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On Thursday morning's First Take, Stephen A. Smith expressed his disbelief that Kobe Bryant would miss time with an injury by saying "****, please." This was not a thing he should have said on TV, yet he did. It was barely noticeable, but at least one person noticed, uploaded the video, and certain folks began pretending to be up in arms.
There were calls for Smith to apologize and calls for ESPN to suspend him, citing as precedent a SportsCenter anchor's suspension for saying "chink in the armor" when referring to Jeremy Lin—even while acknowledging that Max Bretos shouldn't have been punished for that. It became a discussion of race, instead of a TV personality accidentaly using a non-FCC-approved word live on air. If this controversy is about anything, and I'm not so sure it is, it's surely not about how "most white people are afraid to talk or write about anything involving race for fear of being called a racist."

Then things got dumber. Later in the day, Smith gave a bizarre half-/non-apology, insisting that the problem is that he speaks "very, very fastly."

East_Coast wrote:This is not a big issue, in my view. The expression, n***a please, is common among A-A males, especially those from New York. It isn't meant to be offensive, but is simply a graphic declarative statement expressing disagreement and dismissal of a given thought or topic.....

Tubal wrote:But then he comes out and denies he said it, when he CLEARLY did. This is one of those cases where the denial is worse than the act. It just makes him look like a big douche, and is only going to prolong the story.

Tubal wrote:

East_Coast wrote:This is not a big issue, in my view. The expression, n***a please, is common among A-A males, especially those from New York. It isn't meant to be offensive, but is simply a graphic declarative statement expressing disagreement and dismissal of a given thought or topic.....

Normally this is true, and if you're an A-A talking to your buddies, no big deal.

But he's working for "the worldwide leader" and is held to a higher standard. Still, not a big deal.

But then he comes out and denies he said it, when he CLEARLY did. This is one of those cases where the denial is worse than the act. It just makes him look like a big douche, and is only going to prolong the story.

Scorpion King wrote:Lets face it ESPN keeps him for the ratings

Stephen A should not be working for ESPN bu it has no ethics or standards

ROballer wrote:

Scorpion King wrote:Lets face it ESPN keeps him for the ratings

Stephen A should not be working for ESPN bu it has no ethics or standards

RondoToKG wrote:lol He says he didn't say it yet it's been recorded and put all over the internet... How do you blatantly lie to your audience like that. That's just making even worse than it has to be.....