'Lynch Tiger' wasn't worth suspension
Posted: Thursday, January 10, 2008 2:19 PM
Kelly Tilghman should have used a different choice of words or, better yet, an entirely different analogy. But what the Golf Channel anchor said about Tiger Woods last Friday did not merit being suspended for two minutes let along two weeks.
Shame on the Golf Channel for suspending her, and shame on Al Sharpton for so trivializing one of the most important social issues in America by demanding that Tilghman be fired for an utterly innocent verbal slip.
Click here to watch the video.
She and co-anchor Nick Faldo were joking at the Mercedes-Benz Championship about what young golfers could do to unseat Tiger.
“Maybe they should just gang up on him for a while,” Faldo suggested.
“Lynch him in a back alley,” laughed Tilghman.
Tilghman reportedly gets along well with Woods, and the golfer’s agent said he understood there was no malicious intent in the comment. Had she said “mug him in a back alley” – and I’d bet that’s what she meant to say – nobody would have said a word. As it was, it took five days for Sharpton to get himself on CNN to demand that Tilghman be fired for saying a word that can be racially charged.
And then he acted as if the comment were the second coming of the reprehensible slur for which Don Imus was quite rightly fired by CBS Radio.
“Lynching is not murder in general, it’s not assault in general,” Sharpton said. “It’s a specific racial term that this women should be held accountable for. What she said is racist. Whether she’s a racist ... is immaterial. She’s a broadcaster. The channel has to be accountable to the public.”
Note the use of the misogynistic term “this woman.” Note the conclusion that “what she said is racist.” Note the claim that the word is “a specific racial term.”
I realize the word has racial connotations and is offensive to many black Americans. That’s why I don’t use it in columns or stories. I also object to the suggestion, even in jest, that great players should be taken out by the competition. Better to suggest they steal his clubs or put itching powder in his shorts.
But she was suspended for no reason other than offending Al Sharpton, and if that’s what we’ve come to, we’ve got a real problem. Given how easy it is to offend him, no one’s job is safe. And that’s not fair. Imus intended to be offensive and got what was coming to him. Tilghman didn’t, but she got what wasn’t coming to her anyway.
What’s really unjust is that Sharpton is guilty of the same racism he rails against. He also gives people more capacity for hate than most of us have. To accuse someone of racism is a grave accusation, and such charges shouldn’t be thrown around as blithely as Sharpton does. And the delight h takes in his own self-righteousness – as if he’s never said or done anything offensive – is an insult to every person who truly cares about justice and equality.
With all due respect to the Reverend, who could use some lessons in humility and charity not to mention history, not everyone automatically associates lynching with racism. As far as I knew for much of my life, lynching was what they did in the old West to cattle rustlers and other ne’er-do-wells. I had no clue there was a racial connotation until much later in life.
There’s a great novel written on the subject by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. It’s called “The Ox-Bow Incident,” and it’s one of those books every American should read, Sharpton included. It’s all about lynching, and there’s not a scrap of racism in it.
Sharpton is like one of the cowboys in the book who lynch an innocent man. He doesn’t care whether the person he attacks is innocent or not. If she or he looks guilty to him, that’s enough.
And the Golf Channel fell for his demagoguery. Rather than tell him that no offense was meant by Tilghman nor taken by Tiger, and so no action would be taken other than a chat about being more careful about what she says on the air, they suspended her. Her crime wasn’t being insensitive. It was offending Al Sharpton.
Shame on the network and shame on him.
