Give Jemele Hill some credit....

Photo: Jemele Hill [Photo from Michael David Smith's excellent interview with her at FanHouse]

Jemele Hill deserves a fair bit of credit for her lengthy public mea culpa [Page 2] after comparing cheering for the Boston Celtics to "saying Hitler was a victim". It's always difficult to own up to mistakes, especially when you're someone who's in the public eye as frequently as she is. Unlike many other internet, print, radio or TV personalities who have erred (see Pratt, David; Imus, Don [Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Hartford Courant], and many others), Hill offered a detailed and seemingly-sincere apology short on rationalizations and excuses and long on promises to improve. Here's an excerpt:

"The beginning is easy: I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for being thoughtless and insensitive.
I'm sorry for making a casual reference to something that should never be construed as casual.
Real apologies don't mix with rationalizations, so I won't insult your intelligence by offering you any.
This isn't about my editors because even if the word "Hitler" never appeared in the posted column last Saturday, that doesn't change the fact that I wrote it and, at the time, found humor in making a moronic comparison between a man who was responsible for killing millions to Detroiters who root for the Boston Celtics.
This is about my living up to a standard I expect of everyone else -- respect, awareness, honesty and accountability.
Rob King, the editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, once said something I've never forgotten. I'm paraphrasing, but if we truly want to see racial progress, you have to be willing to be the dumbest person in the room, a person who can admit to being in need of education.
I wish I'd raised my hand before writing that column last week."

In this apology, Hill seems to acknowledge the hurt her words caused or may have caused. There are still many people for whom the events of World War II and the Holocaust are deeply personal, and there's many more who are affected by those actions and comparisons to them despite not being around at the time. Believe me, as someone proudly of German descent, I've heard most of the insults you can think of: everything from outright Nazi references to subtler uses of goosestepping and salutes. Plenty of those still hurt me, and that's despite my grandfather fighting in the Canadian army against the Germans in World War Two: I can't imagine what it must be like for those whose relatives were on the wrong side. I don't have any quibble with most humour based around the war (see Rat Race and Fawlty Towers for excellent examples], but comparing rooting for a sports team to claiming Hitler was a victim goes way over the line. Fortunately, Hill recognizes this and admits she made a serious mistake.

Also to Hill's credit, she didn't try to place the blame at the feet of her editor for letting that through, however momentarily. Her editors certainly had a role to play in this situation and made their own mistakes, but ultimately writers have to take responsibility for the content they produce.

Hill isn't the only one to make a mess of this situation. In an interview with FanHouse's Michael David Smith, she said a Boston radio station gave out her home address and phone number over the air, which she described as "completely out of line" and said she was scared by it. I agree: that's downright low to give out that kind of information over the air, and I bet that station would be in serious legal trouble right now if some crazed Celtics fan had done something stupid with it. Can't journalists realize that we're all on the same side in the end? There's certainly room for disagreement and criticism, but effectively promoting crank calls and possibly worse against another member of the media because she wrote something offensive about your team is so far below the belt as to give any boxer a dramatically decreased chance of producing progeny.

In any case, it will certainly be harder for Hill to maintain her critical, often edgy take on the issues of the day after this, as many are likely to paint her future columns with the brush of intolerance she briefly displayed here. Here's hoping she doesn't let that bother her, though, and continues to provide her unique and provocative takes on the world of sport.

Reductio ad Hitlerum: Taking Fandom Too Far

Photo: ESPN columnist Jemele Hill (Photo from Women's E-news).

Let me start by saying that I generally admire ESPN's Jemele Hill as a writer. I usually enjoy her style and her willingness to discuss tough issues and take controversial stands (these columns on LeBron James' Vogue cover and Karl Malone's lack of support for his kids are excellent examples). It's also nice to see a prominent national columnist talking about Detroit sports teams, which certainly don't get too much attention from many of those based in Boston, L.A. or New York. She has more than just strong opinions: she has the talent to effectively and convincly communicate those opinions, and to do so in a way to keep me interested and reading even when I absolutely disagree, which is a rare gift. She also had a great take on the Stern-Donaghy scandal this week.

With all that said, she went too far this time. As Deadspin's Matt Sussman reports, her recent column initially compared cheering for the Celtics to justifying Hitler's actions or rooting for the Soviets in the Cold War.

Here's the offending quote:

"Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan."

Unbelievable. Look, rivalries are great and all that, but there is absolutely no way that cheering for any sports team comes close to defending Hitler (except perhaps if the team was called the Aryan Supermen, and that would even be only part of the way there). This isn't even a true reductio ad hitlerum, as she doesn't even offer any evidence comparing the two or suggesting the Celtics have Nazi connotations (questionable, as they weren't even formed until 1946). I don't think she was trying to be serious here, but if that's a joke, it's in incredibly poor taste, and if that's hyperbole, it goes well beyond the pale. Maybe she was suggesting the Larry Bird/Magic Johnson duels was equivalent to Luz Long/Jesse Owens, but that's a considerable stretch, and in any case, it doesn't have much to do with the current teams.

(By the way, if you're ever interested in finding out more about Long and Owens, there's an excellent piece written by Owens in the collection "The Hard Way: Writing By The Rebels Who Changed Sports." It turns out the two of them got along fabulously, and the political overtones (especially on the German side) were all manufactured. In fact, Owens said he wouldn't have even qualified for the finals of the long jump without a tip Long gave him. That part of the story's related in Long's Wikipedia entry.)

What's especially disturbing is that Hill is not the only one to throw out those kind of comparisons. While researching a column on racism for the Journal last year, I came across another disturbing incident from the world of soccer. In Germany before the 2006 World Cup, some supporters from Chemnitzer FC (Chemnitz, Saxony) displayed some Nazi tendencies [Der Spiegel]. They attacked Turkish-owned shops in Hamburg before an away match against FC St. Pauli, waving Nazi flags and chanting "Sieg Heil". Some of the "fans" shouted, "We’re going to build a subway from St Pauli to Auschwitz." More recently, police detained 157 people, mostly German fans, after the Germany-Poland clash at Euro 2008 on charges of chanting Nazi slogans in the city centre[Shanghai Daily].

It's not just Germans, either. There's a long history of English supporters involved in Nazi incidents as well: two painted their bodies with Nazi insignia before the 2006 World Cup game against Paraguay [BBC News], plenty of English fans went around goose-stepping and throwing Nazi salutes during the 2006 World Cup [The Guardian], and a large group of Chelsea supporters chanted "Sieg Heil" and threw Nazi salutes in Moscow before this year's Champions League final (which has to be one of the most offensive places imaginable to make Nazi references) [Times Online]. Even Prince Harry thought it was somehow acceptable to wear a Nazi uniform (swastikas and all!) to a party [CBC.ca]!

The English and the Germans are not the only groups of fans to take things too far: consider the Polish tabloids demanding severed heads [World Cup Blog], the Polish Prime Minister saying he wanted to kill referee Howard Webb [ESPN Soccernet] or the Polish fans phoning the wrong Howard Webb with death threats [FanIQ] for just one example of another country that takes things too far. Sadly, that seems to be more the exception than the rule these days, and that leads people like Leah McLaren to worry about the rise of soccer hooliganism in Toronto [Out of Left Field], something that's highly unlikely, but perhaps a less bizzare assumption than you'd think (presuming she doesn't know much about the differences between European and North American soccer, it's not that farfetched to conclude that soccer can cause violence, given the epidemic of violent incidents and hooliganism around the world).

I can understand hating a team: that's what rivalries are all about, after all. Is it really necessary to hate on their fans, though? To this point, that's what's made North American sports less hooligan-dominated on the whole than many European or South American soccer leagues: most people here have the ability to differentiate between a team and its fans, or even the ability to insult other fans in ways that are funny and acceptable, not with violent attacks or inappropriate comments. It's a sad day for sports in this part of the world if we're going to sink to that level. I don't want to see the day where we have to put caged-off sections for visiting fans into the Auburn Hills Palace, the Staples Center or the TD BankNorth Garden.

Anyway, back to Hill. What's amazing is not only that she made that mistake, but that her editor didn't find it objectionable before posting it on the site. They quickly scrubbed it later though, and hoped no one would notice. As Sussman writes:

"Oh, don't bother Command+F looking for it in her article, the editors have, you could say, taken it out of commission like Archduke Ferdinand. Even the Google cache of Hill's article has already been Norby'd, so there's no chance of seeing where in the story it was mentioned, or what other dark moments in history are like cheering for the Celtics."

That's also unacceptable, and evokes memories of the New York Daily News's Sean Avery scrub [Sporting Madness: see Regret The Error or James Mirtle for more on that one]. It's not good journalism to just erase an error and hope that no one notices, even though the Web gives you that capability. ESPN's a reputable source for news and commentary, and to retain that reputation, they need to adhere to journalistic standards: recognize the mistake, apologize for it and take action to ensure it won't be repeated.

I'm not calling for Hill's head here: as previously mentioned, I enjoy her work and I hope she keeps writing for ESPN. I would like to see her apologize, however. Comparing cheering for a team to supporting the Nazis just isn't acceptable, and this kind of callous reference is tremendously painful for a lot of people, including Jews, Russians and those of German descent like myself. As Godwin's Law states, these kind of dumb comparisons are almost inevitable in massive Internet discussions, but I feel we have a right to expect better from a talented columnist working at a major media outlet. Hopefully Hill can learn from this mistake, apologize and move on, but sadly, my respect for her will probably still be less than it was.