Everyone remembers Linsanity, right? That brief month back in February 2012 when Knicks PG Jeremy Lin ruled the sports world and was bigger than Tebow, LeBron, and Kobe combined? Although it was a little over a year and a half ago, it feels like it happened in another lifetime. Linsanity ultimately faded and the guard moved to the Houston Rockets, where he experiences much less fanfare on a nightly basis.
One of the lasting legacies of Linsanity was the trouble some media members stepped into trying to be cute and clever and instead using upsetting racial stereotypes. Jason Whitlock tweeted a terrible, terrible joke and was lucky to escape severe punishment. SportsCenter's Max Bretos used the phrase "chink in the armor" about Lin and was suspended. An ESPN editor was fired for using the same phrase in a headline. It was an ugly time for the sports media as they seemed incapable of respectfully handling a superstar figure of Asian descent.
With Lin travelling back to Madision Square Garden, surely ESPN learned their lesson and made it through the Rockets-Knicks highlight without an anchor having to come back on the air for a forced apology… right?
Wrong.
This time it was Jorge Andres of ESPNEWS who signed his name in the guestbook of Forced ESPN Apologies. In describing a Lin highlight he said the point guard was "cooking with some hot peanut oil." Here's the video of the comment and the apology that first appeared at Deadspin…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1cDRibgFWtI
For his part, Andres took to Twitter to apologize again and explain that the line he used was from Duck Dynasty. That's true, but as some of his ESPN colleagues would say, these things are always about context. There's a right and a wrong time to use lines you may have at your disposal and clearly ESPN felt this was the wrong time for that particular line as they had Andres apologize within the hour.
The bigger question is how this keeps happening, especially when it comes to Jeremy Lin. Does anyone proofread anything anymore?
It's now been 1 day since an ESPN Apology, which is actually becoming a meme in and of itself.
[Deadspin]
