SI's Peter King 'Amazed' That Jeremy Lin Was 'Peppered With Slurs' By Opponents and at Ivy League Road Games
During his first hour today, Rush mentioned the reaction of Peter King at Sports illustrated in King's "Monday Morning Quarterback" collection to a paragraph in the magazine's cover story on Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks' point guard who has broken through from obscurity to phenom during the past two weeks. What King wrote is indeed an interesting giveaway of what I believe is a common but unsupportable media perspective, namely that students at and graduates of elite upper-echelon universities like those in the Ivy League are presumptively free of overt racism, because, well, they're all so enlightened.
Uh, no. As Pablo S. Torre reveals in said cover story:
Lin would brush off racist jeers from opposing fans ("Sweet and sour pork!") and Ivy League opponents (he was called "Ch---" on the court) to average 16.4 points, 4.5 assists and 2.4 steals as a senior.
How quaint (and admirable) that Torre chose not to finish the slur word. In the past few days, ESPN's repeated employment of the full word ("Chink") has blasted Torre's attempt at decorum to bits.
Here's King's reaction to what Torre found:
Great job with your cover story in SI this week, Pablo Torre, telling America lots it didn't know about Lin ... Amazing in this day and age that in college, in the Ivy League, for crying out loud, Lin got peppered with slurs like "chink'' and "sweet and sour pork!'' on the road.
Here's part of Rush's excellent take:
So Peter King says we would expect these kind of slurs in Hickville, but not in the Ivy League! Oh, my God, what is happening? He got slurred in the Ivy League? How can that be? (laughing) That's funny to me. The Ivy League! He can't believe that there would be this kind of political incorrectness in the Ivy League. This the kind of stuff that happens, you know, in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, what have you.
Two supplements:
- It isn't just "political incorrectedness," Rush. It's racism.
- The fact that Lin was the recipient of racist taunts from on-court opponents is especially deplorable. Really, what are these other elitist coaches teaching their players, and why do they seem to condone it?
Rush also made an unfortunately telling point about how ESPN and its disciplined employee and ex-employee could have avoided the fallout: "[N]obody would have blinked an eye if they would have made fun of him for being a Christian and made some headline about how his Christian faith failed him during the game."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
- Tom Blumer's blog
- Login to post comments
















Comments
It's no different than when
Submitted by WarEagle66 on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 4:09pm.
It's no different than when I. Thomas said that if Larry Bird was a black guy he would just be another player.
Or how about stupid Roger Mayweather showing how stupid he is by saying that black players are doing what Lin has done...every night. No Rog, if they were...the Kinks would not have stunk for so long. And teh few that ARE doing that...are SUPERSTARS.
The kid can play ball, why can't we just leave it at that?
Don't you know
Submitted by nonncom on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 5:50pm.
nobody but a black man can excel at Ghetto Ball....LOL....I agree.....the kid can play....leave him alone and enjoy it....I thought that's what fans do....
The kid can play ball, why can't we just leave it at that?
Submitted by The_Barrel_Guy on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 5:52pm.
Leave it at that?? Leave it at that!!! If we left it at that, the PC folks at ESPN would be unable to wring their hands and twist their panties into a knot...
WarEagle66
Submitted by rockyracoon on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 8:02pm.
It wasn't Isaiah who made the racist comments about Bird, it was his teammate, at the time, Dennis Rodman. Thomas, however, agreed with what Rodman said.
Your point though, as well taken.
Facts are like kryptonite to the liberal.
He doesn't understand Lin
Submitted by CM on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 9:37pm.
Lin lead the Knicks to a victory over Kobe Bryant's Lakers last week. Mayweather can't understand someone wanting to compete against a tough opponent instead of running away scared.
Scratch a liberal, get an -ism
Submitted by CO2Maker on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:01pm.
I worked on the staff at a prestigious governmental institute at UNC-Chapel Hill for 12 years and later at a childhood research institute at UNC. It was not hard to encounter racist and sexist attitudes, either the benign kind of parentalistic "oh, well, you know" or "we have to treat some people with different ways" approach. Or else it was equally overt racism, which the speaker didn't even recognize because it didn't involve any terms that was called by initial-word, you know, n-word, k-word, etc.
I helped a professor, a woman from South America who had been in the US for 15 or 20 years, on her publication about being sensitive in ESL curriculum materials to cultural practices among Latinos. I selected several pictures from a CD of stock photos that contained 100 photos, about evenly divided into black, white, and Hispanic subjects. I chose two Latino boys, brothers, who were reading a book together. I thought they looked Peruvian. The moment she saw them, she rejected them because they looked Asian. Well, duh! Where do you thing the original indigenous people of the Americas came from? She also put 15 scenarios in the book which portrayed how different cultural practices operated in Latino communities. I pointed out to her that all 15 stories involved only women, no men. Her reply: "So?" Apparently they came from personal stories from field surveys and affected mostly women. But what about modeling gender roles? I asked. Fuggedaboudit.
But she did complain about a poster we were designing (one in a series of twelve) that showed a little boy with Asian features looking at a microscope. This photo came from the on-site day care, not from a commercial photo source, and was a really good photo. To her, it was playing to the stereotype of Asians being good at science.
I put up a Post-It note on the wall: "Hit head here."
SNL does racial stereotyping in sports broadcasts
Submitted by CO2Maker on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 8:15pm.
This is great
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/linsanity-postgame-cold-ope...
I fixed the link
All colleges have crude
Submitted by balboa on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:14pm.
All colleges have crude hecklers.
Yep, Crude Heckling 101 is required in order to obtain a ---
Submitted by matthewdean on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:21pm.
certificate of graduation that will allow a liberal to be an MSM employee.
MD
Ooo. Well-played.
Submitted by balboa on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:26pm.
Ooo. Well-played.
What he said
Submitted by BuffNBone on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:29pm.
The assumption is the Ivy Leaguers are more erudite and loquacious so that the hoi polloi might not realize when they are being insulted.
weird how the media love this guy
Submitted by shawn. on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 7:27pm.
But won't give Tebow a fair chance
Can't help
Submitted by bobsmom on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 8:23pm.
myself from picturing James Spader with his "east coast lockjaw" manner of speaking in Pretty in Pink when thinking of Ivy Leaguers "hurling racial insults", sorry my brain is skewed. "I say thea Linn, do you have any chawpsticks?" In the manner of a Grey Poupon commercial.
Ivy leaguers?
Submitted by tadchem on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 11:10am.
The truth about the "Ivy League" is that they are founded upon bigotry - they are the reason that the "Class Warfare" card still plays well.
Growing up in 'flyover country' where the population is well-armed, we learn from an early age to respect strangers. The 'Ivy League' self-identifies as 'the upper crust' that is somehow better than the rest of us to the degree that they are born to rule. They are raised to believe they have the right to make the rules we (but not they) are expected to obey - rules about public behaviour, morality, and even paying taxes.
Racism is just a small part of that mentality that is a hold-over from feudalism.
When we choose to obey their rules, we accede to their control of our lives.
As the hot sauce commercial says: "New York City? Git a rope!"
While that may hold true for
Submitted by balboa on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 11:44am.
While that may hold true for some Ivy Leaguers, most of them are great kids, just like at any other school.