Earlier today while doing his show, Mike Greenberg, one half of the Mike & Mike show that he does with Mike Golic on ESPNRADIO, made an unfortunate (and horrible) flub of words when referring to Martin Luther King Jr. day. Now, the word he used, which I don't believe was intentional, was and is a racial slur. And when it happened, the crappy video that was recorded from their television set with a digital camera rocketed around the internet.
Accusations of racism, which was to be expected, I suppose, were accompanied by the video. And when you see the video, you hear him make the unfortunate slipup, and he immediately corrects himself and keeps on going.
Later in the day he released a statement apologizing for his slipup, saying in part: "I'm sorry that my talking too fast - and slurring my words - might have given people who don't know our show the wrong impression about us, and about me."
Couple things to think about here.
1. Mike Greenberg has, to my knowledge, never had any instances in the past dealing with racist comments, or anything of the sort. He's not one of these "shock jock" type people such as Don Imus, or Rush Limbaugh who say outrageous things all the time, and where you could at least believe that he would say something along those lines because of what he's said in the past.
Greenberg doesn't do that type of show. He's a sports guy, doing a sports show with pop culture mixed in. So for people to jump on him and automatically brand him a racist, and dismiss the very notion that this could well have been an inadvertant slip, that's a bit much, in my opinion.
2. This brings to mind the recent back and forth between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao over the blood testing. Fans of Floyd Mayweather would taunt Manny and tell him "if you have nothing to hide, then take the test", ignoring the fact that the testing was not dictated by the sanctioning bodies, or the Nevada Athletic Commission, it was dictated by another fighter, one who's father has been slandering him in the press for weeks leading up to that.
Manny refused to take the tests, saying that he wasn't going to follow orders from another fighter. And yet the common consensus from many fight fans is that Manny should take the test to prove he's not dirty.
Why? He's never failed a drug test, and with the exception of a couple fighters, and Floyd's father, there wasn't any suspicion of Manny doping.
However, in this country we seem to have embraced the idea of "guilty until proven innocent". Manny needs to prove that he's not doping, instead of someone else having to prove that he is.
Likewise, Greenberg seems to be getting labeled a racist based on this one instance, without any consideration towards his past actions that could perhaps show that this is a one time slip up.
Greenberg tends to talk very quickly, and as anyone who talks a lot (myself included) can tell you, it's very easy to get words mixed up. Remember as a kid, if you were like me, and would talk a mile a minute when trying to say something, and you get words mixed up, or only say half a word, or as in this case seems to be, combining parts of two words (King and Junior) and your parents say "slow down".
I honestly think Greenberg made an unfortunate mistake, one that will live with him for the rest of his life thanks to youtube and the internet. I just hope people can allow his apology to be accepted and he can move on. Print this post
1 comments:
I agree with you and you articulated the unfairness of it really well. Some people are always out for blood. I can think of two other incidents where people were slurred as racist who had done nothing wrong. One example was an aid to a (black) mayor who had to reign after using the word "niggerdly" which has nothing to do with, and no relation, to the word it sounds similar to. The other was a teacher who was surrounded by and threatened by angry parents when they found out she had read a book to the class that had the words "nappy hair" in the title. (I should note this was before the Imus remark). She was a white teacher and the students were all black. The book was written by a black women to make black kids feel good about their appereance. Parents assumed the teacher and book were racist without even reading it. She was physically threatened
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