Media Bitchfest

The Amazing Race (Relations Clusterfuck)

August 25th, 2006 by Justin

Alec at SteelerBlog.com lets me write about the Steelers. When Alec wants to say something about the news media, he has a home here at MBF. We’re cool like that. Here is a background story about this. This was originally posted on his site…

It’s not very often I go off-topic here at SteelerBlog, but I’m just so sick and tired of the commentary on Bryant Gumbel’s “potentially racist” remarks that I need to vent somewhere. Every single time I turn on ESPN or the local sports radio, they’re talking about it and it’s driving me mad. Let me set the record straight: IT WAS NOT A RACIST COMMENT.

See, here’s the problem these days and it’s especially troublesome in American sports. Because our national sports are so heavily populated by blacks, every single person involved has to watch themselves like hawks to make sure to never say anything slightly off-color because if they do, there’ll be two dozen anti-defamation leagues knocking at their doors. There’s far too many people out there searching desperately for racial comments that they’ll take anything out of context.

When Gumbel said, “Before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw’s leash,” there is no racial overtone in it. It’s a simple implication that Gene is “docile” to Paul, like a dog to his owner. The reference was simply stating that Upshaw is Tagliabue’s “pet.” Docile and pets were words used by Gumbel himself. No Uncle Tom, no slave, nothing like that. Pet. DOCILE PET! How can it be any more clear?!

Of course, every black person with a voice comes out of the woodwork to chastise Gumbel. Deion Sanders said, “I really don’t understand two African-Americans who have worked their butts off to get to where they are, and one has a personal vendetta and would carry it out nationally on (the other). I think it’s nonsense.” Ex-Viking Robert Smith said, “I believe part of it with Gumbel is that Gene is a much more powerful black man than he is. And he’s jealous of Gene’s power and position.”

Why can’t it just be about one man making disparaging remarks against another? Why does it have to become a black-on-black thing? Can’t you just chastise Gumbel for being disrespectful to another man? Please stop finding racism in every innocent comment. If you do, racism will never go away; it’ll just always hang over everyone like a dark cloud as something to be feared and something to censor ourselves with. Let it go, don’t worry about it, don’t fret about it, and it’ll disappear sooner than you think.
For the record, I agree with Alec on this and was mostly confused by this uproar because I didn’t know Gene Upshaw was black.

Posted in Steelers, Racism!

5 Responses to “The Amazing Race (Relations Clusterfuck)”

1. kati wrote on 08/25/06 at 2:02 pm :

   i would like to thank alec for stating so rationally and clearly his opinion. i find that people typically have a hard time expressing this very sentiment because they fear that in saying anything along these lines deems them a racist or at least unsympathetic. thus, most talk about racism is latent with fluff and syrup mixed with PCness and comes out as non-sensical garbly gook. like….”Well, I think that people should just ignore racism, well not ignore it cuz that might mean that they’re really racist, so i guess they should fight it, but then that’s like hard cuz you have to figure out which anti-racism club to join and if you join the wrong one then you might not be battling racism the right way and then someone might say that you’re a racist and that you don’t even know it.” hmm…i hate white people.

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