How ESPN's Fear of the Truth Ruined "Black Grantland"

[tishaLA]

Last edited Wed Oct 7, 2015, 05:10 PM - Edit history (1)

for those who don't know, Grantland is an ESPN-sponsored site formerly run by Bill Simmons, an iconoclastic reporter (sort of in the Olbermann vein) who ruffled lots of feathers at ESPN and, like Olbermann, recently got his walking papers from the company. The relative success of Grantland led ESPN to spearhead a site dedicated to the convergence of sports and African America culture--The Undefeated. Greg Howard, a writer at Deadspin part of the Gawker group), has been documenting the events at The Undefeated for a while in several excellent long-form pieces that have explored why the site does not seem to be launching. At the heart of it is its former editor in chief, Jason Whitlock, a writer whose affection for respectability politics Howard targets with laser precision. But the fault isn't with Whitlock alone, Howard writes, but with ESPN being afraid that African American writers' truth-telling would be too off-putting to its audience. link

<...> It’s easy to say now that Whitlock was destined to fail at The Undefeated, but that’s a harsh reading of events. Whitlock is an unsophisticated thinker on race who wrote his belief in black pathology into the The Undefeated’s DNA, and whose ideas about respectability politics bled into each piece he edited before he was tossed aside. His ideology was formed over 20 years of writing opinions on race that were largely inaccurate, but, more importantly, firmly aligned with the opinions of many whites. Though he’d alienated many blacks along the way, including talented ESPN colleagues, his readings of American history were agreeable to an enormous portion of ESPN’s audience. He was decidedly safe and unchallenging. Through this lens, Whitlock was, in theory at least, the perfect choice to run the site. <...>

ESPN most shows its ass when it treats expressions of bigotry and ignorance as mere expressions of individual opinion or preference, and when it gives discredited ideas equal weight with ones worthy of consideration. ESPN NBA reporter Chris Broussard, for example, is an avowed bigot who, when not writing wrong things, hides behind religion to rail against pre-marital fucking and call homosexuality “an open rebellion to God.” He still has a job. ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling was suspended after comparing Muslims to Nazis this summer. But he still has a job, and after spending his entire suspension publishing more racist things, he was recently reinstated for MLB playoff duty. This comes after last year, when Schilling asserted that evolution was false. When Keith Law defended evolution, Law was suspended from Twitter. Will Cain, a climate-change denier, was hired by ESPN this year and allowed to go on HBO in the role of an ESPNer and deny climate change. After a career built on saying racist things, discarded foreskin and shock jock Colin Cowherd was ushered out of ESPN after calling Dominicans stupid mere days before he was supposed to join Fox Sports anyway. The move fooled no one. Skip Bayless foil Stephen A. Smith has a long history of saying homophobic and misogynistic things, including explaining that women who get hit are to blame. He is also woman-beating boxer Floyd Mayweather’s most devoted and visible defender, peddles ideas about black pathology, and just yesterday hurled a threat at Kevin Durant. He still has a job. After torpedoing The Undefeated, Jason Whitlock went on PTI and spoke at length about the importance of isolating women from their friends and families while dating. This came after a career built, among other things, on peddling sexism. Until this weekend, he still had a job.

The list goes on, but the one thing all these incidents and allowances share in common is the way they express the cowardice of ESPN executives. Their refusal to acknowledge the realities of the world outside of sports—that there are scientifically sound ideas and crank ones; that there are not two sides to every issue; that there is a difference in kind between controversial or unpopular opinions and ludicrous expressions of bigotry and misogyny—is dishonest, a forfeiture of journalistic duty that is felt all through everything ESPN does. It is also why neither The Undefeated or anything like it will ever work. <...>

The whole piece is excellent (and long) like its predecessor, How Jason Whitlock Is Poisoning ESPN's "Black Grantland". This all points to the difficulty of black voices in the public sphere: I want to say "authentic critique" from within the community, but of course that is a heterogeneous thing and nobody believes in authenticity anymore, anyhow, unless they are talking about the false authenticity of "authentic" politicians, in which case it makes people feel good. Leaving that aside, though, it speaks to the troubles of meshing market forces, especially in the form of mass media conglomerates, with voices--whether black, Latino, LGBT--that might upset the apple cart.

[brush]

1. I'm saving this to read later. Jason Whitlock, btw, is and has been an a-hole for years.

Although some at ESPN thought he was the one to head that site, he could never get it up and running because of his indecision and inability to work with creative people (I read the long first piece mentioned).

BTW, where is the link for the second story?

[tishaLA]

2. gah! I forgot to add the link to the MAIN story

I'll fix it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. I know he had a huge beef with Mike Lupica but I forgot what it was about

<<<<<<<<<<<< not a Lupica fan!!!