Ready...Aim...Fire!

Yesterday I talked about the little fiasco over there at ESPN when someone decided that a good headline referring to Jeremy Lin would be "Chink in the armor" when the Knicks lost. (In case you missed yesterday's post, that particular headline was a bad idea.) ESPN apologized and they took the headline down and they did so within 35 minutes. (Doesn't take long for an Internet ruckus to get going.) And of course, that wasn't enough for some people.

According to the Huffington Post, the "...Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization that promotes civil rights for Asian Americans, wants the network to do even more". That's right. Even more. They apologized. They took it down within 35 minutes. And that isn't enough. Apparently, the AALDEF (who should really think about shortening their acronym) says "The time for apologies is over." Sooooo...I guess we shoot them? I'm so confused.

They went onto say "The media and the general public must understand that racist language and stereotypes used to describe Jeremy Lin are an insult to all Asian Americans, and no one should tolerate their use." Huh. I'm pretty sure that the "media and general public" DO understand that. If the media didn't understand that, wouldn't we see more inappropriate language in their reporting? Does this happen often? I don't think it does, but that might be based upon my definition of "often". Since I keep up to date on current events all the live long day, I'm pretty sure that my reading material isn't frequently peppered with racial insults. Based upon that, I'm not sure that it's the HUGE problem that they want to make it out to be. The headline that ESPN used? Now THAT was a problem. But is it widespread? I really don't think that it is. (By the way, the picture that I used for this paragraph is ALSO a problem. Whose idea was that?)

Now let's address the concern that they have about the general public. If you're reading this blog, you have to know that the general public is stupid. Paste eating, mouth breathin' morons is what a lot of 'em are. You know it. You know them! But the media and the general public are two completely different entities. Good luck at getting the general public to consistently adhere to an acceptable group of standards. There will always be those who don't go with the flow and who can't play nice with others. I'm not saying that it should be tolerated, but I don't think that people should be overly surprised when they encounter such softheads.

It's still unclear to me what the AALDEF wants anyone to DO. 35 minutes response time might be some sort of a record. And ESPN said in a statement "We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again". OK, I don't know what "cross-platform editorial procedures" even means. I don't know if even ESPN knows what that means. But they also said "We regret and apologize for this mistake." There you go. It was a mistake. They didn't say "We're going to immediately fire the person who did that because it's clear that they are a flaming racist and are also probably a Klan member." It was a mistake. They apologized. And from what I can tell in reading the reactions to this debacle, the only person who thought it was a good idea in the first place was the moron who wrote it.

I'm all for making people aware of when things aren't OK because they have a racist tone to them. But there are instances when it's just a stupid mistake. I'm pretty sure this is one of those times. I'm pretty sure that everyone at ESPN is NOT a racist. I'm pretty sure that the person who wrote this wasn't a racist. (Really, if you were a racist, do you think that the most appropriate way to get your racist views out there would be to risk your job at ESPN with a comment as lame as "Chink in the armor"? Please.) But I guess now we're just supposed to shoot these folks or something because an apology isn't enough. Seems a bit extreme if you're asking me.

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How To Get Fired

I caught a little media blurb over at Media Bistro yesterday about ESPN firing one of their announcers, a one Ron Franklin. It didn't get into a lot of detail, briefly stating that "Franklin was pulled from last Friday’s Chick-fil-A Bowl broadcast after making derogatory comments towards colleague Jeannine Edwards." Now, I've never heard of Mr. Franklin, so I wasn't so much concerned about him as much as I really wanted to know what he said. So I looked into it. I wasn't sorry.

Before I continue, can I just point out an absolutely ridiculous side note? The Chick-fil-A Bowl? Really? Am I the only one who thinks that sounds totally asinine? Is this what we're looking at from now on? Corporate sponsorship that totally takes over the name of the game? There are some pretty silly sounding names out there. It's going to get interesting if we just let them start having their own bowl games (because they can) and naming them after themselves (because they own them and why wouldn't they?). Oh, wait. I just looked up all of the different names of bowl games and this is going to require its own post. I came to that conclusion after learning that there are over thirty different bowl games and one of them is the GoDaddy.com Bowl. And that's not even the silliest. So tune in tomorrow for Bowl Game Insanity, Part Deux!

Back to Mr. Franklin. I went over to USA Today for a little bit more of the story as to what he had said that was enough to get him fired. It seems that this Jeannine Edwards was talking with ESPN announcer Rod Gilmore. Apparently, Mr. Gilmore's wife had just been elected mayor of Alameda, California. (Good luck with that.) At some point, Mr. Franklin joined the conversation and for some unknown reason said to Ms. Edwards, "Listen to me sweet baby, let me tell you something . . . " She claims that he said that "...with a condescending tone." Yes, I think that if we can assume anything from a sentence that starts off with "Listen to me sweet baby" its' going to be that it's in a condescending tone. I got that without any initial clarification, though it was nice to have my initial assumption confirmed.

Oh, but if you're thinking it stopped there, it did not. "Edwards says she told Franklin not to address her like that." That seems like a fairly reasonable next step, considering that they were in the work place. But then, in a move that doesn't seem like a fairly reasonable next step, considering that they were in the work place, Franklin replied, To which Franklin said, "OK, then listen to me a-hole."

I'm sure it's wrong of me, but I laughed when I read that. Who the heck says stuff like that? To your co-worker no less! Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of co-workers that I would have loved to have said that to. (And I wouldn't have started out with "sweet baby" either. Nope, I would have gone straight to a-hole!) But that's the first rule of having co-workers. You don't call them a-hole to their face. While you're working. With them.

And even though he was fired, I'm under the impression that he was fired because he wasn't apologetic enough. Actually, he wasn't apologetic at all, as Ms. Edwards says that he did not apologize to her. The guy is 68 years old. There's a point in people's lives where they stop feeling like they either a) need to apologize, or b) care to apologize. Mr. Franklin is clearly past both of those points. And it won't matter because I'm sure that someone out there will hire him to do whatever it is that he does sometime in the near future. Hopefully they won't mind being called an a-hole once in a while.

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Irrelevant Details In The News

You'd think I'd be used to this by now. But apparently I'm not. I say that because it still never ceases to amaze me when I read an article that is just a craptastic pile of blather masquerading as journalism. I continue to think the same thing. What in the hell are they thinking?

Today's example and case in point comes to us via the Erin Andrews story. Erin Andrews, if you're not already aware, is a very hot woman who holds a microphone emblazoned with the ESPN logo on it. I have no idea if she knows anything about sports and neither does anyone who has ever seen her or watched her do whatever it is that she does. That's because most people could care less what comes out of her mouth as long as whatever it is that she does, she does looking like that. Good Lord, they're she's beautiful. That microphone could have a swastika on it and folks would still tune in.

Erin Andrews was in the news more than she usually was last July when videos surface on the Internet (shocking, I know) of her getting undressed or being in a glorious state of undress in her hotel room. It appeared that the videos were taken without her knowledge (OK, now that one does shock me) via a reverse peephole dealio or something like that. I didn't know there was such a thing as a reverse peephole, nor did I know that you could utilize one at a hotel room of your choosing. Then again, I'm not a pervert. I swear.

But just the other day the person who is (allegedly) the pervert who took the videos was arrested. The pervert is allegedly a one 47-year old Michael David Barrett of Westmont, Illinois. According to a ridiculous article which was written by an AP Writer and was published on the ABC News website (among others), we learn that the pervert man "...kept his yard manicured, played golf and enjoyed cooking on a gas grill on a patio behind his $300,000 suburban Chicago town house." WHAT?!?!

Cooking? On a gas grill? A pervert?! Are you sure?? What's your source?! Was there chicken? Was he cooking chicken on the gas grill?! I'll be he was! All perverts cook chicken on gas grills! Seriously, how is any of that relevant to anything? I can't figure it out. Yet whenever there is some sort of tawdry goings on out there within all of the Internets, when those partaking in said tawdriness are uncovered (for all the world to shun and mock), the most meaningless details about them in relation to what they have done always seem to surface and I don't get it. What else do we have in this craptastic article?

Oh, good! It includes some of my favorite inexplicable and irrelevant statements in these situations. There's the "It's the apparently normal life of Michael David Barrett, a 47-year-old insurance company employee, that made his arrest for allegedly secretly videotaping Andrews nude so upsetting, his neighbors said Sunday." Wait. What?

So, they're saying that the guy didn't openly act like a pervert? THAT is what is so upsetting to them? The clandestine perversion? OH, well, of course then. That explains their dismay and disbelief. Oh, wait. No, it doesn't. In fact, that doesn't make any sense AT ALL!

Look, he was secretly taping a woman in her hotel room! Did these neighbors expect that he would be candid and open about his little hobby there? I don't think that he would! Why not? Well, for starters, it's right there in the name! SECRETLY taping! He wasn't blatantly opening taping women in their hotel rooms, was he? NO! Why not? Well, because you can usually only do that ONCE. But secretly, you can, theoretically do it more than once!

I'm going to try to go easy on some of the folks that were quoted in this story because they're senior citizens. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to let them skate. We're supposed to be looking to our elders for wisdom and guidance. Tell you what. How about if we still do that, but we just look for it someplace other than these folks, OK? OK!

"I'm totally shocked," said David Wayne, 72, a retired corporate executive who lives several doors down from Barrett. "He looked absolutely normal — nothing distinguishing." I can't tell if he thinks that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is he upset that he didn't know he was living on the same street as a pervert? Would he have preferred that Mr. Barrett exhibit some distinguishing and, in all likelihood, disturbing behaviors? Is he surprised that he didn't know he was living on the same street as a pervert? Does he think that he knows everything about all of his other neighbors? He doesn't!

Why do they insist on interviewing the people that always live "several doors down"? First of all, how many is several? Three? Or twenty seven? I could tell you stuff about my neighbors on either side of me and the three directly across the street from me and my two neighbors. Other than that, I don't have much. Granted, my walled off compound does hamper the sociability factor, but that seems to be a reasonable radius within which to limit your interviews in a situation like this.

I still don't know what the interviewer was looking for by talking to these people. It's not like this guy was Phillip Garrido and had a prison camp full of women that he either kidnapped or fathered in his backyard. This is a guy who videotaped Erin Andrews in a state of undress. What sort of things could neighbors say that might indicate that anyone should have seen this coming? I can't think of a single thing.

Everyone that knows him says that he's a "regular guy". Of course they do, because what are the choices in this situation? You can be a "regular guy" or you can be "the perverted weirdo who is always trying to film women". Most guys who are the perverted weirdo, prefer not to be thought of that way. It enables them to hide their untoward activities and it enables them to do them more than once. (By the way, there were seven videos of Ms. Andrews, so that theory I just laid out there would seem to be true.)

Please. Please all news media reporters/journalists out there. Please stop trying to find something in nothing. Every single time a case like this arises and the neighbors are interviewed, it's always the same. He was a regular guy. We had no idea he was a serial killer. That's why I think that the safest place for anyone (anyone who is worried about being offed by a serial killer, that is) is right next door to the maniacs. Maniacs, as a general rule, seem to leave their neighbors alone. They'll stalk someone across state lines when they really could have spent that time stalking their neighbor and staring at them through the Venetian blinds from the comfort of their own perverted home. But that doesn't interest them, so you're safe that way. Serial killers - the best neighbors ever!

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