Jemele and Mike

Malcontent diva.

Went from ESPN to ABC good morning America. Quickly angered the rest of the on-air team due to laziness and his salary. So he went to NBC (that network loves buying competitors and benching them -- see Kelly, Megyn). He got passed over to succeed Al Michaels so they let him walk.

CBS was trying to find a place for him but they realized that he's not a draw. Especially not for $3M a year. They fired him.

 

And if she had anything interesting or "out of the box" to say, that would be a really good reason to hire her.

I think the problem is bigger than Jemele Hill here, and it is that your top-shelf, sharp-as-a-tack, curious, informed voices on these topics are probably not going to gravitate toward sports coverage. They're thinking bigger.

 

This rant goes on for some time.

The Coates piece about Donald Trump being the "First White President" is getting a lot of attention right now, and I'd presume at least some of what Hill is referencing is the ideology of the piece itself, which argues Trump was elected only because he was white. (Coates takes many words to unpack this idea, which is ultimately circular IMO, but, whatever, it's a neat hook).

Perhaps she presumes Trump voters wouldn't ever want to watch her sports show anyway.

 

Jemele Hill got her start as an angry-black-woman general-news columnist, so anybody who thinks she'd be anything but incenidarily opposed to Fucko and everything associated with him, would have to be nuts.

And Fucko was certainly not elected BECAUSE he was white, since the only other credible candidate (who got millions more votes) was also white.

However, he certainly campaigned, and is "governing," so to speak, as an unrepentant white supremacist.

 

Again, she can say and tweet things that I can't.

Not only that, but her ratings can be flat or tank and she gets far more time before she eventually gets the hook.

 

I love when the politics thread gets locked and YF has to go find a a new toy to play with. I learn things and all of the other ancillary threads get hit with his Twitter buckshot.

 

Jemele's been steadily working in a tough racket since 1999, and she's been at ESPN since 2006. Nobody is lucky for that long. She's talented, she hustles, and she's a great colleague. That's why she's thrived as long as she has.

 

OK.
I'm not picking sides and I'm not saying what she did was right or wrong.
If a white anchor would have said this at ESPN, are they still employed this morning?

 

Go look at the rest of her twitter feed. As @Alma pointed out, it was quite a rant.

Now, ESPN has already been under fire for its alleged left wing politics. It's been suggested as a reason why it's lost subscribers. (I'm not convinced of this, btw.)

But, there folks have been asked/ordered to refrain from politics. Folks have been suspended/fired for wading into politics.

This rant wasn't even tangentially related to sports.

I think it will be interesting to see if there are any repercussions. It's obviously not going to go unnoticed.

And, there's a thread here dedicated to her.

Is it somehow wrong to introduce this episode into this thread?

 

I know you're sensitive to (unfair) criticism of folks in the industry. And, your defense of them is admirable.

She may well have thrived in a tough business.

But, this defense is pretty week. If I'd been somewhere for ten years, and someone defended my performance with vague platitudes about my talent, hustle, and collegiality, rather than pointing to actual accomplishments, I'd be insulted.

For a writer, reporter, anchor, I'd think we'd be directing folks to actual examples of her work that you found exhibited her talent.