Anchor gets suspended for 'racist' Woods comment

[Lady Cygnet]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Technically, anyone can be lynched. I won't disagree that there is an obvious racial association between lynching and black people and a suspension is hardly too harsh a punishment, but I honestly don't think it was specifically a comment intentionally relating Woods' skin color.

Her intent was to joke, but it was still a poor choice of words. People like Al Sharpton read and watch the news every day, looking for things about which they can be offended. Those people are the reason that journalists are forced to watch what they say very carefully, especially when doing live shows. A single remark heard by the wrong person can ruin a journalist's career. Since Sharpton considers Tiger Woods to be black, he's calling for her to have her career ruined over an unfortunate, flippant remark.

Tiger Woods is being very classy about all of this. He knew she was joking around, accepted her apology, and considered the matter closed.

[Mirai Gen]

It's not that simple for Sharpton - he has to receive, I dunno, repayment of damages? for it to be a closed case.

I don't mind the fact that Tiger Woods' nochalant laugh-at-the-joke attitude on this matter doesn't really do it much good - the term itself was offensive to all blacks, not just him. But I do think that demanding her termination is extreme.

Really (Al) the more you fight to defend something like this the bigger it gets blown out of proportion and the more time we spend dwelling on it instead of learning our lesson and moving on.

[BitVyper]

If the simple notion of lynching is THAT terribly offensive, I believe there's at least one American city that needs to be renamed. And there's worse stuff out there that no one thinks of.

I'm not a big advocate of politcal correctness, so I tend to just see this as a pretty harmless joke. That said, she's a news anchor on TV, so her bosses have every right to be pissed at her, but that's about as far as it should really go. Anyone who gets up in arms over it is really taking things too far. Even if it's taken as being 100% racially-based you don't respond to a spitball with a cannon.

I have a pretty hard time seeing this as racist, even trying to look at it from the other side. I mean, at the very worst, she made the lynch joke because he's black. Did she in any way suggest that he is somehow less deserving of the rights and freedoms every American citizen has? Did she in any way suggest that he is less than human? Did she oppress or discriminate against him? Did she suggest anything negative about his race at all? Did she even make a generalization about black people?

This is where I run into my problem with political correctness. Yeah, skin colour doesn't matter. But when it gets to the point where you have to be nervous about noticing that someone IS in fact black, it's getting a little bit ridiculous. And that's all that particular joke really does, besides call attention to unpleasant memories, which puts it on par with a minor faux pas. The kind you usually just pretend not to have heard. I think, for it to really qualify as being racist, the joke has to at least make some kind of generalization about black people.

Keep in mind here, that I do think it was unprofessional, and that management is fully within its rights to smack her upside the head a bit, but they don't need to go ruining the woman's life over some stupid off-hand comment. Like someone else said: We're human. So yeah, suspend her I guess, but firing her is completely unnecessary.

Al Sharpton sounds like that guy who doesn't get exactly what he wants from customer service, so he makes a big scene trying to get everyone and their grandmother fired.

[Toast]

I see this as one of the reasons racism won't die. Nobody wants to let it go. A comment like this is only offensive if you decide to let it offend you, or someone tells you its offensive and you decide to believe them.

If you can't make a semi-racist, or even racist joke, then we apparently haven't come as far as we like to think we have. Racism isn't a one way street and getting all up in arms about something as insignificant as this shows that.

The thing is, we make jokes about murder and rape and for the most part no one gets offended by those kinds of jokes. It certainly doesn't make the news. But for some reason racial jokes are off limits?

[I_Like_Swordchucks]

Originally Posted by Toast

The thing is, we make jokes about murder and rape and for the most part no one gets offended by those kinds of jokes. It certainly doesn't make the news. But for some reason racial jokes are off limits?

Well I somehow get the feeling that she'd have been in trouble if she had made a joke about rape or murder as well (technically it WAS a joke about murder, the victim of the joke just happened to be a black guy).

Seriously, I have a few black friends who I joke with all the time. They refer to me as the whitest guy they know, and I tease them about wearing night camoflague all the time. Thats okay, but I'm not going to go on national TV and say "why don't black people take off their night camoflague?" because that would be stupid and a part of being in the media is understanding that not everybody shares your sense of humor.

Her suspension was well deserved, but she has been punished and forgiven by the target of her joke, so Sharpton and his ilk should let that be the end of it.

[BitVyper]

The thing is, we make jokes about murder and rape and for the most part no one gets offended by those kinds of jokes. It certainly doesn't make the news. But for some reason racial jokes are off limits?

That's probably because no news anchor is stupid enough to joke around about rape. I guarantee they'd catch at least as much hell from their bosses as this woman is.

To clarify what I said before: I see nothing morally wrong or racist about what this woman said. I do, however, see someone who fucked up on the job in a way that publicly embarrasses her employers.

Still, for a comment this minor, I wouldn't think she deserves any serious punishment beyond what it takes the network to look like they're "taking a stand" against... lynching, I guess.

[bass_virus]

The way I see it is that it's not racism unless it is said with hate intended. If there is no hate intended like in this situation than it is just a bad joke. I'm still amazed that a white person can lose their career over a comment towards another race, but people of races other than white cna make a career out of it. Yeah I'm talking about 95% of black comedians.

As for the whole Don Imus thing, I still don't get how what he said was racist in any way. I mean if we wanna catalogue it under one of the ists than it should've gone under sexist. You know what would put an end to all situations like this? If we were all emailed a list of words that anyone qualifies as offensive, that way there will be no discussions on this. If you said a word from the list you're a racist. Al Sharpten can make it, I'm sure he already has it started.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Toast

A comment like this is only offensive if you decide to let it offend you, or someone tells you its offensive and you decide to believe them.

The above statement applies to every comment of whatever level of offensiveness made by anyone, ever.

Also, you haven't explained where a black person would be in the wrong if they were in fact to make the decision that they will in fact permit themselves to take offense, at a white person casually joking that a black person should be brutally murdered by a mob of white people, as many, many black people have been murdered by many, many mobs of white people.

I'm just saying, in my personal sociopolitical lexicon, that's totally the exact sort of thing you are allowed to let yourself get offended about.

Yeah, they're different, but essentially, they're both mistakes.

Unless you're seriously trying to argue that this anchor actually meant to say that they should "pinch him in the back, badly," there's no essential, these are two totally and incomparably different situations. As different as the difference between, well, mispronunciation, and the deliberate selection of words and sentences.

Originally Posted by bass virus

the way I see it is that it's not racism unless it is said with hate intended.

Racism is anything that argues for or supports or stems from the idea that any racial group is different from / superior to / inferior to another racial group. Hate is in no way a requirement.

Originally Posted by Lady Cygnet

Tiger Woods is being very classy about all of this. He knew she was joking around, accepted her apology, and considered the matter closed.

Tiger Woods is also in the position of having to be classy about it in order to maintain his working relationships and professional reputation. Honestly for a lot of people in that position the automatic reaction would have been to brush off the remark as no big deal before even having the chance to think about how offensive they did or didn't find it to be. And of course if Tiger did go home and think about it and decide he was offended then there would be nothing he could do, because our nation's reporting apparatus treats the changing of one's mind as a cardinal sin, so Tiger would state his complaint and then for the next four months news anchors would be dutifully intoning "Tiger says he's offended by this anchor-woman's remarks. But what did he say earlier when she first made them? That it was no big deal. Why can't Tiger make up his mind?"

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

...a white person casually joking that a black person should be brutally murdered by a mob of white people, as many, many black people have been murdered by many, many mobs of white people..

That isn't what she said, though. She didn't say that they or anyone else should, merely that that would be the only way Woods' competitors would be able to defeat him. Granted, a better choice of words would have been something along the lines of "The only way the competition is going to be able to beat Tiger is in the parking lot with a tire iron." She wasn't calling on some good ol' boys to go 'kill the darky.'

[Fifthfiend]

Actually from what I can see, the statement she made was, in its entirety, "Lynch him in a back alley." Whatever argument to be made about relative jokiness aside, that is a statement phrased as a direct proscription of action.

I can't find a direct transcript of the show in question, but this seems like a pretty full description:

During their usual post-round banter as they wrapped up Day 2 at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, Tilghman and cohort Nick Faldo discussed young players who could possibly challenge Tiger. Faldo, ever the joker, said perhaps the youngsters should "gang up (on Tiger) for a while." The pair laughed a bit before Tilghman responded by saying, "Lynch him in a back alley." The pair chuckled awkwardly before moving on.

I mean if we absolutely have to talk phrasing here I can only say that a "should" would be an improvement, as that would at least make it a suggestion instead of the as-phrased explicit directive.