Ten Foot Midget's response.
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/enough- ... 56bf573681Quote:
WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO
Sexist Pigs Make Bad Sports Journalists
Enough Isn’t Yet Enough Because I’m The Problem
The recent discourse in sports media has forced me to take a long look in the mirror when it comes to sexism. I don’t like what I see.
“Will anyone among this male cast of characters decide enough is enough?”
I get the larger point of the above tweet and the others that included my terribly unfortunate headshot. I write at a website that currently publishes the work of zero women and is the online platform of a CBS radio sports talk affiliate that has but one consistent female voice on its airwaves. (Kerry Sayers often is the Scoreboard Updater every half hour for the 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Spiegel and Goff Show).
The gender representation not only is disheartening, but also makes me feel guilty for not being more cognizant of it. When I saw that screengrab of 670 The Score personalities, I winced at a reality that I guess I’ve suppressed.
Four years ago, after being an avid listener and caller to the station for over a decade, I became a small part of The Score Family. The station was doing its third annual Score Search contest, a talent search not unlike ESPN’s now-defunct Dream Job. I had tried out the first year 670 held it, when the prize was a job as an onsite and in-studio reporter for the station. Connor McKnight deservedly won and still is doing a fine job in Chicago radio, while I never heard back from my initial audition. I also tried out the second year; again, to no avail, and Maya Gavin, a woman no longer with the station, won her own overnight talk show. The third installment of the contest offered a chance at a gig blogging on the burgeoning 670thescore.com website.
This time, my performance on a timed, spontaneous writing sample pushed me from an initial group of 10 competitors into a final group of four, with the winner to be selected at a live event. In public, the three other finalists and I were grilled by Adam Hoge, the web editor at the time, program director Mitch Rosen, and the face/voice of Chicago sports radio — none other than the aforementioned Dan Bernstein. Hoge was the good cop of the three. Rosen tried unsuccessfully to be a Simon Cowell figure. Bernstein was the same genuinely unsympathetic and highly critical person he is during every radio show and every in-person experience I’ve had with him.
In the end, I won the gig, and I’ve enjoyed the glory of being able to call myself a paid, freelance sports columnist for CBS Chicago and 670thescore.com ever since. I often write about sports’ intersection with social issues. It’s cathartic — equal parts frustrating and enjoyable — and always falls somewhere between basic social media slacktivism and actual actions — feet on pavement, money donated, or confrontation with the perpetrator of the day.
As self-deprecating as I’ll be about my position there — I’m truly a small fish who isn’t allowed security access into the station’s offices and doesn’t get an invite to the holiday party — it’s a cool job that I know lots of unemployed or would-be professional writers in Chicago would kill to have. There has not been one moment since my initial affiliation with the station where I have been shown anything but kindness from everyone there.
That includes Matt Spiegel, a very good radio host with whom I’ve established a nice little Twitter and fantasy league relationship with. That also includes Bernstein, who is an abrasive, honest-over-polite, polarizing, often progressive, sometimes pigheaded, really smart, really great radio host. I can’t call the two guys friends, per se, but as colleagues, they’ve been nothing but fair, complimentary when deserved, and helpful to me overall.
The Score guys, while there is the ball-scratching misogyny that consciously and unconsciously finds its way into the climate, treat radio and the CBS website with incredible concern. The take their work seriously and consider it a job that goes beyond each talker and writer.
Ultimately, 670 The Score means a lot to me, although I realize how pathetic that sounds to many of you who justifiably find sports talk to be anywhere from useless to toxic. The genre has issues. Lots of issues. Gender and sexuality are two of its biggest. And some meathead duo or turbo shock jock either with a national outlet or a localized show in another city have turned off many intelligent listeners with (b)latent sexism, homophobia, coded language, #HotTakes, and a trashy, Morning Zoo’y product.
That’s not been my conscious experience — either as a listener or content provider — regarding The Score, but rarely have I been conscious of our lack of female representation. Cee Angi, a baseball writer whose work I envy, wrote at 670thescore.com for a time and did great work, but hers were the only words from a woman on that site since I’ve been there. Whenever I have that rightly smacked in my face, I feel bad and consider if I’m a willing participant in something problematic. Then I pump out a column decrying Donald Sterling or Richie Incognito and tell myself I am a net positive because I am the change I want to see in the world — all while trying not to acknowledge that I’m a coward who’d just rather not rock the boat or tell a superior how to do his job.
Let me repeat — I am a coward. To answer your question, Aaron Leibowitz, I haven’t decided enough is enough because it won’t be until I no longer fear losing my freelance, small-fish job that is a dream come true.
I witnessed the Spiegel and Bernstein conversation in real time from my phone app in between the pizza deliveries I make that help monetarily so I can keep that dream job. Immediately, I felt ill. Pure diarrhea was being laughed about by two guys I had tremendous respect for, and not even in private. Like really awful, overt, despicable stuff. And we all have a natural reflexive tendency to make every situation about ourselves, so while my “libtard” bleeding heart screamed at the conversation’s gross misogyny, my ego sweated as I both grappled with witnessing flaws in people I admire, and braced for my inevitable inclusion in the backlash.
I never signed up to be an ombudsman, but those same people who hate socially conscious work that doesn’t “stick to sports” and/or hate the otherwise (usually) morally righteous Spiegel and Bernstein because of visceral reactions to sports radio talk show hosts, will surely retroactively chide me for not doing the job.
I received numerous tweets and texts about the situation after it went down, but I maintained radio silence despite being disgusted by and ashamed of The Score brand with which I am associated. Making matters worse, I knew that responding would only get me further painted by the stereotype that much of sports radio across this country unfortunately has earned. So I didn’t interject. I was busy at another job, after all, I told myself, and I was tired, and someone else would surely be better positioned to scold the offenders better than me, and it wasn’t really my place, anyway, and Dan got me this job, and I have a baseball draft in a week with Spiegs and all.
In other words, I acted like a fucking coward, and I am part of the problem. What Spiegel and Bernstein did is a problem, but my silence is also a problem. And it will continue to be a problem for as long as I think I’m embodying some butchered Gandhi quote.
A better man than I, one who is not the problem, is 670's Laurence Holmes. His thoughts during his show Thursday not only encapsulate much of what the product at The Score is about, but a lot of what I felt as I saw the Twitter conversation between my colleagues going down. Holmes called the apologies of both guys — which I believe were sincere and have acted as an ongoing learning experience for both — insufficient. Holmes mentioned how sports media, sports radio, and 670 have multiple problems with gender (and race and homophobia), and everyone involved needs to be better and work to change the culture.
He also mentioned how there are multiple people at the station who feel they can’t speak up about such toxicity. I assumed he was referring to the sales staff, interns, secretaries, and other office personnel — not the blogger who gets paid a measly per-column sum to call out bigots, give bad sports thoughts, and make even worse jokes.
Still, I teared up while listening to Laurence, another 670 guy who has always been really awesome to me, and who I always respected but do so much more now. A little bit of emotion was over how The Score, a product I’ve championed for years over any competition because of how smart and funny and good it is, was being severely tainted and good people dragged down in the process. Most of it, though, was because Holmes was the voice I should have been, that I should be in the future but cannot promise I will be.
I can’t promise that not because I think the conversation should be parsed and qualified, or that I’m some active participant in the omerta of a Boys Club. It’s because I’m a coward. And I deserve every bit of the collateral male sports talker/writer steakhead stereotype until I prove otherwise. Everything I write from this to the next piece for CBS or The Cauldron that takes any social angle should be cited for hypocrisy. I’ve earned it, and I’ll shamefully own it while I find the courage to be less garbage.
Sorry doesn’t even describe how I feel for Chicago media members Aiyana Cristal, Julie DiCaro, Jen LC, Sarah Spain, Kerry Sayers, and every woman everywhere working so hard to not only create great sports content, but to rise above the turd-filled water of male awfulness the business continues to be despite their efforts and talent. Sports television, radio, and writing is filled with a lot of sexist, scared men who don’t want women getting a fair shake or basic human dignity. Those idiots are a problem.
Aaron Leibowitz, you declared in the title of your piece that sexist pigs make bad sports journalists. Very true. But so do guys like me.
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