Shock of the day, Jemele Hill hates the Celtics.

[FallGuy]

Not surprised, (knowing her) ... but discouraged ... she should be ashamed of writing this crap for the sole purpose of stirring up the race pot and inciting hatred and intolerance. Somehow I don't think our forefathers had this kind of garbage in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights and the intents of Freedom of Speech. Leave it to such self-serving hate-mongers to twist the written and spoken word to fit their warped needs and spew their venom for the sake of controversy and selling copy. Sad ... really sad.

"...inciting hatred and intolerance..."

"...hate-mongers..."

"...spew venom..."

You're being a bit dramatic with this aren't you? You can't possibly read that article and get that from it.

FG/.

You're kidding, right? How can you not get that from it? Guess it's all about perception, but this was way over the line in my book. To each his own, but I'll never be in support of anything that uses race as a point of leverage, or that makes comparisons to Hitler even lightly.

*laughs*

I can be fairly dense and it's really tough to offend me.

I don't know much about her writing. So I could be wrong. If she's always dropping bits of race-related stuff in her articles without exploring it, then i see where people might be coming from.

But I get from her - in this article only - something akin to: "I hate the Celtics. I've always hated the Celtics. There were basketball reasons I hated the Celtics. And there was the race thing, which I've evolved out of (the same way Boston seems to have shed some (all? none?) of its racist reputation."

[FallGuy]

As I've said before regarding this pathetic excuse for a sports journalist, I gotta feel bad for any other females trying to break into the business, because Jemele is setting them back about 30 years with every ridiculous piece of dribble she turns out.

Only if someone's sexist enough to assume all females write the same way.

Presumably men are above that kind of thing?

Obviously I agree.

But anyone judging a woman sportswriter as a derivative of ANY other single sportswriter is a fool.

And my guess (as a former journalist) is sports editors will never, ever make a connection between this writer and a newbie. They care about clean copy, well-reported, on deadline.
I think we all know thats not really the case though.

[jackson_34]

Offensive. Comparing liking the Celtics to cheering for Hitler is offensive. It diminishes all the atrocities the Nazis commited when you compare their leader to a sports team. She needs to publicly fired...

...Out of a cannon.

It's sad to say and I feel guilty about it, but surely she only has this job because of the need for some female quota (which is a massive shame since there are plenty more talented journo's deserving of such a great job, regardless of gender).


I can understand if she hates the Celtics, the rest of league does. If she left it down to plain rivalry, or the team's attitude or something like that, I wouldn't give two hoots about this article. However, to bring race into this YET AGAIN is just down-right frustrating.

[FallGuy]

Offensive. Comparing liking the Celtics to cheering for Hitler is offensive. It diminishes all the atrocities the Nazis commited when you compare their leader to a sports team. She needs to publicly fired.

Yeah, but she made a comparison to Ron Artest's bad rapping, so that makes things all better, right?

None of those jokes worked.

But I'd still argue, for good or bad, comparing something to Hitler (e.g. the soup nazi jokes on Seinfeld, which hit the cultural zeitgeist over a decade ago) is not really that inflammatory anymore.

I mean - if she'd made a joke like "cheering for the Celtics is like cheering for the suicide bombers on Sept 11" I'd understand reactions being a bit more heated.

FG/.

Still something you don't want to read on a sports site, especially from a bigot like Jemele Hill.

See, that's where I'm out to lunch then. I see no evidence she's a bigot based on this article. If she is, and you've seen it, then I'm uninformed.

Which is cool. I'm used to it...

[Casperian]

Offensive. Comparing liking the Celtics to cheering for Hitler is offensive. It diminishes all the atrocities the Nazis commited when you compare their leader to a sports team. She needs to publicly fired.

Yeah, but she made a comparison to Ron Artest's bad rapping, so that makes things all better, right?

None of those jokes worked.

But I'd still argue, for good or bad, comparing something to Hitler (e.g. the soup nazi jokes on Seinfeld, which hit the cultural zeitgeist over a decade ago) is not really that inflammatory anymore.

I mean - if she'd made a joke like "cheering for the Celtics is like cheering for the suicide bombers on Sept 11" I'd understand reactions being a bit more heated.

FG/.

Well, no soup for you.

In case you don´t know it, we still have Nazi`s in Germany, so called Neo-Nazi´s...from time to time, you run into one of them, and quite frankly, the BS they´re spewing sounds an awful lot like the crap from Jemele Hill.

I am a german Celtics fan, does that mean deep in my heart I´m cheering for Hitler? There´s a difference between the Soup Nazi and this...stuff.

The Soup Nazi was a gigantic hyperbole in a comedy show. The intention is clear from the get go.

Her comment is in a sports-related article, hidden between other comparisons. That alone would be offensive, but it´s even worse. She uses it as an angle to write an article about a stereotype that already exists, and in no way, shape or form does she dissociate herself from her statements or this stereotype, other than to imply sarcasm...as you see, even most of us Celtic fans had a problem to understand this kind of "sarcasm".

[FallGuy]

Offensive. Comparing liking the Celtics to cheering for Hitler is offensive. It diminishes all the atrocities the Nazis commited when you compare their leader to a sports team. She needs to publicly fired...

...Out of a cannon.

It's sad to say and I feel guilty about it, but surely she only has this job because of the need for some female quota (which is a massive shame since there are plenty more talented journo's deserving of such a great job, regardless of gender).


I can understand if she hates the Celtics, the rest of league does. If she left it down to plain rivalry, or the team's attitude or something like that, I wouldn't give two hoots about this article. However, to bring race into this YET AGAIN is just down-right frustrating.

How do you know she only has this job because of a quota?

95% of what she attributes her hatred to is rivalry. Probably more.

[Amonkey]

So I go to the article and read all the comments and 95% are against her, and the other 5% are against the Bostonians (but not defending her).  Anyway, I go to leave a comment on the page and what do I get?  A message saying "This article is no longer exist."  I guess ESPN has smarten up and taken the article out of their page.

By the way, just so my comment is not a waste, this is what I was gonna write: "The only thing this article has succesively done is brought all of us together to hate on Ms. Hill."

[PerkinsERA43]

if they did take the article down-- which i think they did-- then my only question is this:

if you already have a negative track record.... and then you right something  stupid, terrible, and offensive enough to be TAKEN DOWN from the website after only a few hours..... how do you NOT get fired??

[cmoney]

to me it's not even a matter of the Hitler/Cold War jokes being "too much" or "out of bounds"... they're not funny.. at all.  She has a pathetic sense of humor.  I love offensive humor of all kinds and if you can work it into a sports piece without it feeling forced and it makes me laugh, kudos to you.  But "is like calling Hitler a victim" isn't funny, nor does the comparison make ANY sense. 

She's a hack. 

[jimmyt]

This article was definitely trash from the get-go. I havent agreed with a single article this woman has written and I cant help but think about all the other men and women out there who are more qualified than her to be on espn as a journalist. Honestly, I can think of at least 5 people on this blog alone who have better writing skills.

This isnt even an article, its a blog. How does this get on the most popular sports website in the world?? It makes no sense to me. Can we set Jemele up with a tiny blog somewhere where she can rant and rave about racism and sexism and nazi's and everything else that runs through her mind as she types pointless articles?

ESPN has succeeded, I only read her articles because I HATE her. Steven A, Skip, and Hill... I swear that ESPN only employs these people because everyone hates them.

[cool breeze]

No more article for you!

[FallGuy]

if they did take the article down-- which i think they did-- then my only question is this:

if you already have a negative track record.... and then you right something  stupid, terrible, and offensive enough to be TAKEN DOWN from the website after only a few hours..... how do you NOT get fired??

It's still up. It's under her archive on Page 2.

It would be interesting to see a long series on race in the NBA as that topic seems utterly under-explored.

Obviously you'd need real journalists to do it and ESPN's guys mostly don't fall into that camp. Maybe one of the better dailies has done something.

[KeepDWest]

if she hated the celtics because they were white doesnt that make her the racist?

[Casperian]

So I go to the article and read all the comments and 95% are against her, and the other 5% are against the Bostonians (but not defending her).  Anyway, I go to leave a comment on the page and what do I get?  A message saying "This article is no longer exist."  I guess ESPN has smarten up and taken the article out of their page.

By the way, just so my comment is not a waste, this is what I was gonna write: "The only thing this article has succesively done is brought all of us together to hate on Ms. Hill."

As FG said, it`s still there.

And they removed any criticism from the comment section.

Think of me what you want, but disgusted is not a strong enough word for my emotion.

[Steve Weinman]

Same old, same old from Jemele.

Looks like RH, my partner in crime in long-term frustration with Jemele, got to the scene already -- as did plenty more of our members.  Amen to most if not all of the comments on board so far. 

I'm past the point of being bothered by her, though for what it's worth, I'll be the umpteenth person to point out that I can do without Holocaust cracks about my basketball team, thank you very much.

Putrid.

-sw