Jemele Hill fallout recap: apologies, non-apologies, hypocrisies, slurs, memos and lawsuits
By Don Povia
Despite what Monday morning QBs might think of her, Jemele Hill is a thoughtful, intelligent professional who, before taking her self-driven ESPN podcast with Michael Smith and turning it into a seat at the 6:00 SportsCenter table, she cut her teeth in the newspaper biz.
Last Monday Hill set off a social media firestorm when she called out President Donald Trump on Twitter for being in her eyes “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
That tweet, part of a series of similarly pointed ones, was spurned by Hill’s reaction to a Kid Rock tweet by The Hill (no relation) about the rocker-rapper-maybe -Senate-candidate candidate bemoaning the media labels him racists, and his retort that “he loves black people.”
After some friendly banter with legendary True Romance actor and cultural appropriator Michael Rapaport about Rock, Hill started getting into a back-and-forth with a bunch of online nobodies that devolved largely on partisan and racial grounds. Hill fired away that “Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.” and “The height of white privilege is being able to ✌🏾ignore✌🏾his white supremacy, because it’s of no threat to you. Well, it’s a threat to me.”
With that came cries of hypocrisy from opponents who noted the network’s treatment of, among others, Curt Schilling and Linda Cohn for their outspokenness on either the company or politics or both.
Twitter fighting aside, the ensuing fallout timeline played out as such:
By Tuesday, ESPN responded “The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the president do not represent the position of ESPN. We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.”
On Wednesday, Hill offered a #SorryNotSorry acknowledgement: “My comments on Twitter expressed my personal beliefs. My regret is that my comments and the public way I made them painted ESPN in an unfair light. My respect for the company and my colleagues remains unconditional,” wrote Hill.
Around that same time, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Hill’s tweets a “firable offense.”
On Friday, Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch released the text of a memo from ESPN president John Skipper to employees which notes:
"ESPN is not a political organization. Where sports and politics intersect, no one is told what view they must express.At the same time, ESPN has values. We are committed to inclusion and an environment of tolerance where everyone in a diverse work force has the equal opportunity to succeed. We consider this human, not political. Consequently, we insist that no one be denigrated for who they are including their gender, ethnicity, religious belief or sexual identity.We have issues of significant debate in our country at this time. Our employees are citizens and appropriately want to participate in the public discussion. That can create conflict for our public facing talent between their work and their personal points of view. Given this reality, we have social media policies which require people to understand that social platforms are public and their comments on them will reflect on ESPN. At a minimum, comments should not be inflammatory or personal."
While not calling Hill out by name, he noted “we had a violation of those standards in recent days and our handling of this is a private matter.”
Despite Skipper’s want for privacy, partisan groups are using the kerfuffle to take political shots. The Democratic Coalition filed an ethics complaint against Huckabee Sanders with the Office of Government Ethics based on 18 U.S. Code § 227: “Wrongfully influencing a private entity’s employment decisions by a Member of Congress or an officer or employee of the legislative or executive branch.”
While it sounds serious and political leftists are teasing jail time for Huckabee Sanders, Dan Abram’s LawNewz notes, “There’s not much that OGE can do when it comes to White House employees. They can recommend disciplinary action, but ultimately, it’s the President’s decision whether or not to carry it out.”
Meanwhile, calls for #FireJemele will likely open up another can of political worms.
Per Kevin Draper at The New York Times:
"But Connecticut also has General Statute 31-51q, which reads in part that any employer, including private employers, “who subjects any employee to discipline or discharge on account of the exercise by such employee of rights guaranteed by the first amendment to the United States Constitution” is liable for damages caused “by such discipline or discharge.”“That statute would prohibit ESPN from disciplining or discharging her based on that speech,” said Todd Steigman, a partner at Madsen, Prestley and Parenteau who was part of the team that tried a major case defining the scope of the statute."
As Hill tries to move on with her life and career (while being hurled racial slurs), she becomes just another part of the political dog and pony show where Hillary believes she can still overturn the 2016 election and righties fight for the soul of a cartoon frog, while Colin Kaepernick enables sports-loving Americans of all partisan shades to lose their damn minds.