewed racist remarks, I’m sure you’ll give Michael Irvin’s remarks equal time. But, like I was saying, there’s a double standard when something offensive is said by a black man when it concerns a white man or any other ethnic group. Why hasn’t Irvin been fired? What’s the difference between Irvin’s statements and Jimmy the Greek’s?”
Now my friend’s response was a bit over the top but I understand both sides to an extent. After all I wasn’t privy to the whole exchange between the two. Yet I do think that the author of that e-mail has a legitimate question. How can the comments of a Black man about a white athlete not be considered the same type of rhetoric in weight, intonation and passion? What’s the difference if I said a similar comment about Jake Plummer on Fox Sports Radio and got away with it but yet my white counterpart at Sports Byline says the same thing about Lavar Arrington and he gets fired? In my eyes there is no distinction. If my white counterpart gets fired, then I had better be escorted to the parking lot as well.
That is where the escorting of the pink elephant off the premises needs to begin; with the realization that off colored remarks, no matter how ‘colorful’ they may seem to the person making them, has no place in the media or anywhere else. When I hear such humor by my friends and colleagues on the national and local airwaves, I just cringe. I cringe not because it offends me but because the subject matter is so borderline that anything could happen on the airwaves.
The reality of this matter is that there is a double standard in this business and Blacks get a little more leeway than others. If this wasn’t the case, Irvin would have been dismissed and a replacement would have done Monday Night Countdown. It would have been the right thing to do at this time.
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