ESPN fires Rob Parker

[Hate]

i HATE the hollow apologies. He thought it, he said it, he should own it.

[tripblood]

i HATE the hollow apologies. He thought it, he said it, he should own it.

Parker is an unqualified shmuck. I dont think an additional apology will change the way he is or the seed of the problem.

ESPN, its producers, and the show "First-Take" is the problem.. No doubt about that in my mind. Parker has always been a classless moron so why would ESPN have him on in the first place? Because thats the kind of rating grab they covet.

Blame the suits, not the cornhole brotha.

[chace1986]

i HATE the hollow apologies. He thought it, he said it, he should own it.

..and it's not like it was a heat of the moment thing where he was reaching for something to say. What he said was thought out and it seemed like he had that whole opinion on deck waiting to throw it out there.

I agree that with trip, that first take is a problem as well.

[ufcguy32]

what i think java is saying is what i see all the time. which is alot of hostility towards white people because of the past mistakes of others. i am jewish and italian. so my ancestry had to deal with genocide...probably one of the worst in history. but you dont see me parading and acting like everyone owes me something or feel bad for me. guess what everyone has problems, struggles and its not always fair. so man up and deal with it. no one owes anybody **CENSORED**.  unless you personally went through it yourself stop projecting your feelings of resentment to people who had nothing to do with it.  just because some people dont have the same opportunities as someone else? guess what ...not everyone is gonna make it. its called life. and yes its unfortunate and we all do what we can. but seriously im over the "i owe u" mentality. if you want something, you have to go out and take it. whether its by yourself or with someones help. quit the pity party and move on. 

[tripblood]

what i think java is saying is what i see all the time. which is alot of hostility towards white people because of the past mistakes of others. i am jewish and italian. so my ancestry had to deal with genocide...probably one of the worst in history. but you dont see me parading and acting like everyone owes me something or feel bad for me. guess what everyone has problems, struggles and its not always fair. so man up and deal with it. no one owes anybody **CENSORED**.  unless you personally went through it yourself stop projecting your feelings of resentment to people who had nothing to do with it.  just because some people dont have the same opportunities as someone else? guess what ...not everyone is gonna make it. its called life. and yes its unfortunate and we all do what we can. but seriously im over the "i owe u" mentality. if you want something, you have to go out and take it. whether its by yourself or with someones help. quit the pity party and move on.

See this is where you got it wrong. You act like racism isnt still ingrained in our culture.

When a black person is speaking on slavery, its a broader opposition to the current prejudices they find themselves in. What happened in THIS country by most of our ancestors(black, and white) is still part of people attitudes today.

A black person going up to any white guy and saying "screw you, your ancestors were slave owners" , is wrong. But speaking about it is still relevant. My father used a "colored only" bathroom, a "colored only" school that offered the worst education, etc.. So do you kind of understand a resentment by some black folk for slavery and a lack of civil rights?

Basically, if you lived a privileged life where no one judged you by your race(or separated you, or kept you as a SLAVE) then you have no idea how someone might feel about the subject.

[tripblood]

I think Whitlock reads this board.. took the word right out of my mouth

Hey ESPN, is RG3 'black enough?'

by Jason Whitlock

Dig deep today.

Put on your thinking caps and open your minds as I try to explain to you how the corruptive forces of America’s illicit drug war and mass incarceration can be seen in ESPN’s morning debate festival First Take.

The show has been in the news the past week because its part-time clown, Rob Parker, gleefully swallowed Skip Bayless’ bait and discussed Robert Griffin III’s “blackness” in the most racist way possible. Among other things, Parker insinuated RG3 was a “cornball” brother not “down for the cause” because he’s engaged to a white woman and there are rumors Griffin is a Republican. To the delight and entertainment of his puppeteer (Bayless), Parker did this on national TV.

ESPN was originally so pleased with the segment that it re-ran it during its daily 30-minute best-of show. The Worldwide Leader did not recognize the inappropriateness and unfairness of Parker’s commentary until the blogosphere and social media exploded with an angry backlash. Within 24 hours, Parker was suspended indefinitely. Six days later, Parker apologized for his stupidity and racism. And on the seventh day, ESPN announced Parker’s indefinite suspension would last 30 days and First Take would receive additional editorial oversight.

What took so long? And why the wrist slaps for something this grossly unfair?

Previously, I’ve explained that First Take is a black barbershop conversation. “Black enough” conversations are a frequent topic in black barbershops. President Obama’s “blackness” is dissected on a daily basis, as is President Clinton’s (I’m not joking). Unless you’re covered in tatts, have more than three baby mamas or are currently working regular shifts selling bean pies and Final Calls for the Fruit of Islam, your blackness can and likely will be questioned at some point inside a black barbershop.


For decades — even centuries — intelligent human life forms were able to distinguish the difference between conversations appropriate for the barbershop and not appropriate for mass broadcast distribution. There’s a lot of sex talk inside the barbershops I frequent. Brothers lose it when Josina Anderson appears on ESPN. Should this be a segment on First Take?

Our public conversations are being dumbed down. Why?

Because there’s a growing mass of American humanity demanding a dumbed-down conversation they can access. In the week since Parker unleashed his stupidity, I’ve heard from countless black men via Twitter and email who believe Parker did nothing wrong and was only bringing up an issue that the black community is discussing. Gregory Lee, the president of National Association of Black Journalists, told the blog TheBigLead.com that he understood what Parker was trying to say but Parker’s “execution was poor.”

Yeah. There’s a right way to publicly question the blackness of a 22-year-old kid quarterback? OK. This kid excelled academically and athletically in college. He carries himself in a spectacularly classy manner. But these aren’t “black enough” qualities? OK. Griffin has the characteristics that would’ve made him beloved by black folks in the 1960s and 1970s, but now he’s a target of Black McCarthyism.

Why?
.
The mass incarceration created by our immoral war on drugs. Mass incarceration corrupts the values of a free society. We wrongly think our world-leading incarceration rate makes our society more civil and safe. It is rotting our core, polluting our values, unleashing corruptive forces that powered the Wall Street mortgage crisis, the urban warfare we read about every day and all the other forms of greed-induced fraudulence plaguing America.

It’s not just the prisoner who is corrupted by the degradation of incarceration. It’s the jailer, too. It’s the community that houses the prison. It’s the loved ones of the prisoner and the prison employees. It’s society as a whole. Our love of guns and paranoid preparation for a race war are fueled by the paranoia and race tension found within prison walls. The unfairness of the drug war and mass incarceration breed a bitterness and cynicism throughout society that undermines our ability to see the characteristics that bind us, to see the good and necessity of working together.

Despite the myths spawned by Grover Norquist and other Ronald Reagan groupies, the Soviet Union collapsed from the internal wounds of mass incarceration not because of Reagan’s military might and foreign policy. The Soviet Union couldn’t withstand the pervasive corruption. We can’t either.

Let me take this back to First Take, the show that features barbershop conversation. A common trade learned in prison is barber. I’d estimate that a good 10 to 15 percent of black barbers have been incarcerated. Who sits around at a barbershop talking all day? Who frequents barbershops selling colognes and hot clothes? Ex-cons. The unemployed.

Who is at home with the free time to watch First Take at 10 a.m. every weekday? Nightshift workers and the unemployed. The unemployment rate for black men is around 13 to 14 percent. I’d think that number is significantly higher for black male ex-cons.

First Take is catering to a growing demographic. Rob Parker at one time owned a barbershop in Detroit — “Sporty Cutz,” I believe, was the name. He knows the demographic well. He knows what they talk about and what they want to see talked about on TV.

He and ESPN are not trying to elevate the conversation and uplift the victims of America’s mass incarceration crime. Parker and ESPN simply want to make a buck, no different from the corporations building prisons all across America.

[wreck ship]

what i think java is saying is what i see all the time. which is alot of hostility towards white people because of the past mistakes of others. i am jewish and italian. so my ancestry had to deal with genocide...probably one of the worst in history. but you dont see me parading and acting like everyone owes me something or feel bad for me. guess what everyone has problems, struggles and its not always fair. so man up and deal with it. no one owes anybody **CENSORED**.  unless you personally went through it yourself stop projecting your feelings of resentment to people who had nothing to do with it.  just because some people dont have the same opportunities as someone else? guess what ...not everyone is gonna make it. its called life. and yes its unfortunate and we all do what we can. but seriously im over the "i owe u" mentality. if you want something, you have to go out and take it. whether its by yourself or with someones help. quit the pity party and move on.

sounds like a lot of guilt. You, like javagay, throw around a lot of generalizations without any thing to back it up and then end your rant with, "I'm over the, you owe me,  mentality." Who specifically is throwing a pity party? Who claims you owe them and who is being hostile toward white people? Specifics please or it never happened.

[michael89156]

ESPN fires Rob Parker

 Posted by Michael David Smith on January 8, 2013, 2:57 PM EST
 

Rob Parker, the commentator who created controversy when he questioned whether Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is a “cornball brother” because he has a white fiancee, has been fired by ESPN.
 
“Rob Parker’s contract expired at year end. Evaluating our needs and his work, including his recent RGIII comments, we decided not to renew,” an ESPN spokesman said in a written statement.
 
ESPN can spin this as simply a decision not to renew his contract, rather than a firing, but the reality is that ESPN specifically stated on December 20 that Parker had been suspended for 30 days, and as of December 20, ESPN was expecting Parker back at the end of his 30-day suspension. (He made the comments on December 13, so a 30-day suspension from that date would have ended on January 12.)
 
So why did Parker’s discipline change from a 30-day suspension to termination? ESPN isn’t saying, but it may be that the network was unhappy with a recent interview Parker gave in which he said that ESPN knew what he was going to say on the air before he said it. In that interview, Parker also seemed to backtrack on his previous apology, complaining that people took his “cornball brother” statement out of context.
 
Parker has long been known for drawing attention to himself by stirring up controversy, and it’s unsurprising that he eventually took it too far and got himself fired. But ESPN is hardly blameless in all this: Parker made his comments on ESPN First Take, a show that celebrates provocation, and at first ESPN’s producers were so pleased with Parker’s comments about Griffin that the network re-aired the comments on Best of First Take. It was only later, after ESPN was criticized for airing the comments, that the network apologized.
 
And now, much later, ESPN has finally done what many viewers said it should have done from the beginning, and fired Parker.

[BucBalla85]

So why did Parker’s discipline change from a 30-day suspension to termination?

Because Parker was an idiot for writing that article.

[JavaRay]

What's the world coming to when a black man can't talk bad about another black man?     He should have been smart and stuck to insulting white guys.   Foolish move on his part.   Glad he got fired for that.

[Ms Elam]

what i think java is saying is what i see all the time. which is alot of hostility towards white people because of the past mistakes of others. i am jewish and italian. so my ancestry had to deal with genocide...probably one of the worst in history. but you dont see me parading and acting like everyone owes me something or feel bad for me. guess what everyone has problems, struggles and its not always fair. so man up and deal with it. no one owes anybody **CENSORED**.  unless you personally went through it yourself stop projecting your feelings of resentment to people who had nothing to do with it.  just because some people dont have the same opportunities as someone else? guess what ...not everyone is gonna make it. its called life. and yes its unfortunate and we all do what we can. but seriously im over the "i owe u" mentality. if you want something, you have to go out and take it. whether its by yourself or with someones help. quit the pity party and move on.

See this is where you got it wrong. You act like racism isnt still ingrained in our culture.

When a black person is speaking on slavery, its a broader opposition to the current prejudices they find themselves in. What happened in THIS country by most of our ancestors(black, and white) is still part of people attitudes today.

A black person going up to any white guy and saying "screw you, your ancestors were slave owners" , is wrong. But speaking about it is still relevant. My father used a "colored only" bathroom, a "colored only" school that offered the worst education, etc.. So do you kind of understand a resentment by some black folk for slavery and a lack of civil rights?

Basically, if you lived a privileged life where no one judged you by your race(or separated you, or kept you as a SLAVE) then you have no idea how someone might feel about the subject.

Good point. I understood ufc post, but it would be a more valid point if racism ended when slavery ended, but it didn't. There was still segregation, lynchings, and countless other forms of racism still around.  Within the last year 2 unarmed black teenagers where shot down by white men, and it took protesting and outrage to get some action in the Zimmerman case. Plenty of racism still exist.  To act like racism has been over since slavery and blacks should move on is ridiculous. Its still and everyday thing.

[JavaRay]

Within the last year 2 unarmed black teenagers where shot down by white men

Interesting.  Using 2009 statistics, there were 8,530 whites killed by black people and 4,380 blacks killed by white people.   

"Both white-on-black homicide and black-on-white homicide increase slightly as the percentage of blacks in the population increase,"

[Ms Elam]

Within the last year 2 unarmed black teenagers where shot down by white men

Interesting.  Using 2009 statistics, there were 8,530 whites killed by black people and 4,380 blacks killed by white people.   

"Both white-on-black homicide and black-on-white homicide increase slightly as the percentage of blacks in the population increase,"

Fine. But unless you're saying those people where killed because they were white then that's irrelevant. That just proves black people are more violent. We are speaking on racism

[The Anti-Java]

Glad he got canned.  Better late then never.

[Hate]

What's the world coming to when a black man can't talk bad about another black man?