ESPN fires and suspends 2 analysts

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Last week 2 ESPN analysts used the term “Chink in the Armor” in their analysis of Jeremy Lin, referring to a game in which he had 9 turnovers. They used the term to describe a weakness in his otherwise outstanding play as of late. One of the analysts was fired and the other was suspended because “Chink” can be used as a racist term towards Asians, and Jeremy Lin happens to be Asian American. It was apparent the analysts had no intention of being racist, yet were punished for using the common phrase referring to a dent or broken piece of armor, used to today to describe a weakness in an otherwise strong item or ideal.

Is it just me or was this a huge over reaction? Being politically correct has gone completely overboard.

nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/jeremy-lin-slur-honest-mistake-fired-espn-editor-anthony-federico-claims-article-1.1025566
 
Okay. I’ll say it: Those ESPN employees deserved to be fired. What an insulting and derogatory headline. (PC’s a red herring - so, no, I don’t think it has anything to do with PC.) How would you like it if they insulted a Catholic athlete? Lin is a non-Catholic Christian, for those who don’t know…
 
I say “chink in the armor” all the time, and it’s not an infrequent sports term. I don’t think anyone deserved to be punished in this case as I don’t think any offense was intended. Do a search on these forums for “chink” and you’ll find over a hundred uses of the phrase or variations of it, none of them even remotely racist in character.

Peace and God bless!
 
Using it in a headline like that leaves the impression that it is a racial reference.
 
I’m very sensitive to offensive language related to race but, yes, this is a crazy overreaction.
 
Considering most headlines in any newspapers/article/etc. try to ‘play on words’ and make clever puns, it would be rather surprising if the purpose wasn’t to make a pun using the derogatory word.

I guess it’s a matter of opinion, but I can’t imagine the writer intended to use a generic phrase for his headline - pretty clear he intended to get the racial aspect in my opinion.

Basically the writer was either trying to make a racist joke or was just profoundly stupid to not realize it, probably deserves to be fired either way.

Furthermore, another reason why I think it was intentional - it’s not as if Jeremy Lin’s race has played no part in his story, it’s at the forefront - the fact that an Asian American is succeeding in a league (NBA) that very few other Asian Americans succeed at. So race is at the forefront of his story, can’t imagine the writer could “accidentally” forget that when people have been talking about it a lot.
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
Basically the writer was either trying to make a racist joke or was just profoundly stupid to not realize it, probably deserves to be fired either way.
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Well there is a point, assuming it was done out of ignorance, it does show an amount of boneheadedness of the writer. On that basis I could see firing them, due to incompetance but not due to suspicions of racism.
 
Ghosty said:
I say “chink in the armor” all the time, and it’s not an infrequent sports term. I don’t think anyone deserved to be punished in this case as I don’t think any offense was intended. Do a search on these forums for “chink” and you’ll find over a hundred uses of the phrase or variations of it, none of them even remotely racist in character.

Peace and God bless!
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It’s very clear it was meant to be a pun on Lin’s Chinese heritage. The article referred specifically to Lin being a weak link in the Knicks loss; thus the “clever” use of chink in the armor. I’m sure they meant it to be funny and not insulting, but the fact is it was a very poor deliberate choice.
 
mini_me640 said:
It’s very clear it was meant to be a pun on Lin’s Chinese heritage. The article referred specifically to Lin being a weak link in the Knicks loss; thus the “clever” use of chink in the armor. I’m sure they meant it to be funny and not insulting, but the fact is it was a very poor deliberate choice.
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How was this “very clear”? Please explain to me how you know the intention of the author without knowing their writing style or previous clever “turns of phrase”. Tell me how you can know this as “fact”.

I’m curious how people evaluate these kinds of things, because I’m not gifted with the kind of mind-reading that so many others seem to have.

Peace and God bless!
 
I haven’t read the article, but at a guess I’d say it was a mere oversight, and the whole thing’s been blown out of proportion.

It reminds me of an incident over hear years ago on television.

Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay) was being interviewed by a TV personage named Bert Newton. Newton asked him a question and when Mohammed Ali replied, he made a bit of a quip. “This boy’s really going …”. I don’t know the whole context, but as soon as he heard “boy”, Ali bridled. I think Bert Newton nearly got his head knocked off on screeen.

And I’m also sure it was purely accidental. The term “boy” just doesn’t mean the same thing here in Australia as it does in the US, particularly as applied to American Negros. It was just an oversight, a common use of the word here which had a very different cultural slant in the US.

Political correctness these days would have had Bert Newton tarred and feathered, and yet his use of the term back then was entirely innocent.
 
To me, it was overreaction. Talk to the analysts, explain the “unintended” consequences of using such a word, and ask for an apology----but suspending and firing them? Heck no…:rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
Beyond silly.

Reminds me of the old joke about the “Poowang bird”, which has one wing shorter than the other. It flies in ever-decreasing circles until it flies up its own fundamental aperture with a resounding “poowannngggggg”.

I think political correctness in this instance has done exactly that.
 
I disagree that it’s “very clear that it was meant to be a pun on Lin’s Chinese heritage.” if it was deliberate I agree he should be fired. The term is used very commonly in sports, but now that the subject happens to be Taiwanese (not Chinese by the way), it becomes a big deal. I can agree maybe there should have been more discretion in titling the article.

I suppose my issue is more with the video portion. If you watch the video from ESPN where the analyst uses the term, it becomes pretty apparent he was using the term with pure intentions.

Also, to the question “how would you like it if they insulted a Catholic athlete?” my point is that I don’t think it was intended to be an insult. Sports analysts job is to analyze teams and players. Both their strengths and weaknesses. The term has been used a million times to brung to attention a flaw in a otherwise strong performance. Just because someone is Asian or Catholic or whatever doesn’t mean their performance cannot be evaluated. I myself am a Catholic athlete, and have been criticized plenty, but I never blame the criticism on hatred toward Catholics. Jeremy Lin said himself he did not believe it to be intentional.
 
Ghosty said:
How was this “very clear”? Please explain to me how you know the intention of the author without knowing their writing style or previous clever “turns of phrase”. Tell me how you can know this as “fact”.

I’m curious how people evaluate these kinds of things, because I’m not gifted with the kind of mind-reading that so many others seem to have.

Peace and God bless!
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I have seen ESPN use “Chink in the Armor” as a headline twice: once when the US played China in basketball in the 2008 Olympics (that article was also pulled off the website very quickly) and once in reference to Lin, a Chinese American, being a weak link in the Knicks loss to the hornets. Coincidence?
 
mini_me640 said:
I have seen ESPN use “Chink in the Armor” as a headline twice: once when the US played China in basketball in the 2008 Olympics (that article was also pulled off the website very quickly) and once in reference to Lin, a Chinese American, being a weak link in the Knicks loss to the hornets. Coincidence?
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Seeing as the articles were written by two different people it would be the very definition of a coincidence. I’m asking how you know what was in this writer’s mind and you mention an unrelated incident? My questions stand.
 
Ghosty said:
Seeing as the articles were written by two different people it would be the very definition of a coincidence. I’m asking how you know what was in this writer’s mind and you mention an unrelated incident? My questions stand.
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I can’t know what he was thinking obviously. However, in an article that was specifically about a Chinese American player (which is something of a novelty in the NBA) being a weak link in the team’s loss, it seems highly unlikely that the phrase “Chink in the Armor” was not chosen purposely.

I dont think it was necessarily chosen to be insulting, I think he was probably trying to be clever and funny, but it’s a very poor choice of words.
 
Let me be clear that I think pulling the article was right. It’s the firing that I question. Perhaps this guy gave indications of racism or deliberate insensitivity elsewhere, but I haven’t seen it yet, and certainly not in the article.

Peace and God bless!
 
Ghosty said:
I say “chink in the armor” all the time, and it’s not an infrequent sports term. I don’t think anyone deserved to be punished in this case as I don’t think any offense was intended. Do a search on these forums for “chink” and you’ll find over a hundred uses of the phrase or variations of it, none of them even remotely racist in character.

Peace and God bless!
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I am as un-PC as you can get, and these guys deserve punishment of some sort. Come on. No one believes they weren’t using Chink to refer to the first Taiwanese NBA player, aka Jeremy Lin.

Honkey, the N word, and others too have no place in a news article on a sports page. This wasn’t some random blogger’s piece. ESPN has a reputation that want to uphold (one that stinks, IMO, but nonetheless, it was a stupid thing to do).

Even if you don’t suspend them for trying to intentionally be offensive, suspend them for being too stupid to realize it was a dumb idea. Billion dollar companies have no rooms for dullards hurting their bottom line with stupidity.
 
He_Man said:
I am as un-PC as you can get, and these guys deserve punishment of some sort. Come on. No one believes they weren’t using Chink to refer to the first Taiwanese NBA player, aka Jeremy Lin.

Honkey, the N word, and others too have no place in a news article on a sports page. This wasn’t some random blogger’s piece. ESPN has a reputation that want to uphold (one that stinks, IMO, but nonetheless, it was a stupid thing to do).

Even if you don’t suspend them for trying to intentionally be offensive, suspend them for being too stupid to realize it was a dumb idea. Billion dollar companies have no rooms for dullards hurting their bottom line with stupidity.
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This is exactly how I feel ! I too am soooo not PC but it just seemed so blatant to me.
 
I remember when Madden was announcing Monday NIght Football and was discussing the different areas the runner could approach. He stated that the offensive line for that team was creating holes in the defense and it was the running back’s job to figure out whether to choose the A hole, the B hole, or C hole.

During the week, radio guys laughed at it and replayed the comments. From that point on, Madden referred to the holes as gaps instead. So it was A gap, B gap, etc…

Chink in the armor is widely used in sports as has already been said. Sports announcing is so pollyannish and filled with euphemisms enough as it is. Let people say what they think.
 
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