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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1887
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 02:21 pm: | 
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February 20, 2006
The Winter Olympics and Defending Bryant Gumbel
White Blindness: Racism on ESPN?
By DAVE ZIRIN
The right-wing media hordes, in a mad dash to deflect attention from Dick Cheney's shooting spree, may have found their target of mass distraction: Bryant Gumbel. At the end of his HBO show "Real Sports," Gumbel unleashed a prolonged rant about the utter unwatchability of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. The Winter Games certainly are a worthy target. On ten-hour tape delay, NBC has been force-feeding us highlights of sports that seem concocted on Madison Avenue to sell Mountain Dew. As Gumbel took the Xtreme winter games to task, he said, "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of Blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." Immediately, and predictably, the bloviating bigots of the blogosphere started splattering Gumbel's statement all over the web.
This was to be expected. But more striking was the reaction to Gumbel on ESPN Radio's "The Dan Patrick Show." Normally, in the red meat world of sports radio, Dan Patrick seems happy to be veal: no gristle or fat, morally offensive to some, but generally just plain and easily digestible. But Dan blew a gasket on the air, going after Gumbel like he was president of the Willard Scott fan club. He called for Gumbel's job, saying that if Rush Limbaugh was fired from ESPN for making racially insensitive comments, a firing Dan says he opposed - then Gumbel should suffer the same fate. Comparing Gumbel to Limbaugh is like comparing apples to an obese drug addict. Gumbel is an award-winning journalist who has had a foot in the world of hard sports commentary for three decades.
Limbaugh is a gaseous hop-head who once asked, "Why do all composite criminal photos look like Jesse Jackson?" and telling an African-American caller to his show who somehow got through the screeners -- to "Take the bone out of your nose." Gumbel hosts a critically lauded show. Limbaugh was a hired by ESPN as a gimmick by their ownership group, Disney, as part of their mission to make America stupider.
But when you actually compare their respective comments, the Dan Patrick argument not only collapses, but becomes intellectually dishonest. Limbaugh, of course, said on ESPN's NFL show that Pro-Bowl Philadelphia Eagle Donavan McNabb was "overrated" because of the "media's social concern" to see a successful Black quarterback. This was exactly the kind of ignorant garbage Disney hired him spew. What the rat shack didn't count on was thousands of phone calls and emails demanding the fat man's Sosa-sized head.
Let's look at Gumbel's comments again. "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention." Patrick told his listening audience that Gumbel was "playing the race card" by claiming whites couldn't be good athletes -- when in fact Gumbel was hardly saying anything so shocking, or even that new. The fact is -- and Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly confirmed this -- that the athletes and the audience in Torino are almost entirely white. This isn't because Black people aren't comfortable in the cold, but because of access to the types of sports on display at the Winter Games. In fact, the Winter Olympics are such a Snow White affair, it became international news Saturday when Shani Davis became the first Black Olympian to win an individual gold, not only in the 2006 Olympics but the entire history of the Winter Games. Davis knew it himself, saying, "I'm one of a kind." For Davis, his special status was heightened by messages he received on his personal web site, revealing, "they hoped I would fall, break my leg, using the n-word." [Maybe Davis is "playing the race card," too?] In the history of athletics, anytime African-American athletes have had access and opportunity they have excelled. Sports that require thousands of dollars of equipment, country club memberships and trips to Vail will continue to be as segregated as New Orleans.
Gumbel's comments on winter sports are not different from what John McEnroe and Andre Agassi have argued about tennis. They have both said, with no backlash, that there are potentially incredible tennis players in the inner cities of the US that we will never see because of an absence of public tennis courts and basic infrastructure. It's not different from the lament of Negro League baseball players of the 1930s like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Buck O'Neal who didn't understand how Joe Dimaggio and Dizzy Dean could be called "the best" baseball players when they didn't even have a chance to compete. Yet Gumbel is a target for stating the obvious. Dan Patrick wanted Rush to stay. Now he wants Gumbel to go.
The problem is not that Dan Patrick is a raving right-winger who likes to spend his weekends shooting 78 year old lawyers in the face. It's that he and ESPN are the anti-political guardians of sport. They are instinctually hostile to anyone who tries to challenge the athletic-industrial complex. ESPN Radio's "Mike and Mike In the Morning" even have a "Just Shut Up Award" for any athlete who dares step outside the box. One player said to me, "The fastest way to win the Just Shut Up Award' is to actually have something to say, particularly about race or [the war in] Iraq."
If we are going to have honest discussions about sport and society, we should look at the content of what Gumbel is saying. And if we are going to look racism in the face, then we can't let someone get canned for having the temerity to talk truth. Maybe if Gumbel had just shot someone in the face instead, Patrick and company would be more forgiving.
Dave Zirin's new book "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States" is published by Haymarket Books. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.
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Libralind2
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 324
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 09:32 pm: |
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"If we are going to have honest discussions about sport and society, we should look at the content of what Gumbel is saying. And if we are going to look racism in the face, then we can't let someone get canned for having the temerity to talk truth. Maybe if Gumbel had just shot someone in the face instead, Patrick and company would be more forgiving."
The above says it all..for me
LiLi |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 4016
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 10:21 pm: |
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What Gumbel says about the Olymphics is very true and relevant. It's just that I am not used to him speaking up like that because, to me, if there was ever an oreo, it was Bryant Gumbel. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4370
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 07:07 am: |
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Part of me wishes that Black children were given more of a chance to succeed in sports they are seldom given a chance to compete in.
But another part of me wishes Black children would in general concentrate less on sports and MORE on academics. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1903
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 03:16 pm: |
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Cynnique:
What Gumbel says about the Olymphics is very true and relevant. It's just that I am not used to him speaking up like that because, to me, if there was ever an oreo, it was Bryant Gumbel.
Tonya:
I RARELY agree with you but THANK YOU, Cynnique!
Those are my sentiments exactly. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1890
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 03:33 pm: |
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I know a guy who grew up in the same neighborhood as Bryant and Greg Gumbel (despite what he would probably have you think it was just a regular working class neighborhood, not nothing special--that's often the kind of background you find that people putting on such airs have) and he says everybody hated them.
Say, he grew up in Chicago.
Where Cynique is from.
Hmmmm. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1893
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 03:43 pm: |
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By the way I heard the Gumbel statement and, as usual, the Klansmen took one sentence he said all out of context.
I will say he was a fool for saying it, knowing how much he is hated (and not for just being black) and how they are waiting to jump on this sort of thing.
What he said was the truth (No black athletes in the Winter Olympics) but you can't tell the truth in America these days because you can't sell the truth.
He might have just been trying to get some heat on the Olympics--nobody is watching. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4397
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 08:03 am: |
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John Newton found GOD, freed his slaves and wrote the immortal "Amazing Grace". |
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