Michael Smith Suspended for Iran Comments

Maybe Fox should suspend Sean Hannity for using Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally footage for Michelle Bachman’s rally. What about all the political commentators that encouraged the bombing of Iran? Or John McCain singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? Pretty tame stuff compared to lying media manipulation and actual war or the threat of war.

Political correctness is absurd when it is exercised by the Fox network. Clearly the sports commentators are subjected to a much higher standard than the political commentators. There is no punishment equal to the ultimate Mormon embarrassment — Glenn Beck.

There — fixed it — now my name goes to the more sedate Moromon theme centric blog.

Oh and thank you — it is NASTY.

I would agree with those who think this does not meet any reasonable standard for hate speech. These two guys strike me as harmless enough. They may be fine athletes, but they aren’t too sophisticated otherwise. Oh, I forget — this was on FOX where saying nasty things about other people — particularly Democrats, Muslims and foreigners of many different stripes — is the order of the day.

So let me get this right. Anytime a joke is made about Borat, censorship is warranted? And if one mispronounces the name of a country, suspension? This is ludicrous.

pardon me, but there’s no racism in smith’s comment. I don’t view suspension as a slap on the wrist, and I don’t think smith’s comment is any where close to don imus remarks. the comment was not mean-spirited at all, and not racist. it is not comparable to rush limbaugh’s comment about donovan mcnabb.

a censure is a form of censorship. I support actions against limbaugh and imus but smith’s comment barely raised an eyebrow, except for one email. we don’t normally suspend a person for offending a single email for mispronunciation (which is what the emailer seemed to have significant offense) do we?

Glenn Beck says worse stuff every day and Faux seems to love that. But I guess I see why someone is offended by the stereotyping, with the Borat jokes and all. I would have just told Smith to stick to sports without any ethnic commentaries.

I think comparisons to glenn beck are appropriate. frankly I can’t stand the guy (or rush, olbermann, etc.) there does seems to be a double standard when beck can call obama a racist with impunity while smith gets suspended for a bad taste borat joke.

I will say that fox sports are locally owned and operated, while fox news is national. so, the double standard is attributable different owners with different standards. what you have is a local california station where political correctness is taken too far verses a national station who disregards political correctness when it fits their ratings goals.

oh and MH,

I’d still like an answer to my question.

What does his height, where he played, when he served his mission have anything to do with the current price of tea in China?

“This is Ulysseus, weighing in at 190 lbs, 6’0″ {Ding}”

MH, you’ve conflated me with Dan and that was painful.

I’m an excellent judge of crude and understand it well — even appreciate it and all its nastiness. Sarcasm and satire have a place in dialogue (and on my personal blog), but that doesn’t mean people don’t always understand the message in that format. I make sure I’m self-employed so that I can suspend myself whenever my crudity gets the best of me, just so I can tell the prudes I practice what I preach.

And yes, in my regular employment days I have been suspended. Not a fun experience, but it takes a special kind of person to have fun with discipline.

If he said anything bad about Republicans, or Sarah Palin, the guy would probably have gotten a raise. Political Correctness is killing free speech.

MH,

I don’t recall tying anything to the tea in China, so I don’t know where you got that tie-in.

that’s sort of the point of saying what does X have to do with the price of tea in China.

I haven’t checked out your website, but judging from Jared’s comments, and your own definition of crude, perhaps you should be suspended from Mormon Matters.

Um, yeah, I’m not Ulysseus and don’t ever link to his blog… While I may swear a little on my political blog, it’s not anything crude. so… yeah…

Dan, did you read the comments at YouTube? It seems nobody really agrees with you. Let me quote:

MrReubenr101 (1 hour ago)
i ont get it ??????????

BanzaiSushi (3 hours ago)
I heard the guy who complained about this being offensive on the radio..dude is a complete joke..I’m not offended by this at all.

heffyz (5 hours ago)
this is nothing  IVe heard alot worse from chick hearn ralph and mike shouldint have been suspended

NocturalRyte (5 hours ago)
LOL. I’m not offended at all.

Now Dan, you say, “While I may swear a little on my political blog, it’s not anything crude.” That could get you suspended and could result in an FCC fine if you said those things on network television depending on what it was. Smith and Lawler said nothing the FCC would be upset about, and I don’t recall the FCC looking into this matter.

Please point out the crude remark that either Smith of Lawler said. Specifically, what was crude? Is the mere mention of Borat an FCC violation? I think not.

Look, I don’t think Lawler should have been suspended either. Since this is Mormon Matters, and Smith is a Mormon in the public eye, I’m more interested in talking about him than Lawler. However, I don’t see anything terribly wrong in Lawler’s comments either. As I said before, it is nowhere near Limbaugh’s comments about McNabb, or Imus’ comments about the Rutgers basketball team. A private apology to this fan would have been fine. Perhaps a public apology, if one is that sensitive about Iranian fans. Suspension? No way.

Have you bothered to apologize for swearing on your blog? I’m sure it must have offended at least one reader. (If not, I’ll register a complaint for your swearing and see if you suspend yourself–I’ll take your word for it if you post something on your blog suspending yourself.) As has been pointed out many times, Glenn Beck referring to Obama as a racist is much worse than anything Smith and Lawler said, and Beck not only doesn’t apologize, but doesn’t get suspended either. I don’t believe Beck swears on air either, even though the FCC has more lenient rules about swearing on cable tv.

So why are you supporting Smith’s suspension? Is it because he is a “former all-American 6′ 10″ forward from BYU. He served a mission from 1984-1986.”

(In case you’re wondering, I’m a Utah fan, and I can’t stand BYU. I’m also a Celtics fan, and I couldn’t believe they drafted him because I didn’t think he was very good. I booed when he was drafted. Tim Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, BJ Armstrong, Vlade Divac, and Blue Edwards would have been better picks, and they were all picked after him.)

dan, it is a free country. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

kuri, you’re just jealous.

#24: “Limbaugh was fired from ESPN, if I recall correctly for his offensive comments.”

Limbaugh was fired, specifically, for suggesting that Donovan McNabb received publicity all out of proportion to his performance, as measured by his statistics (true), and for speculating that the reason for this is that the press is anxious to see an African-American quarterback succeed (which it does).

Whether Limbaugh should have piped up with that little gem, I have my doubts. Some things are true that are not very useful. There should be some places where we can be free from political animosity. Sports should be that kind of “safe place.” (Not that left-leaning sportswriters — or classical music conductors, or dramatic directors, etc. — pay much heed to that advice. That’s no excuse. Being better than the standard-issue obnoxious leftist is way too low a bar for decent people to aspire to surpass.)

Limbaugh was prevented from buying into an NFL team, in significant part, because of things he never said, but which people like you instantly credited.

I am happy to be called a racist by leftists, because their use of the word no longer has its actual (ugly) connotation. It simply means that I don’t buy into their mendacious fantasy world. Am happy to be called heretic by McConkieite Mormons for the same reason.

As for Smith, I’ve got no problem with the Eye-ranian pronunciation (the Persian associate next door to mine pronounces it that way herself), but that “Is he Borat’s brother” was lame and discourteous, and there should have been consequences.

As for item #4, when the President of the United States is using the slur “teabagger” for dissenters, I’ve got little patience for prim declarations of what kind of language is “not acceptable in this society.”

Kuri, we’ll respectfully disagree. I defer to no one in despising real racism (see my comment in the Elder Holland thread re: Mormon racist folklore). But the idea that liberals do not see the world through race-tinted glasses is risible. Limbaugh was pointing out their race obsession, not indulging in his own.

“As for item #4,” your history is wrong. Short version, a couple of Tea Party protestors did make a “teabag” double entendre (which was totally tasteless), but they absolutely did not call themselves “teabaggers.”

I, for my part, had to look up what the phrase meant. Ew.

#32 — I wrote above that Limbaugh shouldn’t have brought politics into the debate. Sports is sports; politics is sports for guys who can’t jump, and ne’er the twain should meet. Of course, that makes one wonder why Limbaugh (or Keith Olberman) were hired to do sports in the first place. Just like I don’t want an anti-Bush lecture by the conductor before I hear Mahler, I don’t need critical race theory when I mean to watch football. I got enough of that crap in school.

Who would even think that it’s relevant? This guy, for starters: http://www.slate.com/id/2089193/

I stand by my perception that Limbaugh’s target was not McNabb and his race, but commentators and their racialism. Limbaugh is far less concerned with race than the vast majority of his critics, who are completely obsessed by the subject.

This strikes me as similar to much of Book of Mormon apologetics: If an alternative explanation of potentially inconvenient circumstances can be articulated, it is accepted as authoritative — regardless of the actual relative strengths of the various alternatives.

There may be no “need” to think race has anything to do with the (arguably disproportionate) attention paid to Donovan McNabb, in the sense that there is no plausible alternative. But must race be excluded as a possibility, just because alternative explanations also appear? At the least, isn’t the possibility that the sports media are being influenced by racial considerations a reasonable one? If so, why is that reasonable alternative among alternatives unfit for mention in polite society?

We desperately want to believe that America has moved beyond race and its associated complications. The world we create in the media reflects what we want the world to be like. I find it hard to believe that this kind of wishful thinking never affects what is emphasized. I would rather this not be the case — I would rather we were not so obsessed with race, that it affects how we let ourselves see the world. But the idea that it’s the person who calls attention to the racialism of others is himself the only one who cares about race, is not realistic.

Thomas,

Limbaugh’s explanation violates Occam’s razor. It adds an “entity” — race — when we already have a well-known, widely-accepted, simple explanation (quarterbacks get disproportionate credit for wins and blame for losses). That’s an explanation that has applied to most quarterbacks (at every level, not just the NFL) for more than half a century. Why do we suddenly need a different explanation when a black QB wins a lot of games and gets (arguably) over-hyped?

But the idea that it’s the person who calls attention to the racialism of others is himself the only one who cares about race, is not realistic.

In this case, it was to the imagined racialism of others. Limbaugh imagined that’s what the press was doing, but there was no evidence for it. And I think that the idea that when nobody else is talking about race, the one guy who brings it up is only doing so because other people somehow “made” him is very dubious.

#38 — Absolutely not true. To be precise, the tea party protestors absolutely did not call themselves “teabaggers.”

What did happen was this: At one of the first tea party protests, one protestor carried a sign reading “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.” Ha-ha. Another slogan was “Tea Bag the Fools in D.C.” — i.e., send representatives a tea bag. I suspect the person with the sign with the first slogan knew the urban meaning of “teabag”; I’m less certain about the second, and I can guarantee that the vast majority of the protesters wouldn’t know a teabag from a Cincinnati bow tie. (Which I only know about from “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin.”) Jeanne Garafalo and some other losers picked up the slur, applied it to the whole tea party movement (none of which referred to themselves as teabaggers) and it was off to the races.

I find this absolutely typical of a certain kind of smug and juvenile leftist — the kind that reads snarky “alternative” publications like OC Weekly which are amply filled with advertisements for cannabis clubs and escort services. Fine. Let those Dirty Sanchezes have their fun with the “teabag” insult. But the President of the United States is supposed to be above this. Unfortunately, the President’s emotional age is about seventeen, so I suppose it goes with the territory.

#37 — I disagree that there is no evidence that McNabb didn’t receive disproportionate interest — that is, more interest than the usual winning quarterback — because of his race. I don’t think Limbaugh should have raised the point in that particular context — again, I think (unlike most leftists) that there should be safe spaces, untouched by politics. But I think it’s telling that this is the best leftists can do to demonize Limbaugh as a “racist.” Calling attention to others (perceived) racialism is simply not racism.

Calling attention to others (perceived) racialism is simply not racism.

If you’d said “not necessarily” racism, I might agree with you. (I’d have to think about it.) But it can also easily be used as a method of dog whistling or race baiting. Then it is most definitely based in, or at least meant to appeal to, racism.

#41 — What the sam hill is a “dog whistle”?

Thomas,

Do you really think “teabagger” is a slur? It seems more like just a nickname to me, like “wingnut” or “moonbat.” Or are those slurs too?

Carlos,

not only that but Borat is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!!! silly ignorant white boy Smith.

What, is “white boy” a racists remark? or is it a black thing????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racialism

explains the difference between racism and racialism…

everything depends on who wrote it Carlos that’s why you can scroll down and check out the footnotes…

Stephen,
I know the term, although I was not familiar with its use in gaming.
But why is calling a spade a spade a slur? It refers to a shovel. And little kids have been catching tigers by the toe since the 1960s at least.