ESPN Columnist Jamele Hill Likens Rooting for the Celtics to Adolf Hitler

ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill was suspended Monday over a column that said, “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.” Wow, that’s a really idiotic thing to say. But the irony in this situation is how quickly she was suspended. When Kelly Tilghman made those comments about “lynching” Tiger Woods, it took a little while before she was suspended.

The offending phrases were edited out of Hill’s online column within hours, but ESPN spokesman Paul Melvin said, “Jemele has been relieved of her writing and on-air responsibilities for a period of time to reflect on the impact of her words.” Melvin had acknowledged “there was a breakdown in the system of editorial checks and balances” when the column was posted late Saturday. Asked Wednesday whether the editors who handled the column would also be punished, Melvin told Journal-isms in an e-mail, “We ARE looking at the entire situation, including the breakdown in editorial checks and balances, and we ARE dealing with that as well.”

Hill said in an ESPN statement, “In expressing my passion for the NBA and my hometown of Detroit I showed very poor judgment in the words I used. . . . This has been an important lesson for me and illustrates that, like many people, I still have a lot of growing and learning to do.”
Jessica Heslam, who has followed the story in the Boston Herald, wrote that “Hill’s suspension came as WBCN radio hosts Fred Toucher and Rich Shertenlieb branded her a hypocrite and demanded she be fired. So, funny how the media gets selective in reprimanding some employees for saying racist things and does nothing to others. Take Fox News for example–during Megyn Kelly’s broadcast Michelle Obama was described as “Obama baby mama” and I don’t believe anyone was suspended or reprimanded for that dust-up.

So, here we go, a witch hunt has ensued for Jamele Hill. For example, the media revisited another article she wrote. “In an April 2007 piece, she called for radio host Don Imus to get cashiered after his controversial 2007 ‘nappy-headed hos’ slur.” Boston Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald invoked the memory of a Holocaust victim Wednesday to admonish, “There is nothing witty about using Hitler as a punch line.

ESPN’s statement said:

“Both Jemele and ESPN.com apologize. The column, as originally posted, made some uncharacteristic, but absolutely unacceptable comparisons. We’ve spoken with Jemele, and she understands that she exercised poor judgment. She’s been relieved of her responsibilities for a period of time to reflect on the impact of her words. Within hours of its posting on Saturday evening, the inappropriate references were removed from the site, but our system of checks and balances failed Jemele and our readers and we are addressing that as well.”

Final Thoughts….

Hill joined ESPN in 2006 to write for ESPN.com and ESPN: the Magazine. She was a sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, believed then to be the only African American woman writing a sports column for a mainstream daily. So, while her choice of words were actually insulting, if the truth be told, let’s hold her to the same standards as we have done for Imus, Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan, Duane “Dog” Chapman, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Liz Trotta, Dick Morris, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and the many other “geniuses” we have in the mainstream media. Just my thoughts, you be the judge.

Filed under: Ann Coulter, Jamele Hill, Kelly Tilghman, Liz Trotta, Pat Buchanan