Outrage

ESPN, the leader in broadcast sports news, loves a good controversy. In their NFL page, they constantly write an article daily about the overrated Tim Tebow. Whether he's preaching the word of the Lord, or buying a ham sandwich, Tebow gets tons of press, and their comment section shows the fans can't get enough. Since Tebow is the moral equivalent of Billy Graham, the Evangelical community loves to white knight him. If you say Tebow isn't a good quarterback (he's not)m you're suddenly vilified as a hater of the mother of Jesus and want to see Christians thrown to the lions. If you say he's a good quarterback (he's not), you're called a dumbass who knows nothing about the sport, which may be accurate.

Now the NBA has their own divisive figure in the form of Jeremy Lin; mediocre basketball player, Asian-American, and Evangelical Christian. He really does nothing special on the court, yet everyone talks about him as if he was the second coming of Jordan. Fans with a religious bent so badly want him to be like Kobe, and others are just annoyed someone so average is getting such attention.

Then ESPN came up with a headline about Jeremy's play with the words "chink in the armor", a phrase used for years in sports reporting and numerous other ways, and in this case, Lin's terrible playing. Of course, ESPN freaked out when they realized that their readers, who they think would suddenly spasm at seeing it, fired the headline writer and suspended the broadcaster who repeated the phrase. No one gave two shits about it, not even Lin himself, who doesn't believe it was intentional.

Now yes, the word "chink" can be used as a racist slur, but this headline was not doing that, and everyone knows it. So a guy got fired for doing his job, a good one at that, all because ESPN, the same organization that thought it would be a great idea to hire Rush Limbaugh, has assumed it's readers aren't smart enough to decipher what is racist or not.

"Have to learn to forgive, and I don't even think that was intentional. Or hopefully not.” - Jeremy Lin