Jason Whitlock leaving ESPN

That's the most he has written in months.

 

The Explanation 2.0 begins. And kids, you might be shocked that it contains a reference to "The Wire".

http://j.school/post/131134873540/the-explanation-20-still-undefeated

 

This is one of the most head-smack-inducing passages I've read of late:

My critics will likely allege The Explanation 2.0 (Wednesday’s radio/TV interview and this blog) is self-indulgent defensiveness. I disagree.

 

This will be interesting. Very interesting.

A couple grafs:

Journalism is being abandoned and used to censor independent thought, demonize people who speak imprecisely and/or violate our constantly moving line of political correctness. Social-media-driven faux outrage dominates today’s journalism. Unseasoned, untrained, instant-gratification-seeking children are beginning to set our journalistic agenda.

Deadspin is the Worldwide Leader in sports journalism ombudsmanship. This is sad. An organization that occasionally stumbles upon journalism but mostly sensationalizes and bullies with its lack of journalistic standards, ethics and maturity exercises unprecedented influence over the profession of sportswriting.
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and

There’s a competing new project targeting African-Americans. It’s a loose confederation of mostly social media groupthinkers/activists and left-wing advocacy journalists. They’re orchestrating the Black Lives Matter movement and working in intellectual alliance with white hipsters. They’re generally atheist and using allegiance to liberal ideology as a litmus test for blackness and fairness.

Hopeless cynicism is their doctrine. The celebrated, talented and atheist writer/thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates is their symbolic Gawd. Gawker’s Denton hailed Coates as the ideal editor to run his business – the ultimate insult intended as a compliment.
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I thought that the white hipsters lived in Brooklyn and mostly focused on rooting for the US Women's soccer team.

 

Precision in language, written or verbal, is the touchstone of journalism. Sports journalism is still journalism. It is not impressionism or abstract expression, but a reflection of facts. Yes, political correctness is a sour crutch but Whitlock owes much of his success as a benficary of political correctness. The angry black man morphs into the angry black man of counter factualism to the angry black man performing as Don Quixote.

Maybe he has integrity and ran into ESPN as sports partner and promoter, not sports news network and didn't like what he saw. Doesn't Simmons make the same argument without resort to racial politics?

 

I like that.

 

Nobody puts Jason in a corner.

 

Circles have no corners

 

Deadspin's argument from the beginning has been: ESPN wanted to hire a conservative to run a site for the sake of "respectability politics", purposely sought Whitlock out to carry out this aim, and it all fell apart because Whitlock was a terrible leader and an even worse thinker and basically wrong about everything as it pertains to race, and even the folks who took a chance with working under him knew that.

Whitlock appears to have a different take, judging by that first blog, as in ESPN wanted his flamethrowing tendencies, but not necessarily the in-depth journalism, and was perhaps concerned about his worldview.

 

Ugh, I tried about four different times and can't force myself to get through that post. I'm not a Whitlock hater at all, but that was a lot of self-indulgent, grandiose gibberish to me.