ESPN viewers on Wednesday still couldn’t grasp why the network pulled an Asian American broadcaster, who happens to be named Robert Lee, from calling a University of Virginia football game.
“ESPN’s Robert Lee decision shows it’s the Worldwide Leader in silliness!” according to a Twitter user, who writes under the handle @Bash_Celik.
Sports fans tore into ESPN’s logic of linking the sportscaster Lee and Gen. Lee, whose statue was a focal point of the violent Charlottesville protests by white nationalists.
“ESPN has officially `jumped the shark,’ “ tweeted Bill Wright, an executive search consultant from suburban Chicago. “Removing an Asian announcer from UVA game because of his name, `Robert Lee?’ ”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee went off on a hilarious Twitter rant on Wednesday morning, asking what ESPN’s next move will be.
“ESPN will no longer air football games on TV as referees are dressed in black and white and that could be viewed as binary racism,” he wrote.
“ESPN will not broadcast games of any kind from Jackson, MS for fear it might honor Stonewall or Andrew Jackson and trigger someone,” according to Huckabee.
“ESPN will not use Dolly Parton songs as bumpers–might remind people of Dolly Madison, wife of slave-owner President James Madison,” added Huckabee.
The fact that ESPN’s Lee is Asian American – and not white – seemed to be lost the cable sports network.
“Did I mention that Robert Lee is Asian?” wrote disbelieving blogger Clay Travis, among the first to write about the story for sports and pop culture site Outkick The Coverage. “Is this even real life anymore?
Lee was reassigned to do the Pitt Panthers-Youngstown State game on Sept. 2.
“The man’s name is his name. Adults can distinguish the difference between a sportscaster named `Robert Lee’ and a statue of a long-dead Confederate general,” penned Jay Busbee of Yahoo Sports. “Hell, I live in Atlanta, and we don’t run anyone named `Sherman’ out of town with torches.”