20 Oct 2003 Tuesday Morning Quarterback Sacked

There’s been a development in the Gregg Easterbrook story. NCPPR executive director David W. Almasi elaborates:

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the Tuesday Morning Quarterback was, in fact, sacked.

In the October 20 Washington Post, media critic Howie Kurtz reports that Easterbrook was unceremoniously dumped by ESPN without even a phone call. Furthermore, it appears his body of work with the network has been removed from their Internet web site.

Easterbrook is a visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution and an editor at The New Republic and several other magazines. It’s not like he’ll be worried where his next meal is coming from. However, besides the initial Associated Press story that can be found on a few media web sites and Kurtz’s follow-up today, this is liable to be the last you see of it. While I commend ESPN for not creating a double-standard by keeping Easterbrook and dumping Rush Limbaugh, I do wonder why this is getting such little coverage.

My beef remains with the lack of media interest when liberals are caught behaving badly.

Everyone knows about Trent Lott and his comments at the Strom Thurmond birthday celebration. Many may also remember his association with the Council of Conservative Citizens. Both stories got major play. But did you know that Senator Jay Rockefeller has a “very close and personal friend” who is a Nazi sympathizer. He’s not really close to the man, but was pretending to as he used Rickey McCumbers as a prop at a 1997 new conference. It was only after the press conference started that it was discovered that McCumbers had a swastika tattooed on his forearm. There was little coverage of the incident. To reveal the media bias, Frank Sesno of CNN said it would have been reported far and wide had the same faux pas been made by Newt Gingrich (see

http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1997/cyb19970729.html#3 for the story).

By the way, did you know that Cruz Bustamante once used the “n-word” in a speech (http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2003/09/100728.shtml)? Of course, you didn’t. But you do know Governor-elect Swarzenegger is accused of being a sexual predator.

I’ll stop now, since I could go on for hours…