NYT's David Carr, Who Called Midwesterners 'Low-Sloping Foreheads,' Cries Racism Over Lin Headline
Veteran New York Times media reporter David Carr’s Monday column self-righteously attacked an unfortunate headline on an ESPN mobile website, “Chink in the Armor,” that was widely interpreted as a purposeful slur on the ethnicity of benchwarmer-turned-NBA-sensation Jeremy Lin: “Media Hype For Lin Stumbles On Race.”
Giving no benefit of the doubt to the ESPN editor, who has since been fired, Carr declared the headline one of myriad “underlying racist tropes that still lurk in the id of American sports journalism.” This lecture comes from a reporter who last year characterized Midwesterners as folks with “low-sloping foreheads,” akin to cavemen.
Since cracking the starting lineup because of an injury and other unusual circumstances, Lin, a 23-year-old, undrafted, unheralded, twice-cut player, has torn up the league, setting records for a first-time starter.
Unfortunately for Lin and the rest of us, the over-the-top coverage that followed ended over the line, exposing underlying racist tropes that still lurk in the id of American sports journalism, and by extension, the rest of us.
From the start, his run threatened the tabloid supply of puns and superlatives. “Lincredible!” shouted The New York Post on Feb. 11. And because tabloids have a back page and front page to shout from, we’ve sometimes been treated to a double dose of wordplay: “Lin and a Prayer” was the cover headline on The Daily News one day last week, while the back page blared “Just Lin Time.”
But all the froth and fun started to curdle, first on Twitter -- the Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted a crude reference about Lin’s anatomy and the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. suggested that Lin was getting attention because of his ethnicity, not his accomplishments -- and then in the tabloid press -- on Wednesday, perhaps at a loss after several breathless days of punning, The Post went with the unfortunate “Amasian!”
The combination of Lin’s ethnicity and accomplishments created some excess, but no one could have predicted how low it might go. On Saturday, an article on ESPN’s mobile site recycled an ancient and blatantly offensive ethnic slur, and in the process suggested that some corners of sports journalism remained a backwater in the culture, a place untouched by a history of civil rights struggle and decades of progress. ESPN quickly changed the headline and has fired the person who wrote it, but not before all but ruining a sweet sporting story.
....
What’s not to like is that part where some doofus writes a blatantly racist headline and a wonderful yarn turns ugly.
(The Times has had its own problem with the phrase.)
While Carr points and lectures, he isn’t exactly a model of cultural sensitivity: On the June 24, 2011 edition of HBO's “Real Time with Bill Maher” he addressed Maher’s description of New Jersey as sophisticated with this charming response likening Midwest denizens to cavemen: “If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? …Did I just say that aloud?” Carr later apologized on his Twitter feed, though he’s employed the phrase before in less specific contexts.
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Comments
Hypocrisy, thy name is
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 2:47pm.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal.
Carr- takes one to know one.
Submitted by Gary Hall on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:02pm.
Carr- takes one to know one.
(;~/ gary
How ironic that, in the
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:11pm.
How ironic that, in the circles of journalism, sports writers are seen as the ones with decreased cranial capacity.
Heck, I'm not a journalist, but I frequently laugh at the verbal ineptitude of sportscasters and sports writers. Theirs is the world of microwave thought--reheated ideas and phrases left over from more original sources.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
A thought...
Submitted by Ashrak on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:31pm.
To me, that a person would write something like "chink in the armor" without even thinking twice as to the racial heritage of the person he is writing about about tells me that when writing the piece and titling it - the author wasn't thinking about race AT ALL. That is the only way it could have been an unintended "mistake".
Isn't removing race entirely from the picture, treating everyone as equals, the POINT of equality? What am I missing?
This cat who got fired should have been championed. He has just been punished for NOT looking at everything through a race colored lens. IMHO, it matches just about everything else these days, its backward.
Kinda like this piece here today demonstrates. One who his himself guilty of actually looking at everything through a racial prism slams another for not doing so. Backward.
I am left to wonder if this nation is so far gone that it will never get better. Common sense is out the window and idiocy is rewarded beyond belief.
Yeah, Ash, I think that
Submitted by killa37 on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 5:10pm.
Yeah, Ash, I think that 'common sense' has been under assault for quite some time, and the meaning of 'smart' has been totally re-defined.
I doubt if this editor was that stupid, however..........although he may have been. But would he have used a word like 'niggardly', or described some process as being 're-nigged'??? I doubt it.
that was my take too
Submitted by dmacleo on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 5:30pm.
never thought chink in armor was in any way race related
re: that was my take too
Submitted by Skunk Ape on Wed, 02/29/2012 - 3:31pm.
It never was, however "chink" is an old ethnic slur for a person of Chinese descent.
Mr. Carr is channeling
Submitted by Larry Shepherd on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:35pm.
Mr. Carr is channeling Sigmund Freud with his use of the term 'id' to imply that racism is an inborn trait of those who live in my region of this country. Metaphorically speaking, Carr seems to have entered Freud's 2nd stage of human development: The Anal Stage. This is entirely appropriate, since he appears to be expressing his foul views from that particular orifice.
LOL
Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:51pm.
Great assessment!
I wonder what Carr had to write when Tiger Woods burst on the PGA scene. Despite Woods' own assertion that he isn't "African-American" but a mixed African, Asian, European, and native American heritage, the MSM insists on calling him a "black" of "African-American" golfer.
Well of course they do...
Submitted by c5then on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:58pm.
The enlightened and completely unbiggoted MSM calls 'em as they sees 'em. And Tiger Woods looks like he's African-American, therefore he is. The MSM has spoken. So it is written, so it is.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
This is liberal PC on steroids
Submitted by c5then on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 3:55pm.
When even a simple headline with unfortunate wording can get someone fired???!!!!
This would have been the headline if it had been ANYBODY else and it would have been fine. It was not in any way racist, it was simply the military/wartime jargon that is commonly used in sports writting and it is UBIQUITOUS!
This is simply un-American. The person or persons at ESPN who fired the hapless editor need to be fired themselves for deriliction of duty and complete and utter disloyalty to their employees. When someone makes an honest mistake the boss needs to stand up for the employee and give them the benefit of the doubt, not immediately throw them under the bus.
The phrase "a chink in the armor" predates the use of the word "chink" to refer to someone from China or otherwise of Asian decent. It's meaning was a flaw or damaged place in the chain-mail of medieval knights
Does this mean that no one in any context whatsoever can refer to:
a black eye
a brown nose
a red face
a yellow streak
a white flag
Is it now to be that if any writing or comment can be interpreted as racist in any way whatsoever, regardless of how obscure or unlikely the intent was, the person committing the infered transgression will be fired? This of course is the end result of the liberal mentality of guilty until proven innocent.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
Carr has a lot of nerve
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 4:05pm.
talking about other people's foreheads.
I got squeamish just looking at that thing.
I was thinking the same
Submitted by killa37 on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 5:07pm.
I was thinking the same thing, SoL...................if I looked like that guy, the last thing I would be doing is making comments about other people's looks!!!
'Veteran New York Times media
Submitted by CJohnson on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 4:39pm.
'Veteran New York Times media reporter David Carr’s' ? Who gave this small-minded dhimmie mouthpiece the title 'reporter'?
The low sloping forehead NYT writer got the Freudian part wrong.
Submitted by drsamherman on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 4:44pm.
The id, a discarded Freudian concept, refers to instinct and innate baser action-reaction arcs that imply no judgment or control when they appear. The id, by general construct, is not capable of exercising an action that would negate its function, nor is it capable of discerning anything but the basest self-survival and animal instincts within a human. The ego, on the other hand, is a regulator of the id with respect to providing direction on its role in self-benefit. The superego, which can be termed loosely our conscience, acts in concert with the ego to provide direction to the id. All three play a role in human functioning with others and self, according to the most classic of Freudian principles.
Rather, the comments directed toward Lin are not products of id as there was no primal threat. These were more directed by the ego and superego, whereas the id only provided the shallow foundation. That is how the classic Freudian may have interpreted the stupid, bigoted and racist actions of filth like Jason Whitlock, Max Breton, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and others.
A more recently trained psychiatrist would simply say they have displayed acute exacerbations of cluster B personality disorders commensurate with manifestations of acute sociopathic incidents.
Personally, I think they are all just racist, bigoted a**holes.
Whaddya know
Submitted by Model850 on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 5:26pm.
The superego, which can be termed loosely our conscience....
Well you learn something new every day.
All this time I thought the superego was currently occupying the White House!
The "G" word
Submitted by Me1976 on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 7:11pm.
It is time to ban the "G" word. This word is ginger. The G word can be used as an offensive term to describe a red head. Obviously, this cannot be tolerated, so everyone go into your spice drawers, take out your uh, spice we can no longer name, and write something else on it. We should also get rid of "G-word root". Someone using this term is obviously being derogotory to someone who has dyed their hair, because the hate of society made them not want to be a red head. They haven't been able to get to the salon, so when those roots start showing, they are a g-word root. This is not nice and must be stopped.
Carr head
Submitted by reddog339 on Wed, 02/22/2012 - 1:29am.
The picture of David Carr - N.Y. Times "elite turd"- Carr has the look of someone who has just had shock therapy at the mental hospital ala " One flew over the cuckoo's nest"- He's a real credit to the Times and journalistic integrity.