ESPN’s Jeremy Lin “Chink In The Armor” = Apologies, Suspensions, and a Firing

By now you’ve seen the huge ESPN no-no… the Jeremy Lin “Chink In The Armor” stuff. So much of a no-no… that the employee that posted it has been fired. His name is Anthony Federico, and ESPN gave him the boot. This was after they had released an initial apology.

Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Pretty harsh considering this cat, Max Bretos, said “chink in the armor” on live TV and did not get fired, rather he was suspended for one month. Here’s his gem:

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Obviously, when referencing a story about an Asian-American…this is a super racist thing to say. No contesting that. You’re an idiot if you don’t think that comment, unintentional as it may have been, doesn’t carry huge racial undertones. So, that’s the question, right? What were his intentions? He said to Knicks analyst Walt Frazier: “if there is a chink in the armor, where can Lin improve his game?” I believe he would have used this common idiom referring to any player. It was a horrible miscue on his part…but it was not malicious. Pretty harsh of ESPN to suspend the guy. But hey, they’ve made it clear… they won’t tolerate racism, unintended or not.

Okay, got that outta the way, now be honest. You gotta admit you laughed, in one of those “oh my…they can’t say that… did they really just say that?… you couldn’t have said anything worse” type of laughs. Well, that was my reaction, for better or worse. Gets you wondering, with all the awful Jeremy Lin puns that are out there… could they have said anything worse?

-bp

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