Colin Cowherd Needs to Shut the Hell Up
This summer, amidst a series of racially charged national news stories (some of which were about sports), Dan and I had writer and radio personality Bomani Jones on the DOC Podcast to discuss the coverage of black athletes by a mostly white media. The three of us certainly did not agree on every issue that came up in our conversation, but we did reach a consensus in our disapproval of the paternalism (finger wagging) that accompanies coverage of black athletes in certain instances. In essence, the people who express that paternalism (something we also cited President Obama as doing) were not “racists” in the sense that they hated black people, but rather were judging a large number of black people from a place of ignorance and arrogance. Despite often noble intentions, this paternalism is very problematic.
An example that I cited in our talk with Bomani was listening to Colin Cowherd on the day that NFL player Sean Taylor was murdered in his own home. If you recall, Taylor had a few run-ins with the law in the years before his death and Colin Cowherd immediately cited these problems in a series of pronouncements that Taylor’s death, while tragic, was an example of someone reaping what they sowed from a lifetime of bad choices. As it turned out, Taylor was murdered by acquaintances intending to rob his home. Regardless of what actually happened to Taylor, Bomani and I were not alone in believing that assigning such instantaneous blame for Taylor’s death to his “lifestyle” was extremely distasteful.
Personally, I do not care for national sports radio in general and usually only listen to Cowherd when a breaking story makes me want to check in with ESPN’s national radio programs to hear the latest facts and commentary. I have mixed feelings about Cowherd in particular. On one hand, I do not care for the aesthetic of the fast talking guy who always takes a contrarian point of view in order to spark a strong reaction from his callers; on the other hand, Cowherd is generally a wise and funny person who often makes valid points.
When Cowherd delivers a unique and antagonistic take on the latest NFL game, for instance, he can be entertaining and can make many quality points.
When Cowherd delivers a unique and antagonistic take on issues of life and death in a breaking story that are hardwired in all of our brains to issues of race and class, however, then he becomes a disgrace to his profession and all sports fans.
I find the term “offensive” to be simplistic since a radio host does not have the power to “offend” me, so I’ll instead describe this sort of conduct to be unwise, insensitive and obnoxious. To be honest, when I learned that Chris Henry died this morning I immediately tuned into Colin Cowherd’s show expecting him to be discussing the story in an unwise, insensitive and obnoxious fashion. Unfortunately, my premonition was correct.
Cowherd’s heart seems to be in the right place and he is trying to make important points. Even so, his show this morning was an embarrassment. He discussed the percentages of athletes who go broke and how young men from troubled backgrounds can be taken advantage of and waste their money. He referred to “cousins” of athletes and posses (without saying the word); the unmistakable point was that young black athletes (and black men in general) do not have their shit together and will never succeed in our society without getting smarter. I will not speak to the correctness of that point because I have the good sense to know that my mere opinion is not a license to paint with such broad strokes. Further, timing is VERY IMPORTANT when making such points, regardless of how correct parts of them may be. As I type this sentence Cowherd is interviewing T. J. Houshmandzadeh about his former teammate and Cowherd keeps inserting these paternalistic statements about athletes in general into a conversation that should be about one particular man.
Chris Henry has been dead for only a few hours. We have no idea what actually happened on that truck. This simply is not the time to be attaching larger meaning to his death.
Even if it turns out that Henry was acting foolishly, meeting our image of him as an incorrigible and angry man-child lacking skills to live a decent life, then the points that Cowherd has made about him (and that he tried to make about Sean Taylor) are not relevant when delivered in a sports radio rant hours after his death or in a poorly conceived newspaper column (that we know will appear tomorrow). We talked on a recent episode about all of the great things that ESPN gives sports fans, but they need to police Cowherd or else he is going to keep doing this for the rest of his career. He doesn’t need to be fired but he needs to be straightened out.
And please do me a favor tomorrow morning: when you open your local newspaper and read the column about how black athletes need to get their shit together, write that middle-aged guy who wrote it an email telling him to shut the hell up, too.
Tags: bomani jones, chris henry, colin cowherd, espn
December 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hold everyone accountable, to the same standard. It’s too much separation in athletes and management personnel, from stereotypes to respect. Mark Cuban shouldn’t be allowed to racially charge Kenyon Martin’s mother, in addition, athletes should hold their self accountable and not the media.
Chicago Bulls!
December 18th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Yeah, Cowherd makes an ass of himself on a regular basis. That’s the nature of jock squawk radio though. It’s not about thouroughly exploring an issue to understand it for what it is, it’s about producing sports related verbiage to fill up the airwaves. That’s why i can’t stand sports radio and am so thankful to live in the age of podcasts.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:56 am
SpasticAssasin,
Your point of view is a good one. And “jock squawk” radio (great phrase) certainly isn’t high art sometimes.
Personally, I don’t want to make this about podcasts vs. radio or even my own definition of what is cool or entertaining vs. what i don’t enjoy.
In this case, I have an actual problem from a moral perspective. Minorities in this country don’t need to be addressed in this indirect, insulting way. If Cowherd has all these things to say then he should present these theories in the proper context and not wrap up Chris Henry in larger societal issues in which he doesn’t belong. Cowherd doesn’t go out on a limb like Bill Cosby has, for instance, because Cowherd knows that it would not be entertaining and that he would get a tremendous amount of criticism. Instead, he waits for a tragedy involving a visual aide like Chris Henry and then he pounces. That’s not cool.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Also, it should be noted that I LOVE local sports radio. I always have and I always will. I grew up on WFAN with Pete Franklin and then Mike & the Mad Dog. Chicago sports radio is good, too.
Check out this piece i wrote last year for my thoughts on sports radio:
http://disciplesofclyde.com/?p=287
December 21st, 2009 at 12:15 am
I had this same “discussion” on another blog site & it just irks me the way people have lost the ability to sense when something is being said with racist & stereotypical undertones. The issue revolved around a Monta Ellis post right after the NY incident with Nellie and many people were discussing the issue rationally as to why he should be traded or kept.
But the big issue I had with the way the conversation was going was that even though there were 2 distinct camps on keeping or letting Monta go, their was a specific racial component to the dialogue where Monta was being pinned as being dumb or un-intelligent based on nothing but his southern drawal and the fact that he left high school early or that “they could tell he was dumb by the way he talked”.
Either way the problem I had was that people felt it was ok to project this ideal with no basis & instead let their pre-conceived notions of knowing how young black athlete’s act without actually either knowing any or having a previous relation with any was just plain ignorant. Needless to say it got to a point where just because I was calling people on their unintentional racism towards monta, I was labeled the racist just b/c I brought up the issue.
The idea now that people like Cowherd can justify ignorant views towards “these types of guys” with no consequence is ridiculous because they are just perpetuating the racial stereotypes that are inherent in our society. What would be said if instead of Chris Henry dying it was Jeremy Shockey? Even if the circumstances were the same, I’m sure the guy would have been ulogized as one of the greatest TE’s on the verge of reaching their full potential & have all kinds of shows dedicated to him, etc… The fact of the matter is that even though our professional leagues are dominated by minorities, the segment of the population that ESPN is geared towards and the writers who cover these same athletes are middle aged white males & in many ways have different ideals of how athletes should act & how there childhood development should not be an impediment to them making the right choices in life because they are getting paid tons of money to do so.
Great write up guys and it is just sad to think that even though Cowherd should be held to a higher standard in terms of his reporting he is not going to be because the group that is being catered to doesn’t have a problem with the coverage, which is the real sad thing on the issue of race in sports media.
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 am
I’m a huge fan of Disciples and I do agree that Cowherd can be a jackass. But the sports kabuki surrounding Henry’s death bothered me a bit. Ken, why should ‘timing be important’ in these matters? Shouldn’t we be honest regardless of sensitivities? The problem with Cowherd is that these tragedies ring some sort of Pavlovian racial paternalism bell. I want him to stop, but I also want honesty in the aftermath of death. For example, I felt like Chad Ochocinco used this to take a bath in his narcissism. No one was allowed to call Ocho on it and the NFL was happy to milk him for drama. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, but emblematic of a problem: If we aren’t honest in the wake of a wake, famous deaths get used by the less principled for sleazy ends (see: the aftermath of Reagan’s death).
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
you make a good point about timing, ethan. I think that i meant “timing” the sense that if you stripped away the context of CHris Henry’s death, all you would have left would be a guy like cowherd spouting half-assed solutions to complicated problems. and that’s what it was. it was ten percent about chris henry and ninety percent about problems that are almost exclusively associated (in the media) with black athletes. if he had such good points to make, why do you need chris henry to die in order to make them?
in the end i may not have labled excactly why it was upsetting to listen to, but it was. i don’t think he’s a racist, either . . . cowherd seems like a fairly sophisticated person who should know better.
December 26th, 2009 at 3:04 am
Hey Ken, I know I’m shamelessly promoting myself (this will seem darkly ironic if you read this post), but I expanded on my Henry/media reaction thoughts in this post: http://1984watch.com/2009/12/26/belated-thoughts-on-chris-henry-and-sports-kabuki
Check it out if you have time, and keep giving Dan as much crap as humanly possible!
December 31st, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] I hate when guys like Colin Cowherd jump into these stories as though someone rang a racial paternalism bell. But I also hate how we scrub history clean in [...]