From golf to politics: only fools and vultures want to play the race card
So, Hillary and Obama have buried the hatchet again but not before reminding us that political campaigns will always be dirty, especially when the good ole race card gets played.
Both camps have been quite active raising the ghost of Martin Luther King. I’m not sure the good reverend had that kind of party politics in mind when he made that ‘I have a dream’ speech.
Still, whatever he was thinking about, it probably wasn’t golf:
The GOLF CHANNEL regrets the poorly chosen remarks made by Kelly Tilghman on a recent broadcast and, again, extends our apologies to anyone who was offended. There is simply no place on our network for offensive language like this. While we believe that Kelly’s choice of words was inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate. Consequently, we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately.
‘What’s that all about?’ you might well ask.
Well, there’s this golf commentator, called Kelly Tilghman and she and a fellow presenter, Nick Faldo, were talking about Tiger Woods. You know the kind of stuff: hoe formidable and unbeatable Woods is, etcetera. The usual boring blather.
Alas, then Tilghman forgot herself - or, at least, forgot about the fact that we now live in a time in which the politically correct Puritans rule.
So, what she subsequently said caused the usual ruckus - in real life (or well, real life…: on TV and in the papers) and on the internet.
This is what happened:
Faldo and Tilghman were discussing young players who could challenge the world’s No. 1 player toward the end of Friday’s broadcast at Kapalua when Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while.”
“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman replied.
Not a very clever thing to say, I admit. I’m not sure though that this one remark somehow turns her into the poster girl for the KKK.
Which didn’t stop the usual suspects from trying to form a lynching mob of their own. Enter the reverend Al Sharpton, one of the more famous ambulance chasing civil rights activists:
“If I got on this show and said I wanted to put some Jewish-American in a gas chamber, I don’t care what context I said it in, the entire Jewish community would have the right to say I should be put off this show or my radio show if I said it there,” Sharpton told CNN. “Or if I said I wanted to see a woman raped. This is an insult to all blacks. Lynching is not murder in general; it is not assault in general. It is a specific racial term.”
Tiger Woods, by the way, has already responded to this through his agent:
Woods’ agent at IMG, said it was a non-issue and considered the matter “case closed.”
“Tiger and Kelly are friends, and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly,” Steinberg said Tuesday night in a statement released by Golf Channel. “Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments.”
That won’t stop the circus though, of course. When the race card gets played it stays played - and that’s the saddest part of this story. Not the stupid and yes, insensitive joke made by someone on TV but the unrelenting righteousness of those professional zealots who so love their wounds, or worse, their centre stage position, that they can’t stop picking the scabs: a sight only slightly less sickening than the ugly nonsense spewed by the hateful vermin who deny the existence of these wounds at all.
So, Obama and Hillary, take care: don’t try to make these particular ghosts part of your political caravan. For if you do, both of your campaigns will suffer, your party will suffer and politics in general will yet again - and rightly so - be seen as a game only fit for the most cynical types of profiteers, hypocrites and vultures.
Some dreams can turn into nightmares all too easily.
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January 16th, 2008 at 20:32
That Al Sharpton sure does spend a lot of time sticking his nose in other people’s business….
But I should stop there.
He might come after me ..
ah, who am I kidding?
I’m not famous. He wouldn’t bother.
January 17th, 2008 at 04:30
Pretty soon we won’t be able to talk to each other at all. Everything we say will be taken in a manner that will get us in trouble. Hand jestures and sign language will reign supreme.