We honestly don’t know that. Being in the media myself, I can see why ESPN made the choice they did. If I’d been in charge of stuff there and a reporter with that name had come to me and said “Hey, given what a shitfight things are there right now, perhaps I should cover another game instead?” I’d say “No worries, consider it sorted”.
If he had come to me, I would have done the same thing. But I wouldn’t have gone to him.
ESPN doing something stupid? Now THAT’S a first.
Let’s hope that Christopher Columbus doesn’t end up as reviled as Robert E. Lee, or else Director Chris Columbus is screwed. Will we all have to burn our copies of the first two Harry Potter movies?
I see that New York’s dumbest ever mayor is fanning the flames of Columbus hate:
They didn’t make an announcement about the change. Any communication about it was internal.
You wouldn’t have heard anything about it, and there would have been no volume whatsoever, if the story had not been leaked.
If lee works the game, there is “tone deaf” complaints.
If lee doesn’t work the game, then there are no complaints at all.
It is only because we found out about their decisions behind the scenes that we feel that we should criticize their decision making.
How does that follow?
It was decided that it would create too much controversy to have a person named Lee to announce a game in charlottesville after a white supremacist terror attack.
How does harry potter in any way have the same sorts of connections?
So we can probably expect Columbus Circle to be renamed Time Warner Circle.
I love the 1984 references in that article implying that removing statues is equivalent to Big Brother rewriting history.
Except the difference is that it’s UN-rewriting a history that glosses over the atrocities committed by people like Robert E Lee and Christopher Columbus.
The first couple of films were directed by Chris Columbus.
I get that, but the reason that Lee was moved to another broadcast was because hi sname coincided with the broadcast he was going to do.
How does Columbus’s name have anything the same relevancy to the movies, as Lee’s did to broadcasting a game in a town that had just had a white supremacist terror attack?
Adahar might as well make the assumption that Liberals want to destroy all the trees, because in a group, they are named a for[r]est for all the relevance that his “burn the harry potter movies” quip comes from.
Well that was a misleading description - the article doesn’t mention Rudy Giuliani at all.
But you gotta admit it’s a masterpiece of deflection, in its own way. Nation erupts in turmoil over statues because several hundred literal Nazis and KKK’ers rally in support of Confederate memorials, where they literally mob an innocent black bystander and literally murder a peaceful counter-protestor, besides causing innumerable other injuries—but for the National Review, all this spontaneous anti-statue sentiment is just the fault of those awful “politically correct” left-wing activists. Oh, those awful left-wing activists, getting all upset over nothing, as usual!
It will be interesting to see over the coming months whether the right-wing anti-liberal propaganda can manage to keep up with the damage control required by actual right-wing atrocities and bigotry:
Actual Nazis committing terrorist murders? The real problem is that antifa sometimes punch people!
Racists unironically using in everyday media the term “white genocide” to refer to the voluntary choices of individuals about intermarriage and parenthood? Well, what about the BLM movement refusing to change their slogan to “All lives matter”?!
Armed antigovernment-cult militants seize and occupy for weeks on end a federal building and harass and intimidate federal employees? The Standing Rock protesters are terrorists!
The strategy is always the same: just keep on normalizing and downplaying and disregarding actual right-wing bigotry and menaces, while pearl-clutching with loud shrieks of dismay at any efforts of protest or resistance on the other side.
rofl
You were so close to being a halfway decent poster. Why would you do this?
Here we have the most precious snowflakes ever: People whose feelings are hurt because you can’t pronounce their names:
This is one of the aspects of the racism debate that really bugs me sometimes. This idea that something that happens to you happens because you are a minority. Sometimes it's just something that happens to everyone. In the case of name pronunciation, nearly everyone who doesn't speak your language is going to butcher your name. If your name is as seemingly simple as Andrew, everyone who isn't a native English speaker will butcher it. If that bugs you, you need to be made of stronger stuff.Huh? A lot of minorities have difficult-to-pronounce names because they are from minority cultures.
Which is what happens to immigrants.
Yep, that’s life as an immigrant, although in the US even some Americans have a fondness for really difficult names. If your name is difficult to pronounce, then you’re joining a huge club that consists of immigrants and Americans with lousy parents who hate their children.
From who? Should we care?
Whenever I go to Germany nearly everyone mispronounces my name because there’s a ‘th’ and a j in it. I do not get bent out of shape about it.
People who may listen to the game, hear about the game, or otherwise know about the game.
Obviously, you do care, if you did not care, you would not be making this post.
The question is not whether or not you should care, you were never asked or consulted on the decision, and the decision was never meant to be judged by you.
The decision was made internally, because someone at ESPN, whether it be a producer, and exec, or the announcer themselves, felt that it would cause too much of a distraction.
If the news had not been leaked, you wouldn’t even know. So no, you are not expected to care.
If you think it’ll make you feel better, you are welcome to contact ESPN, to make sure they un all their staffing decisions by you first, to make sure that it will not upset you.
I have no desire to randomly watch a youtube video, but… there’s a huge distinction between “here’s something bad that minorities face, it makes life difficult for them… and you white people are BAD and you should feel GUILTY and any time you mispronounce someone’s name it’s because of the PATRIARCHY and COLONIALISM and YOU ARE ALL AWFUL AND SHOULD DIE” vs “here’s something bad that minorities face, and sure it’s not a big deal all by itself, but it’s one of many factors that make it hard for them to succeed, so, hey, white people, please be sensitive about it, and do your best, OK?”.
I think it’s easy for people to read something that’s basically the second and then react as if it’s the first.