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February 17, 2006

Certainly, I'm not the only one to remember Jimmy The Greek

1988

The speed with which the electronic media can make or break a career is breathtaking. Within 24 hours of the time Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder made his absurd and offensive remarks about black athletes last Friday in a TV interview at Duke Zeibert's, a Washington restaurant, he had lost both his job as CBS's pro football prognosticator and his credibility.

Snyder's firing by CBS was swifter than the resignation of the Dodgers' Al Campanis last April for similarly stupid remarks. Snyder said in the interview that blacks have ''been bred'' to be better athletes than whites. ''This goes all the way back to the Civil War, when during the slave trading the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid,'' he said. ''That's where it all started.'' Snyder said that the black man was ''bred'' to have ''big thighs,'' which gave him a genetic advantage in athletics.

Commenting on blacks and coaching, Snyder said, apparently facetiously: ''They've got everything. If they take over coaching like everybody wants them to, there's not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean all the players are black. The only thing the whites control are the coaching jobs.''

Some of Snyder's friends stood by him. One of them, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, said that CBS was right in firing Snyder but met with him and praised his plan to write letters of apology. ''He's not a bigot,'' said NBC sportscaster and former NFL star Ahmad Rashad, who is black. SI's Paul Zimmerman, who is white, said, ''I've known him for more than 20 years, and I've never seen any of the telltale, giveaway signs of the closet racist -- the offhand good-ol'-boy remark when there's no one around, the nasty slip of the tongue.''

Whether Jimmy was racist or not was irrelevant for CBS. Jimmy had made an ignorant, offensive and race-based comment that got his ass canned in 24 hrs.

Will Byrant Gumbel be fired in similar fashion?

Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like them and won’t watch them ... Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin.
As Jeff G observes
To me, the real outrage is the suggestion that we can’t be witnessing the world’s greatest skiers, skaters, snowboarders, etc., simply because blacks haven’t taken up those sports.
Granted, I'm not a huge sports fan. But something beyond mere heirarchal sports snootiness is going on here. There's just an edge of hostility to Gumbel's remarks about 'pseudo-atheletes' and the contention if the sport is dominated by whites it can't 'be real.' Certainly, Gumbel is entitled to feeling any way he wants, including being a bigot. But to air those comments, ala Jimmy? Let's see how much true "fairness" exists at HBO.

Posted by Darleen at February 17, 2006 12:11 AM

Comments

Repost:

- The only thing I’ve found interesting in reading a bit on the games thus-far, is that Kazakhstan has a hockey team. I thought that region of the balkins/steepes was basically mud huts and goat farmers, or did we finance that team too. ‘nothing wrong with that, just interesting in the same way the Carribian bob sledding team was.

- Seems like at least once or twice a year, someone in the public spotlight experiences a sudden impulse to say something thats patently obvious to everyone else, but so un-PC that we immediatly transform into a nation of Roman Emperors, killing the messenger.

- I so want Condi to win in 2008. Watching the way the race baiters would handle that event would be first class entertainment a hell of a lot more interesting that the snow boarding maniacs.

Also seems ones racism is only important when you have the temerity to speak the truth. Whether the truth is all that important is another question. Is it any more important that there is a paucity of Black skiers than the fact that few Blacks have entries in the National Dog shows? Seems like a stretch too me.

Posted by: Big Bang Hunter at February 17, 2006 09:06 AM