Did you see the latest headlines? ESPN, owned by the Disney Company, has fired Keith Olbermann for calling President Trump a Nazi and referring to him as “[expletive] Trump.” Yet in a brazen display of hypocrisy, Disney-ABC has hired Roseanne Barr after she sent out a bigoted, racist tweet against a former adviser to President Obama. Or did I get that wrong?
Yes, I got that quite wrong. But I think you get the point. And the double standard is glaring.
But what else is new? Bigotry against the left is indefensible. “You’re fired!” Bigotry against the right is justifiable. “You’re hired!” One is condemned. The other is commended.
It was no surprise, then, that ESPN recently rehired the radically-left leaning Olbermann, despite his extreme anti-Trump rhetoric and his history of conservative-bashing.
As noted by Brian Flood, “Olbermann has been among the most outspoken critics of the president in the entire media industry, even moving out of his luxury New York City apartment building because it was owned by Trump. He once claimed that Trump and his family have done more damage to the U.S. than Usama bin Laden. ESPN’s newest star was widely criticized when his anti-Trump book featured a cover image of himself draped in the American flag, which is visibly touching the ground—a violation of U.S. flag code.”
Despite this (or, because of this?) ESPN, owned by Disney, rehired Olbermann, now for his sixth stint with the network. This is inexcusable and unjustifiable.
Yet this very same Disney just fired Roseanne Barr for her own inexcusable, bigoted tweet in which she said of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, “the Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby.”
Despite the wildly popular nature of her new show and despite her apology, the show was cancelled. (In her apology she wrote, “I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me—my joke was in bad taste.”)
In the words of ABC, her comments were “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.” And how would ABC-Disney describe Olbermann’s remarks?
Remember: These are remarks for which he has made no apology. To the contrary, he has turned his bigoted and biased comments into a book titled, Trump Is [Expletive] Crazy (This Is No Joke).
And is it wrong for me to wonder if ABC would have fired Roseanne if her tweet was directed at Trump? Or Sarah Sanders? (Obviously, I don’t mean the same words. I mean the same ugly spirit.)
Adding to the hypocrisy, in 2016, ESPN fired baseball legend (and conservative) Curt Schilling for posting a controversial meme which objected to a very male-looking transgender “woman” using the ladies’ bathroom. (SI.com noted that, “Schilling had previously been suspended by ESPN for sharing a post that compared Muslim extremists to Nazis,” a position that many rationally-minded people would affirm.)
The lesson in all this is clear. As we have known for years, the left’s “tolerance” is a one-way street. “We come against you, even in the harshest imaginable terms, and we’re social justice warriors fighting for equality, standing against evil. You come against us, even in more mild terms, and you’re bigots and racists, just plain evil.”
In the case at hand, I have no problem with Roseanne being fired, unless she demonstrated such a deep and clear repentance that it brought a redemptive ending to the story. Anything less than that and she obviously had to go.
My issue is with the double standards. They need to be confronted and exposed until they change. (And yes, while we’re confronting and exposing the double standards of the left, let’s be sure to check the consistency of our own standards. Of course!)
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