And now, the worst of sports media 2007.
Jason Whitlock: The bojangler of record.
It began last year, with an interview by The Big Lead. An ESPN commentator at the time, Whitlock came out swinging against his employer, mincing no words, sparing no expense at ?telling it like it is?. He slammed colleagues Mike Lupica and Scoop Jackson, branding the latter as a “bojangler.”
Taking aim at easy targets like ESPN, Jackson and Lupica no doubt endeared Whitlock to many. The Kansas City Star columnist got himself fired from ESPN for his comments, which essentially made him a martyr for truth ? someone who would take no bull, even if it meant standing up to the big, bad Worldwide Leader in Sports. Whitlock had been a fairly well known name before. Working for ESPN, he appeared on The Sports Reporters, and wrote columns for Page 2. But now, he was a renegade.
Whitlock parlayed that fleeting fame into a gig at AOL Sports. But it was not his criticism of ESPN that grew his popularity. To understand Whitlock’s appeal, one must understand the structure behind it.
In the public relations industry, firms like to use third party advocacy to help legitimize their claims. For example, say a company producing toxic waste wants to continue producing toxic waste and make sure nobody complains about it. Said company may pay off a highly respected, supposedly objective health expert to quell public fears. Because the expert does not appear to have a vested interest, people are far more likely to buy into their argument.
Jason Whitlock has become the third party advocate of a certain segment of America. The segment that blamed Michael Vick?s dogfighting on hip hop, the segment that said Sean Taylor deserved to be shot because of his past, the segment that was up in arms over a fight between the Nuggets and Knicks but mum on a fight between the Cubs and Padres. The segment of America that opens up every discussion on race relations by saying ?its not about race? before unleashing a diatribe on the various failings of a demonized young, black American culture. Whitlock is their supposedly objective observer. Their rationale states that if a black man is criticizing black men, he must be correct.
It started with the 2007 NBA All Star Game in Las Vegas. Just days after penning a column celebrating the hedonistic wants of his and his various associates, Whitlock slammed the NBA for allowing its All Star Weekend to devolve into ?madness?, and wrote that the league is ?aligned too closely with thugs.? ?All-Star Weekend?, he wrote, ?can no longer remain the Woodstock for parolees, wannabe rap artists and baby?s mamas on tax-refund vacations.”
This, only days after Whitlock described All Star Weekend as some sort of primal event for African Americans, writing ?For black men and women below the age of 45, NBA All-Star Weekend in Vegas was a calling you felt deep in the pit of your stomach.?
If All Star Weekend is a ?calling? for young African Americans, and also a ?Woodstock for parolees, wannabe rap artists and baby?s mamas on tax-refund vacations?, exactly what does Whitlock consider black America to consist of? The question is less rhetorical than it is already answered.
Whitlock’s articles supposedly tell black America to sit down, shut up, and take responsibility. ‘Real talk’, apparently. Which would make sense if black America was one individual person, instead of a race of millions of individual people, each with their own mind. One of the main tenets of prejudice is the stripping away of individuality from the group being targeted. Whitlock certainly excels at doing this, as his articles frequently depict black America as one indistinguishable mass, especially young black America. It is this lumping of black America into one group that can allow Whitlock to so foolishly suggest that All Star Weekend was a calling people felt in the pit of their stomach, and to suggest that hip hop music is the cause of every ill within black society.
Whitlock singles out hip hop as his scapegoat for every controversy from Don Imus? comments to Michael Vick?s dogfighting. When Imus called players on the Rutgers women?s basketball team ?nappy headed whores?, Whitlock quickly pinned the blame on hip hop ? after all, hip hop constantly deprecates black women; Imus was only doing what the rappers enabled him to do, hence he is absolved from blame. At one point, Whitlock wrote, ?I?m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent?s or Snoop Dogg?s or Young Jeezy?s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.? Because some of the girls on Rutgers might listen to hip hop, they no longer have the right to complain about being called ?nappy headed whores.?
During the Michael Vick dogfighting case, Whitlock blamed Vick for falling victim to hip hop. ?It speaks to the grip the negative aspects of hip-hop culture have on young people. Vick is a millionaire athlete who has spent most of his NFL career trying to maintain his street cred. Despite lifetime financial security, Mike Vick stayed on the “grind,” hustling for that paper with his Bad Newz Kennels. Idiot.? Never mind that dogfighting cuts across age and culture (to the point where one of the biggest kingpins in the ‘sport’ was a 70-year-old white man). Hip hop, rather than individual stupidity, was the culprit.
In perhaps his most controversial ? or ludicrous, depending on your point of view ? column, Whitlock asserted that NFL teams with more white players were more successful, because black players are by and large troublemakers and only hurt the teams they play for. ?African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. ? It’s already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots ? the league’s model franchises ? are two of the whitest teams in the NFL.?
After the death of Sean Taylor, Whitlock blamed the ?black KKK? and hip hop for his death. In a column decrying black on black crime, Whitlock wrote: ?You’re damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there’s no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration.? This gross oversimplification is accompanied by him referring to the murder — and other crimes like it — as a “uniquely African-American crisis“, as if murder is now exclusive to black people. Perhaps the reason “black on black” crime seems so unique is that nobody refers to crimes committed by whites against whites as ‘white on white crime’. In perhaps the least intelligent, most simplistic statement in the article, Whitlock writes “until we recapture the minds of black youth, convince them that it’s not OK to ‘super man dat ho’ and end any and every dispute by ‘cocking on your bitch,’ nothing will change.”
Whitlock forgets that the vapid, commercialized hip hop of today is not exclusive to black youth. For every young black child listening to Soulja Boy, there are another four white children listening to the same music. According to Ebony magazine, “two out of every 10 records sold in America are hip-hop; 80 percent of buyers are white.”
Back to the public relations example. The company pays off the third party to advance its agenda. One might wonder how Whitlock is being paid. Consider this: Jason Whitlock went from being a fairly well known writer who sometimes subbed on PTI to a part-time cable news pundit with a featured column on Foxsports.com.
His articles are designed to get attention, to be controversial, and to always please the majority. Whitlock is considered the ?rational? black man, the one who can see beyond his race, and look at things from the right point of view. He never plays the race card, and doesn?t blame white America for everything — or anything at all, for that matter. He is a true ‘credit to his race’; sadly, one imagines that he would beam with pride upon hearing such a statement. He tells it like it is, in that he tells the majority what they want to hear.
Even if one agrees with what he says, one must concede that he is transparent. Whitlock has no interest in the fortunes of black America, and is simply giving people what they want ? validation. And that validation has resulted in multiple copycats. Whitlock has awoken a sleeping giant, one that took one look at what he wrote, and realized: ?If he?s doing it, I can do it too.?
Jason Whitlock, worst of the sports media in 2007.
