Several people here are fans of Gregg Easterbrook's excellent column Tuesday Morning Quarterback, available (until this week) at ESPN.com. Unfortunately, in his side gig as a writer for the New Republic, in a blog entry savaging the movie Kill Bill, Easterbrook
made comments that came across as perpetuating ugly stereotypes about Jewish people. He immediately claimed 100% responsibility for the ugliness, and
apologized completely and without reservation. Within a week, he was fired by ESPN, all his archived columns (nearly two years worth) removed, and the search engine rigged such that searches for his name, the name of his former column, or the nickname for his column all return only the front page of ESPN, as though the search itself had never taken place.
Many are beginning to suspect, however, that this isn't a case of political correctness, as much as corporate punishment, as ESPN is owned by Disney, which produced Kill Bill.
posted by jonson
on Oct 19, 2003 -
80 comments
