Topic: NewsBusters
"Bruce Bookter" -- the cowardly NewsBusters blogger hiding behind a fake name -- rants in a June 18 post:
So, riddle me this: how does a company edict, that requires employees to not wade into political matter of an inflammatory nature, change from a sternly enforced rule, to all of a sudden becoming, no biggie?
Apparently, this abrupt change occurs based on whether the person wading into the “inflammatory” debate is a conservative or a liberal. In the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub terrorist attack of last week, ESPN’s Jemele Hill took to Twitter and opined on what she viewed to be the hypocritical nature of the country’s reaction to the attack:
Of course, the irony here has nothing to do with Jemele Hill’s nonsensical take equating, I guess, opposition to gay marriage with gays being executed by state sanction. Which occurs in several Muslim countries, openly. No, the irony --check that-- flaming hypocrisy here, is that Jemele Hill is still employed by ESPN after saying this. Despite the fact that this is the same company that cited its anti-inflammatory rhetoric policy when firing Curt Schilling for merely illustrating the finer points of male/female bathroom construction.
So, Schilling’s Facebook rant about how male bathrooms are built for males and female bathrooms are built for females, is blasphemy. Yet, Jemele Hill tweeting out some half-baked, whacked out comparison of American/Christian attitudes towards homosexuals vis-à-vis Muslims, in the immediate aftermath of the worst shooting tragedy in American history, is all good?
According to an ESPN spokesperson, apparently, yes.
Actually, Schilling wasn't"merely illustrating the finer points of male/female bathroom construction." He sent out an anti-trans post so offensive that even "Bookter" wouldn't reproduce it in a NewsBusters post whining about him getting fired.
That's not all. A mere 14 hours after "Bookter's" post, NewsBusters posted an item by Tom Blumer praising a political statement by a sports person. Needless to say, it didn't express a view that wasn't conservative:
Yesterday, as Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers faced the Milwaukee Brewers in LA, legendary Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, in a 20-second monologue between pitches, did more to substantively educate his audience about the tragic reality in Venezuela than most of the U.S. press has done in months (HT Twitchy):
Transcript:VIN SCULLY: Socialism failing to work as it always does, this time in Venezuela. You talk about giving everybody something free and all of a sudden there's no food to eat.
And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela? The daughter of Hugo Chavez. Hello. Anyway, 0 and 2.Scully's statement about María Gabriela Chávez is from all appearances correct.
The reason why Venezuela is tanking is not the sole fault of mere socialism or even the main cause, as Blumer (and, apparently, Scully) believe. As actual economic experts have detailed, the fault lies more with a plunge in oil prices in an economy based on oil exports and rampant corruption and cronyism in the Venezuelan government.
Of course, if "Bookter" was at all intellectually consistent, he'd be demanding that Scully be fired, never mind that the guy's a living legend of sports broadcasting just like he did Jemele Hill. But he hasn't -- the only thing he (or she) has put his (or her) fake byline to in the past week is continuing to whine that Caitlyn Jenner received an Arthur Ashe Courage Award from ESPN a year ago.
