RUSH: Did you hear about this poor guy at ESPN, this reporter? He’s actually a sportscaster, play-by-play for tennis coverage. His name is Adler. He was doing the Australian Open and Venus Williams was playing in the Australian Open, and in one particular moment during play she charged the net, and she slammed a shot back at her opponent, got the point, and this Adler guy said that she was employing guerrilla tactics, look at that, and it was praised, guerrilla tactics.
Doug Adler
Well, the New York Times reporter heard that and tweeted that this guy was the worst of racists. “How come the Williams sisters are still referred to in this way in 2017?” And it wasn’t both. It was Venus Williams. So this New York Times reporter tweets that he was a racist by calling them gorillas and the New York Times ran this, made a big deal about it, and ESPN fired the guy.
Do you remember the story — this is some years ago now — there was a member of the Washington, D.C., city council, they’re talking about the budget, and he was being critical of a certain part of it and called it niggardly. And all hell broke loose on that. N-i-g-g-a-r-d-l-y, means stingy. They accused this guy of using the N-word or something that sounded close to it and, therefore, unacceptable, and this guy got canned.
Well, the ESPN reporter has since suffered a heart attack because of the stress due to the fact that his reputation has been destroyed, his name has been destroyed, and all he was doing was complimenting Venus Williams’ style of play. In fact, Nike even described guerrilla tennis in an ad in 1995 featuring Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.
The New York Times, having learned all this, has still not corrected, has still not withdrawn. Adler is suing ESPN. Guerrilla, g-u-e-r-r-i-l-l-a. You’ve heard of guerrilla warfare, guerrillas in war, they are independent, small, little military units that in many cases run coups, versus a gorilla, g-o-r-i-l-l-a, one of the great apes. Two different words pronounced the same way.
The guy did not say one thing incorrectly. He did not say a racist thing. He was not calling Venus Williams a gorilla. The New York Times sees to it that the guy gets fired by mounting pressure on ESPN, “How can you dare have somebody like that on your air? How could you dare?” And it’s just outrageous. It’s not just political correctness run amok. It clearly is that, but it is also much worse.