Dave Zirin: White Noise on the Golf Channel

[marmar]

from The Nation:



comment | posted January 10, 2008 (web only)
White Noise on the Golf Channel
Dave Zirin


After five days of dithering, the Golf Channel has finally suspended commentator Kelly Tilghman for two weeks for her on-air comment January 4, suggesting young players looking to break into the game should "lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley." At first Golf Channel officials blew off the controversy, saying that they had gotten very few complaints about Tilghman's appalling attempt to get a laugh.

Tilghman, celebrated as the first full-time female play-by-play commentator in the history of the PGA Tour, was slow to offer an apology. It took her a couple of days to say, finally, "On Friday during our golf broadcast, Nick Faldo and I were discussing Tiger's dominance in the golf world and I used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended by my comments."

Through a spokesman, Tiger Woods called Tilghman's gaffe "a non-issue." But it is an issue.

To state the obvious, there's nothing funny about lynching. It's even less funny to chuckle about lynching the most prominent athlete of color in a sport with an unparalleled history of racism. For Tilghman to be oblivious to this history should be grounds for dismissal. As a point of comparison, Major League Baseball was of course desegregated by Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It took until 1975 for a black man, Lee Elder, to play that most esteemed of all golf tournaments, the Masters, held at Augusta, Georgia. Augusta itself finally started admitting black members in 1991.

Tilghman's comments carry even more resonance, no matter her intent.

There is something particularly cement-headed in talking of lynching in a climate where the noose has achieved something of an unfortunate renaissance. That ultimate symbol of racist violence has found new life because of the case of the Jena Six--six African-American high school students who faced decades behind bars, last year, for their part in a school fight that followed the hanging of nooses in the courtyard of their high school. Their cases, and the subsequent demonstrations of support, have received so much news coverage, even the Golf Channel must have heard something about it. Since then, nooses have surfaced--at Columbia University and the University of Maryland; high schools in North and South Carolina; the Hempstead Police Department on Long Island; the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut; and elsewhere. They are reminders to those who want to build a new movement for civil rights to know their place. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/zirin

[rucky]

1. Not good enough.

She has gots to go!

[damntexdem]

2. Suspended, not fired!

A joke about lynching Tiger Woods should be clear grounds for termination of employment.

[Traditional Liberal]

3. Disagree

She said she was sorry. On air.

She's been suspended two weeks for making a mistake.

Tiger, and his agent, have said they are through with the issue.

Woods and Tilghman know each other, and Tiger accepted her apology and dismissed the issue. I'd say that's pretty clear evidence that a mistake is a mistake.

How many of you want to lose your job over a mistake you apologize for?

[Two Americas]

4. mistake?

What makes it a "mistake?"

What exactly is being apologized for?

[Doctor_J]

5. Oh, fer Chrissakes

there was NOTHING racial in her comment. It was meant simply to say that the rest of the PGA has no chance while Tiger is around and healthy. She might have said, :lock him in his trunk", or "run over his toes in the parking lot" or "put some Drano in his breakfast cereal". Tiger already said he thinks nothing of it. Let it go.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. If it were possible, she would have brought more shame on the US, earned via the

moral Jurassic Park of its 20th century history, than history has already recorded.

White Americans should blench at the thought of the word, "lynching", and the ignominy it has brought to the US in the eyes of the world, and a world by no means stangers to racism, yet here we have an American woman so inured to finer feelings that, rather than joking about shooting him, as a normal person might, she bithely jokes about "lynching" a part-African American.

The apparent complacency about the scandal in the US golfing establishment tends to confirm me in my opinion that pro golfers, particularly in the US, are, for the most part, a bunch of hopelessly spoilt rich kids, with the deeply unpleasant well represented (the crypto-fascists curse behind the history of pain and sorrow in South America instigated by their class). Little wonder that people such as Jack Niklaus stand out so brilliantly as human beings. Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that they tend to count among the best of the best on golf course?

I bet the likes of Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens are laughing their heads off in Heaven at the peevishness of some of the weaker specimens of sportsmen and women without African blood, at their being routinely humiliated by sporting champions with African bood. It must rankle with them enormously to be constantly reminded of how inferior to the latter God has made them in terms of their all-round athleticism and sporting abilities. Life can be so unfair. I bet they agonise tremendously over the economic Darwinism their class routinely inflicts on their fellow-citizens. By their own deliberate choice, moreover....

This is not a racist accusation, as some might conclude, but a matter of common observation and common sense. We are not talking here about the merits of different peoples in God's eyes. He makes us and... eventually unmakes us. The only claim of personal merit we may in some tenuous and paradoxical way lay claim to, is our acqiuiescence in the generosity of spirit he inspires in the willing soul.

If, on the other hand, I were to claim that Pigmy tribesmen made as natural basket-ball players as Masai tribesmen or as Russians or as just about any other people, I'd be a liar and a fool. However, to claim, as some benighted individuals, including highly-educated individuals, are wont to, that Africans are of inferior intelligence does show themselves to be liars and fools.

The only person Christ directly reproached in a parable as a fool, was a quite worldly-wise and duly prosperous farmer, who wanted to maximise his gains by building more barns, in order to store a more plentiful harvest. Not particularly brutal capitalism by our standards. Indeed, many would say, common sense. This misunderstanding of the nature of true intelligence is perfectly normal in our world, so it should not be surprising that Christ should have inveighed so fiercely against calling someone a fool. I do it all the time on here, because their words betray that they are worldlings, the same type as the rich farmer. What is more, in relation to this subject, it is also a matter of common observation there is no shortage of Africans and people with African blood of a very high worldly intelligence, despite the obstacles they face.

[Traditional Liberal]

7. oh really?

It's not a scandal in the golfing industry. People in the golf world and industry are familiar enough with both parties to know it's NOT a scandal. Individuals outside the sport and industry are trying to MAKE it one, for their own reasons. A common thing these days.

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. Of course it's not. That was the point of my post if you read it properly.

So many spoilt brats who never learnt to be decent human beings.

[Traditional Liberal]

9. no

No, your comments were about a lot more than that, most of which I would never address in a public forum.

Those spoiled brats to whom you refer raise and donate a lot more money for charity than the other major sports of the United States. By a long ways. All the support for the United Way that the NFL brags about during their broadcasts are small change compared to what pro golfers and the golf industry generate for charity.

And while I'm on the subject, remember how athletes conduct themselves in their public and private lives when evaluating their character.