Another NFL team signs an obscure backup quarterback not named Colin Kaepernick and another Left-stream media member is unhinged. This time it was the Baltimore Ravens signing the unheralded David Olson that pushed ESPN's Jemele Hill over the edge.
Hill, who co-hosts the ESPN Sports Center program -- SC6 with Michael (Smith) and Jemele -- posted this sarcastic tweet over the weekend:
Oh and ICYMI, the Ravens signed a dude who quit football to be a realtor and played in 2 games in college over a Super Bowl QB.
A twitter user named Nathaniel Johnson replied: "I feel like it's been forgotten that he basically called (all) cops 'slave patrol'" a month ago. I mean, that's pretty inflammatory."
He was referring to Kaepernick's June 16 anti-cop tweet in response to a jury's acquittal of a Minnesota police officer who shot Philando Castile. Kaepernick posted a photograph of two badges side-by-side, one stating "Police officer" and the other stating "Runaway slave patrol". Along with the words, "You can't hide your history. Always remember who they are. A system that perpetually condones the killing of people, without consequence, doesn't need to be revised, it needs to be dismantled!"
Johnson's remark only made Hill even more incensed, as she shot back: "inflammatory, but historically accurate."
Johnson answered by tweeting, ''There's historically truth there, yes ... but is it fair to say now to all the cops, esp when many minorities serve?''
Hill went right to the race card: ''I wouldn't say all, but it's been clear for a long time the policing & judicial system are institutionally racist''.
Keith Griffith of The Daily Mail wrote that Hill "has often been at the center of" charges that ESPN is increasingly pushing a liberal political agenda. Hill recently spoke about that, saying, "Sports have always been political." Griffith added, "Hill said that athletes often push political agendas, 'dragging' sports journalists who cover them along with them."
In March, Hill said on Sports Center that the idea Kaepernick is embarrassing is embarrassing in itself. Smith agreed with her in the defense of the former 49ers' quarterback, who has essentially talked, kneeled and tweeted himself right out of his sagging football career.
Hill also said that complaints of liberal bias at ESPN are "really racist sentiment in disguise":
As you see more ethnic diversity, then all of a sudden ESPN is too liberal. So I wonder, when people say that, what they’re really saying.
This is a preposterous, indefensible claim. Whether it's coming from ESPN or the Democratic Party, race is always allegedly at the root of opposition to left-wing politics. It's all too predictable and all-too tiresome. Hill has abandoned all pretense of objectivity as a reporter to align with a polarizing individual who has distanced himself from respectability and from the NFL.
More sports and far, far less partisan politics, please, ESPN.
