“Proportionality” is an ethical principle, one that has been recognized for centuries. In the Josephson Institute’s “Six Pillars of Character,” it is included under the “pillar” of Fairness. Plato explained that he concept of ethical retributive justice must be committed to three principles:
- That those who commit wrongful acts deserve to suffer a proportionate punishment;
- That it is intrinsically morally good if a legitimate authority gives such wrongdoers the punishment they deserve; and
- That it is morally impermissible to intentionally to punish the innocent, or to inflict disproportionately large punishments on wrongdoers.
This brings us to the case of Thom Brennaman, play-by-play broadcaster for the Cincinnati Reds and the son of retired and revered Marty Brennaman, also a veteran baseball announcer. Last night, Brennaman the Younger was caught on an open mic describing someplace as the “one of the fag capitals of the world” after the Fox Sports Ohio feed returned from a commercial break in the top of the seventh inning in the first game of a doubleheader at Kansas City. This led the Reds to pull Brennaman off the air after the fifth inning of the second game, and the announcer was quickly suspended.
The team quickly released a statement:
Note “horrific.” That “horrific” word can be heard near the beginning of the famous song above from “Company,” lyrics by Broadway icon Stephen Sondheim (who is gay). To my knowledge, no audience members have ever walked out of a performance upon hearing it. Sondheim, now in his eighties, did recently concoct an alternate lyric for those productions that are determined to be politically correct. He’s a prudent man, I guess. I wish he hadn’t.
The word is apparently so horrific that I had to search all over the web to find out what it was. Most accounts said that the announcer used an “anti-gay slur,” and left it to readers’ imagination what was said. This is crummy, craven, virtue-signaling and incompetent journalism. If the story is about the uproar over a word, a news reporter is obligated to say what the word is. When the ESPN report only said that the word used was “horrific,” I thought it was something I had never heard before. It’s a slur, that’s all. It’s a word.
Was Brennaman’s over-heard phrase evidence of bias? Possibly, but certainly not unequivocally. I have heard gay friends use the term many times themselves—in jest, for effect, ironically, or to insult someone else of similar orientation. Is it evidence of “discrimination”? If it is, it is certainly weak evidence: discrimination requires action.
Brennaman’s gaffe is definitely evidence of carelessness and unprofessional conduct, justifying a suspension. The Reds, however, sound like they are going to fire him.
Is that proportional? Despite all of the caterwauling and virtue-signaling it triggered, Brennaman’s remark didn’t cause actual harm to anyone but Brennaman. Fox Sports Ohio said in another statement that it endorsed the suspension because Brennaman’s remark was “hateful, offensive and in no way reflects the values” of the network.
Offensive? Sure. “Hateful”? Prove it.
I would not be shocked to find out that Brennaman was gay himself. Never mind: his use of a taboo word in an unknown context suggests that he may be guilty of WrongThink. In the current culture of the ascendant Left, that’s sufficient to justify his destruction. No real harm to others is necessary.
Do we really like this brutal society we are flirting with?
The announcer, of course, quickly issued a desperate apology before he was pulled off the game, saying on the air,
“I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went out over the air that I am deeply ashamed of. If I have hurt anyone out there, I can’t tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart, I am very, very sorry.”
Then, after calling a Reds home run, Brennaman added: “I don’t know if I’m going to be putting on this headset again,” and apologized to the Reds, Fox Sports and his coworkers.
It wasn’t a great apology; the “If I have hurt anyone out there” line places it firmly in Category 9 on the Apology Scale,“Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”).” He was apologizing on the fly, so I suspect what he really intended was a Category 7 apology, “….forced or compelled… in which the individual (or organization) apologizing may not sincerely believe that an apology is appropriate, but chooses to show the victim or victims of the act inspiring it that the individual responsible is humbling himself and being forced to admit wrongdoing by the society, the culture, legal authority, or an organization or group that the individual’s actions reflect upon or represent .”
At least he didn’t say that the remark “isn’t who he is.”
My guess is that Brennaman will be fired, and that he and his family will suffer terribly from this episode, while social justice warriors puff up their chests with pride. Mercy? Forgiveness? Compassion? Nah. Golden Rule? What Golden Rule?
In the middle of the George Floyd Freak-out, as blacks activist are taking full advantage of society’s leave to destroy statues, reputations, careers and lives for perceived evidence of racial bias, and not long after #MeToo empowered women to do the same to sexists and harassers (unless they are running for President against Donald Trump), the LGTBQ community is not going to take a pass on exacting its own pound of flesh when the opportunity presents itself. The message will be “We’re here, we’re LGTBQ (the chant doesn’t rhyme any more), and we can destroy you if you displease us.” If the Reds try to bring Brennaman back to broadcasting baseball in “the Queen City,” they’ll get boycotts, petitions, and protests. The team, like the rest of baseball, has already shown its lack of fortitude by pandering to Black Lives Matter.
The cancellation of Thom Brennaman over a single word inadvertently broadcast during a baseball game is not proportional to the wrongdoing.
That means it is unethical.
Ethics Alarms 
–Brennaman the Younger was caught on an open mic describing someplace as the “one of the fag capitals of the world”–
Maybe it was Kansas City? Remember Slim Pickens riding up at the end of this scene in Blazing Saddles?
My guess is that Brennaman will be fired, and that he and his family will suffer terribly from this episode, while social justice warriors puff up their chests with pride. Mercy? Forgiveness? Compassion? Nah. Golden Rule? What Golden Rule?
Do we really like this brutal society we are flirting with?
First, you-plural do not seem to know — we do not seem to know and have a hard time understanding — what force and what forces have come to bear on us that have, over time, undermined our value-system and have *transvalued-values*. You say that we are ‘flirting with brutality’, as if brutality or ‘meanness’ is the cause. But ‘we’ don’t know the cause or causes. That is part of the *mystification*.
Now, it is true that everyone has been taught that to accept and act *inclusive* of homosexuals and homosexuality has been an achievement, if I can call it that, of the Postwar era. All of this was gone over years back here when the topic was discussed in detail. It was part of the homosexual agenda to train people not to care about sexual deviation or perversion. It was *sold* to the nation. It became an educational program in the public schools. Hollywood represented it and sold it. Social coercion and profound emotional blaming said that anyone opposing it had the problem, were the problem. There was the book After the Ball that explained, in clear detail, how the reversal of value was to be undertaken.
And you-plural are the outcomes of that. But when I say you-plural I really mean *we*. We are all the outcomes of these sorts of manipulations.
But who sees them, and who understands the driving force that stands behind these undermining influences? Who? Not Jack. Not any one of you. You do not understand the reality that you live in. You see it through a tiny crack. To make such an arrogating statement is, in fact, my object. I desire to say things in the most bold terms possible. I do not care who gets *offended*. (Don’t take it personally).
My guess is that Brennaman will be fired, and that he and his family will suffer terribly from this episode, while social justice warriors puff up their chests with pride. Mercy? Forgiveness? Compassion? Nah. Golden Rule? What Golden Rule?
They — the SJWs — are in a sense just as much a victim as those they victimize. But then the question becomes What ideology stands behind and motivates the SJW and in this case the agent of the penetration of sexual deviation into the cultural body as ‘normalcy’? as a ‘good’? That is how it has been represented mind you. Sexual liberation is presented as a progressive evolution. If you are *progressive* you are concomitantly sexually-liberated. And the SJW or the Homosexual Activist or some ‘health professional’ is there to tell you how messed up you are if you have a problem. But the easiest way to understand the totality of the indoctrination effort is to see it as a production: See YouTube Taylor Swift You Need to Calm Down.
This is, it really is, a very advanced form of social engineering Maoist-like propaganda. If you cannot see this as bordering on an evil use of persuasion, then I suggest that you begin to examine how far you have been manipulated, and how deeply you are complicit in that manipulation.
Seeing the forces that have so manipulated us, and being capable of naming them, is the first step to being able to develop a position where they are stopped in their advance. But if you cannot see this, then you will not — not now and not ever — be able to act against it. That means: you have no anchor. You have no anchor in values. Or to see it in another way your *anchor* is in the same loose value-system that moves *them*. All of this hinges on one’s ideological tenets and one’s ideological position.
To worry about the suffering that Brennaman will go through — his family, et cetera — is to see the issue superficially. You, Jack, completely and absolutely support ‘the homosexual agenda’ with no reservations at all. To do so is part of your value-system. But the far more important backdrop to this issue escapes you, or put another way it does not appear on your radar as a concern! The sexual perversion of a people. The use of sexual perversion and ‘liberation’ as a tool in processes of profound social manipulation and — note this — the connection to radical progressive politics.
So, what really is your ethical position here? What is the ethics that you are defending?
To understand — to at least begin to understand somewhat better — the issue and the problem of the employment of sexuality in processes of profound social manipulation see E Michael Jones ‘Libido Dominandi’. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQeRu7BUEr8 ]
The strange, the difficult and the curious thing is that to understand the use of sexual deviation in larger, destructive patterns of social manipulation — my assertion is that this is now culminating in the present revolutionary activity, that is, it is all connected — requires what I call ‘a metaphysical perspective’. That is to say that it requires seeing man and existence in a metaphysical/physical context of relationship. Those who do not have such a perspective, or cannot get to it even intellectually, will not be able to see ‘what is really going on’ and ‘what is being done to all of us’.
Because this is so — a blind culture lurching forward in a kind of intellectual and spiritual woundedness — these processes will continue until they *hit bottom*. It is clearly *unethical* (and immoral) to be on the side of the blind ones. But the blind, as I say, are also victims.
It is a curious and an involved problem. Please keep your detailed & thoughtful responses to under 5,000 words! 😂
My assertion is that the undermining that we witness — in ourselves, in our moral and ethical stances, in what we accept and allow and in what we encourage — is all of a piece.
The essential factor, however, is ‘undermining’. And what is undermined is, as I say, one’s metaphysical platform. One’s metaphysical platform is an existential stance. It provides one with a fulcrum, a lever, through which one can, literally, move the world. Without it one is reduced to powerlessness and to victimhood: to life within mutability. In mutability one is susceptible and manipulatable.
The larger essence of what is happening to us can be grasped through a presentation such as G. Edward Griffin who made these presentations right in 1969. A foretelling as it were of what has come after.
I really want to sing Camp Town Ladies and later perhaps I will — but for now I present the following:
Well, I think the answer to that last question is that at least some of us do. There are a lot of activists and politicians who see this as a chance to seize permanent power and do the brutalizing. The thing is, like the Democrats in 2013 under Harry Reid, they thought that they would be in power forever. It was not the case. Beware the tactics you okay, the protections you strip, the people you class as evil, otherwise, don’t complain when they are used on you.
I spent my college years at a McDonald’s restaurant. One of my duties was to work the drive-thru. The headsets used were not the greatest. If the night crew failed to charge the batteries overnight, I would start off the day changing the battery every hour trying to get enough juice to get through the day. People’s cars were noisy, their kids were screaming, their radio was blasting, their dogs were barking and the surrounding environment was full of possibilities of disruption: emergency sirens, thunderstorms, honking horns. Hearing the difference between Fries, Sprite and Pie could be challenging. I learned to project my voice and articulate my words pretty quickly in order to be understood. I had to push a button on the headset in order to speak to the customer.
Until the day came that I didn’t have to push the button.
All of a sudden, without warning, we found that our voices were being heard through the order box without pushing the speak button. No one knew how to fix this. Imagine every discussion with a customer at the window and every chat with a co-worker going through that box. It wasn’t nearly as awful as the day some yokel nearby figured out how to radio into our order box and started making obscene remarks through it, but it wasn’t pleasant. It stopped eventually; however, it could recur with no warning so we learned to be careful what we said when not taking someone’s order.
After my days at McDonald’s were over, I moved to a mail-order company that had a call center. While our phones had mute buttons, those were designated only for brief moments to give representatives the chance to sneeze or cough. They were not intended for disparaging remarks.
Being human beings, of course, there were some representatives who used the mute button to make comments out of earshot of the callers. And also, being human beings, sometimes those representatives failed to accurately hit the mute button and found out their comments weren’t muted at all. Additionally, technology, being designed, assembled and maintained by human beings, doesn’t always work exactly the way it should every time. Consequently, some representatives learned that, even if the mute button was hit with pinpoint accuracy and was shown to be working, they could be heard anyway.
For that reason, our company made each new employee aware that the mute button must be used sparingly and only for quick masking of coughs. They were warned that the mute button might not always work as expected and that human error could cause a person to push the button in a way that didn’t activate it. Any representative that decided to do otherwise took his chances.
And there were some that did take their chances and learned the hard way.
When one works with a headset or a microphone on a daily basis, one learns very quickly not to assume one can’t be heard. In a call center environment, when a person is just a few feet away from another person, a loud enough rant – even if that employee is on mute – might be heard by another employee’s customer a couple of seats away. And all call center employees grow to loathe the non-phone employees of a business who walk through the call center on their way to lunch, laughing loudly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there are people on the phone. It only takes one customer to grouse, “Yup, it’s just one big party for you people over there, isn’t it?” to develop the disapproving scowl needed to accurately convey annoyance at such a noisy group.
I’ve moved on from the mail-order company, but the lessons I’ve learned in my early jobs have stayed with me. I do not understand why anyone who, as part of a profession, uses a microphone in any capacity – announcer, interviewer, interviewee, speechmaker – does not train his or her mind to assume a nearby microphone is on and avoid saying anything one doesn’t want broadcasted to the entire world.
Yet, this continues to happen with politicians, news anchors and movie stars. If a drive-thru employee or a call center representative can learn how to control his or herself around a microphone, surely a politician, an anchorman or a sports announcer can, too.
In addition to be disproportional, coverage is grossly incompetent. I saw “Breaking News!”, “Baseball!”, “Suspension!”, and my heart sank because I thought the season was cancelled.
Then they announced it was over a slur (and immediately though of Colbert who got a bonus check for his homophobic slur). Now I learn what the “slur” was and am disgusted by everyone.
Jack said:
My guess is that Brennaman will be fired, and that he and his family will suffer terribly from this episode, while social justice warriors puff up their chests with pride. Mercy? Forgiveness? Compassion? Nah. Golden Rule? What Golden Rule?
Probably. In defense of firing him, let me make a few points:
1. Every broadcaster knows words like fag, faggot, nigger, spic, beaner and many more such slurs are forbidden. They cast their employer in an unacceptably bad light. Why, even thinking the mic was off, would anyone utter them in a public place, even in a private conversation? It beggars belief that a person with any intelligence would engage in such conduct.
2. It is terribly unfair for his family to suffer, but what family does not suffer when the breadwinner makes a mistake that costs him his job?
3. Regrettably, your comment about SJW’s is right. Apparently unbeknownst to them, it has the potential to eventually set up a backlash that could set all their causes back decades. Or even worse, one day, this “cancel culture” is going to help provoke one or more mass murders, and the “cancel culture” will be partially to blame.
In mitigation, let me add the lament that politics has become the poison of our culture, and my new favorite saying is a paraphrase of a Kurt Schlichter offhand comment, “Democracy dies in dumbness.” Merciless, compassion-free treatment of minor offenders caught in an unscripted moment is a recipe for eventual disaster, as I’ve outlined above. When will we see someone step up and embody the virtues you enumerated above?
Certainly not before the election, it seems. Maybe not ever if the Democrats prevail.
Robespierre was merciless and compassion-free, and so was Marat. Then one day it was Robespierre’s turn to hear the guillotine go kerchunk and Marat got stabbed in the bathtub. Michael Collins was ruthless…and himself died with a bullet in his head. Throw the boomerang, and don’t complain if it comes back and clocks you.
That’s pretty much what we can expect in this case as well, although I think we can all hope that a guillotine is not involved. 🙂
This is my take as well, the fainting couch, pearl clucthery is odious, but even if the organization curbed their enthusiasm in regard to their editorializing, the guy said “fag” on air. He was going to get fired. It shouldn’t surprise anyone.
And I’m not even sure that it’s inappropriate. Even if he didn’t know he was on-air…. He knew he was at work, right? I’ve never been employed at a place where I could stand surrounded by colleagues and subordinates, rattle off a slur or two, and not be held to account. It seems like per se harassment.
He also knew he was in a job where everything he said was going to be under the microscope and publicly available. When I was in private practice (before 2005), where most of the attorneys were old-school and conservative, yes, we’d tell racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes in the office, and anyone who didn’t like it was welcome to leave. Unfortunately for those with big mouths and less than wonderful judgement, you can’t do that now.
“And I’m not even sure that it’s inappropriate” pretty much describes my ambivalence as well, although “appropriate” and “fair” are not necessarily the same here. My problems with the result are…
1. We don’t know what his intent was.
2. Private conversations that become public by bad luck literally could sink anyone, so I would expect the Golden Rule to be followed.
3. Anyone who works extemporaneously around a mic should be given a second chance, because a brain cramp is inevitable.
4. The standards are unevenly applied. Colbert gets away with calling the President Putin’s “cockholster” deliberately; Bill Maher calls GOP women cunts and twats—and this ends a career?
Finally, word taboos are moronic. What did his statement mean? Does “fag” mean anything other than, “this is the word for gay individuals typically used by people biased against gay people”? Is anything but “gay” a firing offense? Is there a hierarchy of uncivil words for gay, or are “Homo,” “queer” and the rest also automatic firing offenses? He meant that some city—San Francisco? D.C.? LA? Providence?—has a larger gay community than most. Big deal. Oh, but he used the “wrong” word for gay. Hang him.
He should be given the chance to apologize, reform, and regain the trust of his audience. Obama wanted regulations preventing an employer from asking about an applicant’s arrest and prison record, but a single word is forever?
Proportionality.
If you could end Bill Maher’s career you’d win a lot of friends on the left.
That’s amazing.
Weeeell, “homo” and “queer” are probably below “fag,” and “cocksucker” probably isn’t an insult, since it’s just someone, anyone, who engages in fellatio. More creative insults, like “fudge packer,” “butt pirate,” or Britishisms like “He bowls up Cadbury Alley,” indicate someone has put some thought into hate.
I once used the “flaming” adjective when describing a gay person, much to the chagrin of a friend who graciously later informed me this could be interpreted as “burn in hell for your sins” rather than my intended over the top “flamboyant” expressiveness of the individual.
Golden rule is essential.
He should be given the chance to apologize, reform, and regain the trust of his audience.
I put this 180 degrees in opposite. He should not have to apologize, and he should be able to refuse to apologize and laugh in the faces of anyone who demands an apology.
He could just as well say that it it they that need to reform.
That would be normalcy. That would be ethical. Exactly the opposite of what you seem to assume.
The retransvaluation of transvalued values! I’m on it . . .
Jack said:
1. We don’t know what his intent was.
How are we supposed to ever know that? I agree, intent is important, but he’s certainly not going to confess to homophobia, and worse, I’m sure some enterprising person can find something somewhere he either said or allegedly said to support a charge of homophobia.
So I’m not sure “intent” is all that important since it’s probably — not certainly — unknowable to any degree of certainty.
4. The standards are unevenly applied. Colbert gets away with calling the President Putin’s “cockholster” deliberately; Bill Maher calls GOP women cunts and twats—and this ends a career?
I know, right? The problem is, this double-standard is pretty much ingrained on the Left in every way, and in order to protect themselves from their ire, companies are willing to treat this as a strict liability offense. Those are the rules we are being forced to live by. Unethical? Yes, but what to do?
Proportionality is for a world in which we do not currently live.
Mostly agreed… I’m not sold on the idea that “fag” isn’t per se a slur.
This might be a colloquial difference, like how “cunt” means something drastically different and is more acceptable in The UK or Australia than it is in North America (Just don’t tell the guy from the UK that his daughter is “full of spunk” or “spunky”), but I don’t see “fag” as anything other than a slur. It doesn’t quite have the notoriety and weight of a word like “nigger”, but I can’t imagine it being used in anything other than the most ironic of ways and “one of the fag capitals of the world” doesn’t seem very ironic… It doesn’t even have the benefit of being intelligent or amusing like Steve’s “bowling up Cadbury Alley” (which I’ve never heard before, but find the imagery fun).
I understand and agree with the point about intent…. If “fag” becomes so non-grata that even bigots stop using it, then they’ll just use another word until that word becomes non-grata, and the cycle continues, and more words die along the path. I find the loss of language annoying…. But I still live in the real world and still understand that certain words have this kind of notoriety, and the fallout from them is mostly predictable. I suppose context matters, but I don’t know what context could make “one of the fag capitals of the world” better. Perhaps assuming a bad intent is uncharitable… But assuming a good intent is perhaps too far a stretch for me.
Should Sondheim have changed the lyrics?
If Sondheim wrote that piece in 2020, I’d bet money that lyric would be different.
Culture in the 70’s is obviously different than it is now. We can rail against that and say that the culture and language shouldn’t have changed… I don’t know if I would argue that as strongly as you seem to want to… but it did. And we exist in 2020. I was born in 1985, and I cannot recall a single instance of “fag” being used as anything other than a slur.
It was a slur in the Seventies. The women singing it are pissed.
I like the language changing, as long as it makes communication better, not more restrictive.
I did a Google search. What is the *fag capital of the world*? San Francisco?
I don’t think Thom’s been suspended for being incorrect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_village
Not much to disagree with here. I once used the word “niggardly” back in 2005, I think, and my boss took offense until I explained the word to him. And thus, the Niggardly Principle was born in my life long before it was described here. 🙂
And back in 2005. boy, was an accidental slur a lot less likely to get you fired!
Poor Thom. He was very pleasant to listen to when he was doing Diamondbacks games before he was called home to Cincinnati, (aka, per Thom and fellow Ohioan and color commentator and booth mate, Bob Brenly, “The Natti”) to ascend to (be assumed into?) the Reds’ TV booth and put on the mantle of his father’s legacy of calling games for the first professional baseball team in history. I hope someone in the organization says, “Hey, wait a minute. We’re talking about Thom here. He’s a nice kid, a good kid. He’s Marty’s kid! He screwed up. Let’s suspend him for a few games and then let him come back.” I really think that will happen in a place like Cincinnati that so prizes loyalty and tradition. And common sense. I think the fans may even rally around him. Mark Grace had a similar fall from grace with the Diamondbacks when he was arrested for aggravated DUI (and had an unaddressed drinking problem). Gracie lost his spot in the booth, but after a sojourn in the desert, he was brought back to do various bits and post game segments and remains, to this day, an integral part of the team’s broadcast crew.
This incident reminds me of watching WGN broadcasts of the Cubs in the late ’70s when the austere, august, and magisterial Jack Brickhouse was still working. He was famed for his minimalist style (as opposed to the florid (dare I say ‘lush?’) style of his then Southside competitor, Harry Caray who would, ironically, become his successor in the Cubs’ booth). He would simply say, “Ball one,” and then await the next pitch and say, if appropriate, “strike.” Unbeknownst to his audience (or at least ME) until that fateful afternoon, Jack would switch off the mike between his spare observations and yack like an excited school girl: “Hey, look at that broad over in section two twenty-one. Ain’t she something?” boomed out over the TV as Jack evidently failed to push the mute button on his mike. “Did you get mustard on your dog. I didn’t. What’s up with that?” Then there was a prolonged, too long, silence before Jack went back into character with “Strike two. A curve ball.”
And no one said a thing.
And by the way, Thom Brennaman once related one of his father’s favorite anecdotes: Muhammed Ali and Marty met each other at a function. They were fans of each other and glad to meet. They were also both suffering from Parkinson’s Disease by that time. They hugged. And Marty reported, with a chuckle, “Unfortunately, they had to get two guys to pull us apart.” Self deprecatory humor is my personal favorite.
Too bad Marge Schott and “Schottzie” aren’t still running the Reds.
In some parts of the world such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand fag means cigarette so wouldn’t it that make Richmond “one of the fag capitals of the world’?
Also, if a group of British and Americans gather together for a chat, are the British supposed to censor themselves and not say “fag” at all or does it depend on whether they are talking about cigarettes or gays, or does it depend on which country they are in?
“Faggot” is also, “a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel.” Which must have been the source of it becoming a slang term for “cigarette” before becoming a gay slur.
Errol beat me to one point I had considered writing.
Errol: I agree with your point. And to your questions, the most likely answers, I believe, are
1. “maybe,” and
2. “it depends on how much power the “offended party” (pathetically petty asshole that party would be) holds over the British participants – but, ‘yes,’ unqualified ‘yes,’ for any American anyplace in the universe at any time in their lifetimes, but especially in the present and at any time in the past (no matter the context of usage of the word and any connection that usage might have to Jack’s Niggardly Principles).”
I have heard Thom’s broadcast hundreds of times, both for the Reds and for the Cubs. I believe he is a good man. He is a married man and a father.
In his apology/not quite apology, he did say that he is a man of faith and anyone who knows him knows that is not who I am (in reference to the slur).
My guess is that he may have been trying to impress someone on the internal line (or in the booth) with his use of that word (sort of “being one of the boys”) and that he got caught with the “hot” mic.
Revered as his father was, Marty would be apologizing today for some of the things that he said without a second thought in the past. I remember him making comments such as “If that’s a [fill in the baseball term], then I’m a Chinese aviator.” [I am not really sure why that would be offensive but I am sure someone would find it so.]
One of Marty’s golden moments was when he witnessed Roseanne Barr “sing” the National Anthem before a game. He said [in the overcooked delivery that only he had]: “I’ll tell you what… she ought to be put in jail for that rendition of the National Anthem”.
If there is a city in this country that may forgive him for his mistake, it is Cincinnati. They unapologetically produced Jerry Springer and Bill Cunningham.
I hope the Reds and their broadcast companies do forgive Thom. He is one of the better local baseball announcers around. Everybody deserves a second chance.