Saturday, January 12, 2008

Why It's Al Sharpton Who Needs To Shut Up


If you haven’t heard the brouhaha, Kelly Tilghman, the anchorette who co hosts tournament events on The Golf Channel with pro Nick Faldo, has put in her golf cleated foot in her mouth and her job in jeopardy, by saying, on the air in a moment of banter with Faldo, that Tiger Woods is such an indestructible force on the course that the only way young players might have a chance to win tournaments is to take Tiger out and “lynch him in a back alley”.
Okay, Is there anybody who has heard this story, or who is just reading it for the first time here, that doesn’t think that Tilghman just set the cause of blondes being taken seriously back about ten years? And is there anybody who doesn’t think that she deserves, at least, the two-week suspension that The Golf Channel has levied?
Of course not.
Enter Al Sharpton, the self appointed guardian of race relations in the 21st Century and judge of that which is, and is not, grounds for termination of employment. This would be the Al Sharpton who, for all practical purposes, got Imus canned when Don called the Rutgers basketball ladies, “nappy headed hos”
Now Sharpton is on record as saying that Tilghman needs to be fired, as well. And he insists that although Tilghman has personally apologized, both publicly to those concerned and privately to Tiger himself (Tiger says he forgives, by the way) and she is, in fact, benched for two weeks with what is likely a big fat strike one in her employee file, she needs to be fired. Period. End of discussion.
Okay. Here’s my two cents.
Kelly needs to do a much better job of what she says (and what she thinks, but, frankly, that’s between her and God and nobody else’s business.)
Al Sharpton needs to shut up.
No reasonable person, who hears the whole story, will honestly think for a second that Kelly Tilghman is a racist, including, as mentioned, Tiger Woods. She’s obviously not a world class humorist and she has self inflicted a pretty bad gash in her broadcasting future, but being fired for one badly mangled attempt at being funny is cruel and unusual punishment (it’s one of the pesky phrases from that little thing we call the Constitution, Rev Al, feel free to check it out.)
Sharpton’s argument is that the use of the term “lynch” is racist. Because “lynch”, in his judgment, is a direct reference to the method of exterminating blacks in the Deep South (and elsewhere) during shameful periods in our history.
Kelly Tilghman used the term “lynch”, therefore, Kelly Tilghman is a racist.
He’s right.
She did use the term.
But he needs to shut up, anyway
Because the term is certainly provocative and connotative, and in Tilghman’s case, clearly inappropriate and in bad taste.
But it’s not necessarily racist.
I seem to remember, as a kid, reading a pretty well written story (well, actually I read the Classics Illustrated comics, I mean, after all, I was a kid, you know?) titled “The Ox Bow Incident”. It was the story of group of cowboys who “lynched” another group of cowboys in a miscarriage of frontier justice.
I also remember that none of the cowboys was black.
Additionally, to this day when I hear the term “lynch mob”, my imagination conjures up a bunch of really misguided townspeople with torches and ropes, surging down the center of town headed for the sheriff’s office to hang poor Billy Joe for the rustling of cattle.
Of course, that’s just my imagination. Each of you is entitled to your own.
And just in case I might be missing something, I looked up the word in the Princeton Dictionary.

(v) lynch (kill without legal sanction) "The blood-thirsty mob lynched the alleged killer of the child"

Correct me if I’m mistaken. I don’t see the word “black” in there anywhere.
Al Sharpton most likely means well. I don’t know the man, so I cant really say one way or the other. And, even though I work in broadcasting, I came down on his side in the Imus saga.
The difference between the two situations is black and white. (oops, sorry, Al….please don’t get me fired…)
Imus personally denigrated specific human beings, describing them with a profane and derogatory slang term.
Tilghman badly fumbled an attempt at humor using a word that has other associations besides the one that Sharpton is hanging his hat (or just trying to hang Tilghman) on.
Thin line, you say?
Fair point. But a thin line is the measure that separates our society from societies who ban, forbid, dictate, punish, even exterminate without so much as a by your leave.
As in, a thin line separates the jury from the lynch mob.
And Sharpton’s attempt to make this a case of racism puts his own credibility into question. I seem to remember a story about a boy who cried wolf.
Uh-oh..Now I’ve done it. I’ve called Al Sharpton “boy”.
Well, before I lose my job for this most offensive outburst, let me sum it up.
The problem with Al Sharpton trying to make a huge deal out of everything is that sooner, rather than later, people will stop listening to anything he might have to say.
If he is sincere about his work as a voice of the people, he needs to be more selective about when he opens his mouth.
And, this time….
He needs to just shut up.

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