GREGG EASTERBROOK AND ME (ESPN fires Easterbrook for "Kill Bill" comments in TNR)

RogerLSimon.com ^ | 10.18.03 | Roger L. Simon

[mhking]

I just got off the phone with Gregg Easterbrook who emailed me that he wanted to talk. He is a warm and cordial man. He honestly solicited what I thought he should have done but I could offer him little advice. I have enough trouble deciding what I should do, but I did point out that in this world that has gone radioactive on what the Stalinists used to call “The Jewish Question”—from the appalling UN Conference on “Human Rights” in Durban to yesterday’s rehash of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” for the entire Moslem world by the Prime Minister of Malaysia—it is incumbent on all of us to be especially alert on issues of anti-Semitism. The results of such talk have been devastating in the past and can be again.

But Easterbrook also informed me of something else that is highly disturbing. He has been fired from his job at ESPN. Gregg takes full responsibility for this (he wrote the original words that he regrets), but I, as one of his harshest critics, believe that ESPN has vastly overreacted. I urge them to reconsider their decision. I don’t think anybody who attacked Easterbrook wanted to see him fired. I certainly didn’t. To the degree that I am even remotely responsible for this I humbly apologize. I can only say this is another example of what we all know—words have consequences.

[mhking]

Easterbrook is a slime-ball, but this shows what kind of limp-wristed butt-wipes ESPN managerment are.

Just damn.

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[Dog]

They fired Rush for making a racial slur....their words not mine. Yet this Easterbrook makes vile comments about the Jews and is fired yet this guy wants them to reconsider.......amazing.

[discostu]

Easterbrook isn't a slimeball, he's a smart guy who leans right and wrote the best football column out there. Who started a protest against him? His mention on Kill Bill was mostly making fun of Tarentino for saying parents should take their kids to see it.

[quidnunc]

After the Limbaugh/McNabb kerfuffle ESPN had little choice other than to fire Easterbrook.

Can you imagine the hell there would be to pay from conservative commentators — who have the ear of much of ESPN's audience — if they gave Limbaugh the bum's rush for little of nothing while keeping a liberal who suggested that Jews are unprincipled money-grubbers?

[Dog]

In this PC world you make comments like he made .......and the left pounces on them.

He might not have meant what he wrote.......but he wrote them just the same.

[discostu]

I must have missed this wonder comment. The only thing I read from Easterbrook about Kill Bill was completely innoffensive, the only people I could see possibly being even remotely offended would be Tarentino who's an idiot anyway. Either there's a whole extra comment I missed or the world has just gone whacky.

[WHBates]

Well this is prof positive that there is lots of stuff going on that is under the radar? What is the problem? Thin skins or a real issue?

[dennisw]

Vast over reaction is right. Plus people will say the Jews got a man fired even though he apologized.

[Dog]

Kill Bill.

[discostu]

Thanks that's a different comment than the one I read (Kill Bill must have really gotten under his skin). Seems like a clunky construction but not really offensive, are we all supposed to forget the Holocaust and pretend nobody should have learned a lesson from it? And really no reason to fire him from ESPN it's not like he made the comment there.

Without TMQ the football season just got a lot less interesting. Hopefully he'll resurrect it somewhere else, best football brain out there.

[visualops]

His comments:

Corporate sidelight: Kill Bill is distributed by Miramax, a Disney studio. Disney seeks profit by wallowing in gore--Kill Bill opens with an entire family being graphically slaughtered for the personal amusement of the killers--and by depicting violence and murder as pleasurable sport. Disney's Miramax has been behind a significant share of Hollywood's recent violence-glorifying junk, including Scream, whose thesis was that murdering your friends and teachers is a fun way for high-school kids to get back at anyone who teases them. Scream was the favorite movie of the Columbine killers.

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

[Mears]

Getting tough to be a media person these days,isn't it? I hope my grandchildren grow up to be cowboys. It's a lot safer!!

[thathamiltonwoman]

When I read Easterbrook's comments I knew he was toast.

[Diago]

This was reported elsewhere:

Mr. Easterbrook said he wrote a column last week about Mel Gibson's coming film "Passion," and added: "I raised the issue that Mel Gibson professes to be an ardent Christian. Maybe he is. But his background previous to this movie is making movies that glorify violence."

"I raised the exact same question about a Christian," Mr. Easterbrook said, and "there was not a single peep."

[beckett]

I think it's an over-reaction. Easterbrook is a helluva good writer who composed a few clumsy phrases. He deserves a break.

Although he is usually considered left of center (barely) conservatives owe this guy a few favors. He has done some for us with his highly competent science writing, which he has deftly used to skewer radical environmentalists.

[rcocean]

Hey Rush got fired for a lot less. If you're ever hired by ESPN - ask for list of all the topics that cannot be discussed or written about.

[FReepaholic]

>>...They fired Rush ...<<

I thought Rush resigned. Not fired.

[Timesink]

ESPN forced to fire one of their best writers to cover their ass for their PC ostracism of Rush Limbaugh!

Schadenfreude

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[Timesink]

Hey Rush got fired for a lot less. If you're ever hired by ESPN - ask for list of all the topics that cannot be discussed or written about.

Why aren't there more Jewish quarterbacks in the NFL?!?!? </sarcasm>