Jason Whitlock leaving ESPN

Whitlock's problem is there's so much baggage, legitimate issues he raises are pretty easily dismissed. I don't think he should necessarily be expected to just move on. It was a spectacular flameout, and the main...narrative about it has been the Deadspin pieces. Him refuting it seems like a normal thing to want to do. It's just that because it's Whitlock, it can't be just that, both because he'll drag The Wire and a thousand other things into it and others will just disregard anything from him.

And I think he has legitimate criticisms of Deadspin/Gawker, which has become the Internet's ombudsman bully while simultaneously being extremely thin-skinned.

 

Which is probably why it's DOA

 

Along the lines of "What's it like to be a black quarterback?"

Howard is a journalist who is black. That is all. I know Whitlock wanted black journalists for the blackcentric website.

 

This strikes at why I think the site is a bad idea and will never take off. If you're basically building a platform that will be navel-gazing and address issues to which the writers and editors deem themselves as exclusive arbiters, who is the audience? It's an insular audience. How many men read ESPNW? How many straight people read GLAAD publications? How many 30-somethings read AARP? How many white males between the age of 18-40 are going to read about the trials and tribulations of being black? It's just an odd venture and I think John Skipper spent about 10 minutes thinking it through.

 

Greg Howard responded, and wrote something that I frankly found really interesting and worthy of debate.

In “Black Quarterbacks,” I noted that you wrote that RGIII had too much swagger, isn’t humble enough, and most curiously, that he is arrogant for playing injured. This is code. You were calling him a nigger. You often rail against or flinch from the word nigger, but you are a wealthy man now because you are one of the only mainstream writers in the world still willing to call black people niggers in 2015.

It took a few rounds of edits from Tommy Craggs and Tim Marchman to stop dancing around this point, and to just say what I mean. Marchman, Craggs, the rest of our team, and I wrote and edited the 30,000-word piece. When you say that I am their mouthpiece ... you are conflating editing with ghostwriting. You’re showing your ass. You’re telling everyone that, on a fundamental level, you don’t know what an editor actually does. Your lack of understanding of basic, working fundamentals of journalism is one of the reasons why you failed as the editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, and why you now blog on a Tumblr for Fox Sports, a multi-platform network with a website of its own that functions just fine.
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I purposely bolded the part I'm more interested in, because Howard is essentially making the case that Marchman and Craggs - and later Howard - concluded that it can declare Whitlock's critique of RGIII a certain thing based on their assessment - and apparent total mastery and grasp of - of coded language.

And I think that's a little - bordering on a lot - dangerous, when one group of writers start declaring that they know the coded intent of another writer, especially when one writer knows the other well enough and can frankly confront that writer, if he so wishes, and hash out the other writer's intent. And it's a consistent weakness of Deadspin - their arrogance and certitude as it pertains to how to think, how to say you think, and how those things manifest themselves into blanket declarations of person's character or intent.

Even when you're inclined to side with Deadspin - and, generally, in this situation, I would, given Whitlock's history of broken relationships and paranoia - I am nevertheless troubled by the groupthink and intellectual bullying Deadspin uses to achieve it. The site and the people on it have so little grace, and that is alarming.

 

Whole lotta Uncle Tom Foolery goin' on. Definitely Empire 2.0 in the making.

And this bit at the end is amusing.

And yet, surely you see that setting you up with a personal Tumblr account where you can’t interrupt but can be easily summoned amounts to Fox Sports inviting you onto the estate and directing you to the slave quarters. Do you think you’re finally home? Do you still think you’re the king?

Omar's definitely comin' ...

 

I'm amused at Howard prefacing his piece with comments about being weary of this "tedious boring thing between us", as if it is a thing of Whitlock's making that he's just sick of.... But wasn't Howard the initial aggressor, the one who ignited this public war by unloading that massive broadside on deadspin? If you throw the first haymaker don't bitch and complain later about the other guy punching back.

Also, as some of the comments noted, I find it odd that Howard never addressed Whitlock's claim that he flat out lied about the hospital phone call thing. He sidestepped the core accusation against him. His "response" to Whitlock was not so much a real response--in terms of addressing his actual points and allegations--as it was just the lobbing of more insults.

 

There's a lot of things Howard didn't directly address in his post.

And, the thing is, there is so little integrity in many national online sports sites that they'll just side with Howard of out of sheer "Oh, he said Whitlock was a sad, lonely person?" I agree." thinking.

And, beyond that, some of the hatefulness in Howard's post, especially at the end...ugh. These are bitter, bitter times, and Deadspin fuels in its writers a "fuck you" vibe that, again, is alarming. Over time, it has to be corrosive to one's soul.

 

Almost as if Jason kept every text, and didn't answer any call but kept every voice message, knowing we'd have reached this point where he can post them all.

That said, at some point it would be nice if Jason simply started doing his sports-race-culture thing and left Greg and Deadspin to their own devices.

 

Well, in fairness, isn't that what he was once trying to do? I believe this feud began with deadspin's attacks on Whitlock, not vice versa. There's a limit to how much unilateral public attack a man can endure before he has to bite back.

Funny thing is, I seem to recall a long ago time when Whitlock was a champion for young sites like the Big Lead and deadspin, he was the establishment voice I recall defending them when others peered down their nose and ridiculed them. Boy has that ever changed. Deadspin's been biting the hand that once patted its back in a huuuge way.

 

I agree. But he has bitten back, twice. Shit ain't going to settle of its own volition. It's just a cat fight at this point.

I'd like to see Jason write about what he planned to write about at The Undefeated. Enough of the squabbling. Boring.

 

I find journo wars to be very entertaining. Most of you are small to medium celebrities. Most of you are college graduates which brings the discourse up a bit.