from The Nation:
comment | posted January 10, 2008 (web only)
White Noise on the Golf Channel Dave Zirin
After five days of dithering, the Golf Channel has finally suspended commentator Kelly Tilghman for two weeks for her on-air comment January 4, suggesting young players looking to break into the game should "lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley." At first Golf Channel officials blew off the controversy, saying that they had gotten very few complaints about Tilghman's appalling attempt to get a laugh.
Tilghman, celebrated as the first full-time female play-by-play commentator in the history of the PGA Tour, was slow to offer an apology. It took her a couple of days to say, finally, "On Friday during our golf broadcast, Nick Faldo and I were discussing Tiger's dominance in the golf world and I used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended by my comments."
Through a spokesman, Tiger Woods called Tilghman's gaffe "a non-issue." But it is an issue.
To state the obvious, there's nothing funny about lynching. It's even less funny to chuckle about lynching the most prominent athlete of color in a sport with an unparalleled history of racism. For Tilghman to be oblivious to this history should be grounds for dismissal. As a point of comparison, Major League Baseball was of course desegregated by Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It took until 1975 for a black man, Lee Elder, to play that most esteemed of all golf tournaments, the Masters, held at Augusta, Georgia. Augusta itself finally started admitting black members in 1991.
Tilghman's comments carry even more resonance, no matter her intent.
There is something particularly cement-headed in talking of lynching in a climate where the noose has achieved something of an unfortunate renaissance. That ultimate symbol of racist violence has found new life because of the case of the Jena Six--six African-American high school students who faced decades behind bars, last year, for their part in a school fight that followed the hanging of nooses in the courtyard of their high school. Their cases, and the subsequent demonstrations of support, have received so much news coverage, even the Golf Channel must have heard something about it. Since then, nooses have surfaced--at Columbia University and the University of Maryland; high schools in North and South Carolina; the Hempstead Police Department on Long Island; the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut; and elsewhere. They are reminders to those who want to build a new movement for civil rights to know their place. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/zirin