Jemele Hill's apology

[Roy Hobbs]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/080623

Yay!  We all missed you, Jemele.  Time for more of your racial drivel.

The apology sounds good.  She definitely said all the rights things, and showed the proper amount of culpability and regret. I just wonder how much she really meant it.  Time will tell, I guess, but if I was counseling Jemele, I'd tell her to lay off the race discussions for awhile, and concentrate on the other inane nonsense she likes to prattle on about.

[crownsy]

I love how she goes out of the way to put in that Celtics fans sent her mean email in her "feel sorry for me, even though this is the exact thing i wanted imus fired for" paragraph. and "i've learned who my friends are" during this suspension? you mean your apologists?

sounds to me like she doesn't really think she did anything wrong, she's just sorry she got punished.

The fat walrus did this too, way to play up the fact that the rest of the country is full of Boston hate to try to deflect attention hill.

we'll see how she does from here, mabey she'll try to develop a style thats not race baiting 101.

[JSD]

Seemed sincere, I do think this country has gotten very sugar cookies, apple pie and a bit to PC.

I begin to think some of these "slip ups" followed up a slap on the wrist is becoming a bit of a marketing tool in this competitive electronic media driven world. Hell every Tom, Dick and Harry has a blog or a youtube now. I get my information from Celticsblog not the Boston globe sports section, I'm sure the globe wants me back. People want to stand out.


 "I've learned Boston Celtics fans sure do know how to make the most out of e-mail."

Did anyone from this board e-mail her? If so would you mind sharing that e-mail on this thread?

[Roy Hobbs]

I do think this country has gotten very sugar cookies, apple pie and a bit to PC.

I agree with that.  However, when Hill goes out of her way to call for the firing of Don Imus, publicly supports the firing of Steve Lyons (for making a joke that was misinterpreted, and wasn't about race at all), and says that Kelly Tilghman should be suspended for her "lynching" remarks about Tiger, it's only fair she tastes some of her own medicine.

For those interested, Hill also gave an interview with Fanhouse.  It's a pretty soft interview, and doesn't really shed much insight. 

I would say, however, that it's completely inappropriate for anybody to be releasing Hill's phone number or address, or hurling racist insults at her.  I think she deserved plenty of criticism for her column, and I think the suspension was completely appropriate (and probably too short), but she doesn't deserve to be degraded through hate speech. 

Now, back to criticizing her.  Can somebody explain this rationale?

. I would never dream of joking about the Holocaust in a column. I would never do that. Hitler to me seemed in a different category...

Um...  what?  Admittedly, she said that "obviously I was wrong with that", but shouldn't that be pretty common sense?  For somebody who is so preachy about public figures choosing their words carefully (again, see Imus, Lyons, and Tilghman), Hill sure seems to have been fairly cavalier in her use of them.

[Schupac]

Actually....

I thought it was poorly written    

I could apoligize WAY more sincere...-er than that.

[bbc3341]

She's just not that great of a writer to begin with. She's much better on TV... Though the apology was the right thing to do, I think she should have explained it and not left it at 'I don't want to rationalize' - I would have loved to see her try and explain it, my guess is that she can't, not without admitting to things she doesn't want to.

[rondofan09]

She has a dirty, whorish mouth.

[JSD]

I do think this country has gotten very sugar cookies, apple pie and a bit to PC.

I agree with that.  However, when Hill goes out of her way to call for the firing of Don Imus, publicly supports the firing of Steve Lyons (for making a joke that was misinterpreted, and wasn't about race at all), and says that Kelly Tilghman should be suspended for her "lynching" remarks about Tiger, it's only fair she tastes some of her own medicine.

For those interested, Hill also gave an interview with Fanhouse.  It's a pretty soft interview, and doesn't really shed much insight. 

I would say, however, that it's completely inappropriate for anybody to be releasing Hill's phone number or address, or hurling racist insults at her.  I think she deserved plenty of criticism for her column, and I think the suspension was completely appropriate (and probably too short), but she doesn't deserve to be degraded through hate speech. 

Now, back to criticizing her.  Can somebody explain this rationale?

. I would never dream of joking about the Holocaust in a column. I would never do that. Hitler to me seemed in a different category...

Um...  what?  Admittedly, she said that "obviously I was wrong with that", but shouldn't that be pretty common sense?  For somebody who is so preachy about public figures choosing their words carefully (again, see Imus, Lyons, and Tilghman), Hill sure seems to have been fairly cavalier in her use of them.

I agree and fairly cavalier is an understatement. She is a downright walking contradiction.

[Amonkey]

I thought that was a pretty good apology.  It seems that she read the replies from her blog site and tried to address that.  Did she learn from them?  That I am not so sure, but she at least acknowledged it, and thats already a step up from a racist like her.  However, I think it would've  been a little more sincere if she had apologized to Imus and the golf girl too.

[Donoghus]

I actually think its a well written apology.  The problem is that its the best thing she's wrote in the last few years. 

[bbc3341]

In her original column I actually didn't think the Hitler reference was the worst part, it was when she injected race while writing "this isn't about race" I don't know that she has the chops to tackle an issue as heavy as that - race in sports. Very few writers do. Ralph Wiley did...

[Frontierboy]

She's on a short leash........ she will be gone within a year

[dark_lord]

her an imus should go on a date together.

[GLS]

her an imus should go on a date together.

Given Imus's latest foot in the mouth endeavor, maybe the two of them can have a point/counterpoint show on some cable channel.

I'd pay to watch 

[nickagneta]

After reading a brief word she wrote on her blog regarding her suspension, I can't help but feel that Jemele Hill hasn't learned a thing other than she is a lot better at writing hollow apologies than she ever thought she was.

http://jemelehill.com/#/blog/175/

In the link here is a brief paragragh she wrote before she wrote her apology and after her suspension. I think it tells us all a lot more about what Jemele Hill is all about:

"But just a couple of things I'd like to point out before moving on to that Game 6 atrocity(for the Lakers: 1. It's H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E. If you're going to call me that, just wanted to make sure you have the correct spelling. 2. If you're going to call me a racist and you want your point to stick, it kinda levels the argument when you follow it up by calling me the n-word. Just a little bit."

So before issuing her apology she tries to imply that people calling her a hypocrite are stupid because apparently in her mind, none of them know how to spell the word "hypocrite".

And then she goes on to imply that the people who are calling her a racist should just come forward and call her a racial epithet proving that they are the ones that are indeed racist.

That paragragh just does not tell me that anything she wrote in the apology was something she genuinely felt.

And yet, ESPN is still cutting her paychecks. Mind boggling.