King Kaufman's Sports Daily

ESPN's firing of football columnist Gregg Easterbrook for anti-Semitism only looks honorable if you don't look too closely. Plus: Fox ignores the Jeffrey Loria story.

Oct. 21, 2003 | When is the high road the low road? Ask ESPN.com.

The Web site dumped Gregg Easterbrook's "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" column because of an anti-Jewish statement he made in his blog on the Web site of the New Republic, where he's an editor. Sounds OK if you don't look any deeper, which I'm guessing ESPN is hoping you won't do.

Here's what happened: Easterbrook attacked Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" as a glamorization of violence. He wondered how movie executives could live with themselves for profiting from such a film, "oblivious to the psychological studies showing that positive depiction of violence in entertainment causes actual violence in children," he wrote in his apology. The company that put out "Kill Bill" is Disney, which Easterbrook characterizes as an outfit "whose work is mainly good."

Here's most of the offending paragraph: "Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice."

In his apology, Easterbrook writes, "It was terrible that I implied that the Jewishness of studio executives has anything whatsoever to do with awful movies like 'Kill Bill,'" adding, "What I wrote here was simply wrong, and for being wrong, I apologize."

But he stands by his point, writing that he's "ready to defend all the thoughts in that paragraph," the idea that people of faith, any faith, shouldn't be glorifying violence. That was probably a mistake. He wanted to keep his legitimate argument about the morality of violent entertainment from being swallowed up in the controversy. He'd have been wiser to cut his losses, because standing ready to defend the paragraph lent an air of defiance that doesn't work when you're supposed to be apologizing.

The Anti-Defamation League refused to accept the apology, calling it "insufficient" and "a rationalization." "Sadly, instead of making a clear apology and a rejection of anti-Semitic stereotypes, Mr. Easterbrook says he 'wrote poorly' and was misunderstood," read an ADL press release.

Here's the meat of Easterbrook's apology: "Where I failed most is in the two sentences about adoration of money. I noted that many Christian executives adore money above all else, and in the 20-minute reality of blog composition, that seemed to me, writing it, fairness and fair spreading of blame. But accusing a Christian of adoring money above all else does not engage any history of ugly stereotypes. Accuse a Jewish person of this and you invoke a thousand years of stereotypes about that which Jews have specific historical reasons to fear. What I wrote here was simply wrong, and for being wrong, I apologize."

I don't see how you can read that and not find both "a clear apology" and "a rejection of anti-Semitic stereotypes" -- unless of course you were trying to get a little mileage out of the situation.

A few days later the New Republic published an editorial also apologizing, saying pretty much the same thing Easterbrook had said but without defending his arguments about the movie, and the ADL accepted.

Not good enough for ESPN, though. The network that hired Rush Limbaugh to make offensive remarks, and rightly did not fire him when he made racially offensive comments about Donovan McNabb -- he quit, remember? -- dropped Easterbrook like he was on fire.

And he's not just gone. He's, like, gone. In the Stalinist sense. There's no trace of him on the Web site. USA Today media columnist Peter Johnson writes, "Sunday night, ESPN.com called his comments 'offensive and intolerable.'" He has quicker eyes than I do. I never saw those words, and on Monday there was no notice on the site about the column being discontinued. When I wrote this paragraph, his column archive was still available, though not linked to. By the time I went to check links, perhaps 30 minutes later, someone had gotten wise and removed it.

Although ESPN declared itself satisfied that Limbaugh had done the right thing by resigning, the network had appeared ready to stand behind him as the controversy played out. Easterbrook, who by the way offered readers a lot more useful insights into football than ESPN's other moonlighting political commentator, was given no such courtesy. That's because ESPN is owned by Disney, the company Easterbrook hammered in the blog entry that started all this, the one in which he called out Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

ESPN would have you believe it's standing up for the Jewish people. It's really just standing up for the company.

Next page: Fox loves story lines, but ignores the messy, intriguing tale of Jeffrey Loria