Your Mother Slept With Wilt Chamberlain

Golfweek editor Dave Seanor was relieved of his duties today for this cover of a noose in response to the Kelly Tilghman “lynching” remark about Tiger Woods. The cover and subsequent article have caused an uproar and media firestorm, causing some subscribers to cancel their subscriptions and had advertisers threaten to pull their ads. Here’s a statement from the parent company:

“We apologize for creating this graphic cover that received extreme negative reaction from consumers, subscribers and advertisers across the country,” Turnstile Publishing Co. president William P. Kupper Jr. said. “We were trying to convey the controversial issues with a strong and provocative graphic image. It is now obvious that the overall reaction to our cover deeply offended many people. For that, we are deeply apologetic.”

Well what the hell were these guys thinking??? What, could they not photoshop a picture of a burning cross on the 18th green at Augusta on the cover??? Or how about Tiger Woods in a minstrel outfit with some Popeye’s chicken in his hand??? Did this editor, and more importantly the staff at Golfweek, not think that the cover would cause some mess???

In the cover story, they quote Dr. Harry Edwards, noted sociologist at Cal-Berkeley (he encouraged Tommy Smith and John Carlos to do the “black power” fist at the ’68 Olympics in Mexico City) as saying: “Accept the apology and move on. We all say dumb things. If we stopped the train every time somebody made a dumb remark that is potentially offensive, we’d never progress as a society. We’d be in big trouble.” I would normally agree with that statement, except that the fine folks at Golfweek used this in an article to stir the pot after Miss Tilghman had already been suspended by the Golf Channel, personally apologized to Tiger Woods, and Woods, after accepting the apology, said it was over.

Then I read on Golfweek’s website an editorial by Jeff Rude, and while I could write a novel in response to his article, I would like to refute his thinking that Tilghman’s two week suspension was too harsh. While I think that she should have not lost her job, I think a suspension is fine because she is still a TV broadcaster, and she should have known that whatever she says will get out to the masses, even if the original broadcast is not seen by as many people as would watch a football game. Whenever you get behind a microphone or TV camera, you must use your words carefully.

More than anything, I hope that media types, whether they be former athletes, broadcasters, celebrities, etc., will realize that race relations in this country and all over the world is a sensitive topic. Racism, sexism, and any other ism that you can think of has been around since Biblical times (Egyptians enslaving the Israelites immediately come to mind), and long after we are all dead and gone, racism will still be around. But we all must respect each other and our cultures if we are to advance as a society. Dr. Edwards, while I do respect you and everything you have done for society, we should not completely stop whenever someone says or does something racially insensitive. However, if we do not pause and reflect on what we have experienced and respond, we only cheat ourselves, and the lessons that we learn can hopefully make us better as a society (but hey, I am not a noted sociologist like you).

Mr. Rude, if you even have the slightest thought that racism is dead and that hateful words cannot hurt, email me when you come to Houston, and I will take you over to the Third Ward. We’ll talk to some of the people over there, and you ask them about how racism has affected them at one point in their lives or another. I think that you would get a different opinion.

As for Golfweek, stick to putting actual golfers and putting greens on your cover. Leave the pot stirring to places like Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. Oh, one more hint, if you’re thinking about putting a golf cart with 20″ rims and guys with 40′s of St. Ides and big booty video vixens on the cover of one of your future issues, don’t…