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Goodreads
Oct
22
In the heat of the moment
Filed Under Books and Culture
No I am not talking about that great Asia song but rather the controversies that have been buzzing through the blogosphere of late. The scandal of the moment is the Easterbrook affair. Most of the heavy hitters have weighed in on this issue and it has even had play in the mainstream media.
I must say that the whole thing has left me rather chastized. During the Rush Limbaugh embroglio I jumped on Rush and even expressed the hope that “ESPN drops him like a rock.” Rush of course resigned and soon was caught up in the much more serious issue of his addiction to pain medication. Now, Easterbrook has been fired and his TMQ column removed from ESPN.
I guess I feel like I let my emotions gain the upper hand with Rush and had a hard time letting go. I have tried to get a handle on why this happened. In the end I think I was upset that Rush would allow himself to become such an easy target. The irony, in my mind, was that Rush made it easier for the media to use the streotype of the racially insensitive conservative as he was trying to point out the racially over-sensitive media intereaction with NFL QBs. But in the calm of a couple of weeks remove, it seems to me that what Rush said was unwise but mostly harmless and at least arguably true. I remain convinced that it was silly not to see the ugliness coming, Rush should know that the media would come after him. But with that caveat, I still want to say that I was wrong. I over-reacted and used slippery arguments to try and bloster my case. I was led by emotion and not reason.
As to Easterbrook, I read the post in question and saw it as a rather convoluted and inelegant moralistic rant. I am not sure I saw it as objectivly ant-semitic even after it exploded onto the scene. Perhaps, I am just not sensitive to this issue. But I see in this over-reaction the same type of emotion and hyperbole I got caught up in and likely fed. Given its immediacy, blogging can easily fall prey to this type of reaction just as the mainstream media can pick up on it and even feed it. Measured and reflective thought is not always the leading edge of bloggers anymore than it is the daily paper. The one positive is that blogging provides a quick and easy way to correct things. Perhaps because of his position as a journalist and his recent foray into blogging, Easterbrook felt constrained in clarifying his position. As others have pointed out, a quick clarification and apology would have dampened most of the heat. Regardless, I am troubled by his losing his TMQ gig and for the heat he is taking. Again, as others have pointed out, this type of thing only further chills the ability of intelligent, open minded writers to broach difficult subjects. It is perfectly clear to me that discussing race in any potentially public forum is dangerous business these days and that, despite its supposed dedication to free and open debate, much of the media is uninterested in a real discussion of controversial topics. Instead they like to comment on scandals from a distance when in fact they create an atmosphere where open discussion is discouraged - they in essence create scandals and then pretend to be detached from them.
Lastly, in some weird way all of this is wrapped up in my own feelings about blogging and writing. I am less interested in writing rants and more interested in writing intelligently about ideas and issues. I am working on a project that will seperate my personal/diary like blogging from more serious attempts at writing. So stay tuned . . .
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Kevin,
You are working from the assumption that he lost his gig because he wrote an offensive stereotype of Jews. Let’s just say I have my doubts that he was fired for that reason..
It strikes me, that it was more likely that he was fired for his criticism of Disney and Disney subsidiaries and executives. Something Disney has no tolerance for.