ESPN fires writer for going there
01/29/2010
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Paul Shirley, a 6'10" white basketball journeyman and sportswriter, got fired from ESPN for blogging on FlipCollective that he wouldn't be donating to Haiti "for the same reason that I don't give money to homeless men on the street. Based on past experiences, I don't think the guy with the sign that reads 'Need You're Help' is going to do anything constructive with the dollar I might give him." That reminds me of the Two Minutes Hate directed at William Bennett about the same period of time after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans for referring to Steve Levitt's Abortion-Cuts-Crime theory on the radio. I wrote:
Ever since New Orleans, the hysteria among the political and media elite has been building: Who among us bigshots will crack first and allude to the elephant in the living room?
Also, I'm reminded of the 2003 incident when Michael Eisner fired ESPN columnist Greg Easterbrook for mentioning "Jewish [movie] executives" in denouncing a slasher film in his blog on the The New Republic:
Easterbrook was widely excoriated both for terminal unhipness and for supposedly resurrecting the myth that Jews control the media. Disney supremo Michael Eisner, however, did control Easterbrook's other employer, ESPN, which immediately fired him. Most commentators opined that Easterbrook had it coming. All I can say is that if Walt Disney were alive today, he'd be spinning in his cryogenic preservation chamber.
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