Human nature’s a bitch…
Most of us like to think of ourselves as taking the high road, but do we? The fact is, everybody likes a sexy story – a peek behind the scenes at wrongdoing – a fall from grace – it’s in our DNA. That’s my theory, anyway.
Which is why a number of readers forwarded various stories describing Jason Whitlock‘s latest misstep.
In a nutshell, ESPN removed the former Kansas City Star sports scribe from the job he was hired to do two years ago – to launch a website about sports and race by mentoring younger writers- presumably people of color.
Never happened.
In the interim ESPN made use of the self-described “Big Sexy” by having him appear as a fill-in host and guest on other ESPN shows like Keith Olbermann’s.
Meanwhile back at the starting blocks – the months and years dragged on with little to nothing to show for it but a handful unflattering stories characterizing Whitlock as “paranoid, demeaning, oblivious, vindictive, unbelievably self-regarding, and, in some cases, truly destructive.”
Descriptions that come as little surprise to those who worked with Whitlock at the Star, online or at local sports radio stations WHB and 610 Sports.
Was this the beginning of yet another end for the writer who appeared to announce his personal bankruptcy in January on Twitter?
While it would seem to be a demotion for Whitlock, ESPN’s statement held out hope.
“While it would seem this is a demotion for Whitlock, the statement continued on, pouring compliments on the 48-year-old sportswriter,” the Washington Post reported.
“To some, this news will come as a surprise, considering ESPN reportedly built the proposed site around Whitlock’s topics of choice; but to others, his replacement seemed inevitable.
“In April, Deadspin published a long expose that outlined the several ways Whitlock was allegedly ‘poisoning’ the creation of what had previously been known colloquially as ‘Black Grantland.’ ”
I spoke with Star editors two years back who were skeptical of Whitlock’s managerial skills.
BY the way, that goes hand-in-hand with the New York Times assertion that “ESPN did not cite any recent incidents that prompted the change but implied that he did not have the management skills to run the site.”
But forget all the talk about Whitlock’s poor people skills, as a writer who built a career on pimping white folks and black alike, there’s no way Jason could make the transition into being a serious, provocative tackler of race issues. That sort of even handedness just isn’t in his DNA.
A textbook example of that inability can be seen in last December’s endlessly long screed by Whitlock, “Black Folks Can’t Breath.”
Aside from a couple of sprinkled in Jasonisms, it’s a complete snoozer
The $64 million question being, what’s Whitlock really trying to say and why did we care?
“The marriage of capitalism to incarceration is as destructive as Ike and Tina, as unethical as Bonnie and Clyde, as immoral as Woody and Soon Yi, and as stupid as Bobby and Whitney.”
Give Whitlock credit though – for better and for worse – he’s still in the game.
I actually thought that was a really good piece he wrote “Why Black People Can’t Breath”, although it took him a while to get to his point.
He said that police shooting blacks isn’t an epidemic, it’s rare. The real danger to the black community are laws like “Three Strikes and You’re Out” that have lead to mass incarceration.
I guess for me, taking that long to get to the point was a deal killer…
Readers shouldn’t be made to wait.
And it was such a departure from Jason’s normal writing style that I lost interest early on.
Serious journalism can be compelling too, One Guy.
To me, it felt like Jason was a wish out of water writing it
Who? Jason Whitlock? Who?
I wonder if Greg Hall ghostwrote the “Why Black People Can’t Breathe” article. 🙂
Not Greg’s style…
Now Paul Wilson – strong possibility
Jason is the perfect melding of a modicum of talent that always showed promise but was never honed, an over-inflated self-opinion, and lots of enablers. The result is always going to be the same with those ingredients.
Ding ding. winner.
The somewhat obviously missing ingredients were his ability to even just get along with people, let alone lead, inspire and manage them…
Combined with – to me anyway -a lack of the sorely needed credibility to undertake a project this big.
Looks to me like some white dude at ESPN just said, “Hey, Whitlock’s a controversial, famous black writer dude. Let’s give it to him!”
I bet he got fired because ESPN secretly want the Confederate Flag over their offices.
Now Word…
Say what you will Whitlock is KC’s only real on air national guy…these days on ESPN…he is on quite a bit. I was not surprised about financial issues in KC…I don’t know the details..I’m all for Jason…he is a talent…and has done quite a bit for himself over the years…hope it all works out for him.
Kevin Harlan is a KC national on air guy and he is much more accomplished
than Jason Whitlock.
Roger Twibell has a bit of credibility as well.
He (Whitlock) seemed to be in good spirits today on PTI.
By the way, the ferment of intellectual life on this blog suffers in the absence of Sutherland and Steele.
Just sayin…
…and Valentine.
Valentine takes the summers off to promote and book outdoor festivals and the like.
Steele just got back from France and is working on a book.
And Dwight will be along shortly I suspect
I’ve been expecting Steele to go off on the Pope’s recent Encyclical on climate change.
There have been several good writers that have come out of the Star’s stables, but Whitlock really isn’t one of them. When someone says, “Don’t quit your day job”, Whitlock’s response would have to be, “…but this is my day job”. Over the years, the Star has produced some notables, Hemingway, Christopher, and Stark. For those that can identify the first two, but not the last, well, like Hemingway he got fired from the Star. He ghost wrote Bruce Jenner’s column on the West Coast, and the Star never liked it wen their reporters one-upped management.
Now, back to Whitlock: Perhaps he has been in the wrong venue. After all, if it is not racist, he’s not writing about it. It is no longer good enough to be good at grammar and have a fine vocabulary. If article A continues to look like article B, with the same characters and same theme, an author falls into the trap of paraphrasing his or her own works. There are a host of authors and editors out there who, once published, are finding it harder to get their printed words out, and writing about how to fix a toilet may not be New York Times bestseller material, but it pays the bills. Yes, Jason needs to expand, but will he? Probably not. Thanks Hearne for making the site available.
Prego
“Hemingway, Christopher, and Stark”. Too funny Cowboy. I’m sure Stark will appreciate the shout out. He also made some major contributions to the Golden Gloves programs back over 3 decades ago. Allan was/is quite the talent and obviously the Star didn’t know what they had.
On PTI this week, Jason looked significantly smaller. He mentioned he had been on a diet. Now, he is by no means down to a normal weight, but he could easily have dropped 50-100 pounds. Hard to tell sitting behind a desk.
When Whitlock was with the Star he seemed to lose self control a lot. There was the time he was suspended for yelling obscenities at New England Patriots fans. He got into a verbal tussle with Andre Rison(actually, Rison was/is a piece of chit). He would proclaim to all us readers that he was the most handsome “heavy” black man in KC(I guess if women love a man with a 52 inch waist!). He got fired from Sports Reporters for insulting his co-workers. He burned his final bridge and finally left KC.
Obviously, Whitlock was hired by The Star just to race bait. He did his job pretty well and he did a very good job of creating controversy. Can’t say I miss him as much as Posnanski but it was noice when both of them were around.
Whitlock has been on PTI all week.
He killed it.
The camera loves his fat azz and he is really good in an extemporaneous, on camera discussion.
It is what it is.
He kills, kills on TV.
If Whitlock was a stock, I would bet my entire 401K on his fat AZZ.
He kills it on TV.
He will, absolutely get his own show, and it will kill.
The truth is the truth. The guy is brilliant on TV.