How an ESPN Announcer's Career Was Destroyed by a False Accusation of Racism

In his 2000 novel, The Human Stain, Philip Roth created the besieged professor Coleman Silk, who

was the object of calumny and hysteria after he called roll in class and, noticing that two students had never appeared in five weeks, asked the students present, “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” The two missing students, who turned out to be black, may have had no interest in attending class, but they took the trouble to charge Silk with racism.

Since Silk had never met the students, and hadn’t known they were black, the charge of racism was absurd: “I was using the word in its customary and primary meaning: ‘spook’ as a specter or a ghost,” he said. Nevertheless, Silk (who turned out to be a black man who passed for white) faced a kind of witch trial, including expulsion from his college and the loss of his wife, who suffered a stroke and died during his battle with the administration. “Creating their false image of him, calling him everything that he wasn’t and could never be, they had not merely misrepresented a professional career conducted with the utmost seriousness and dedication­­—they had killed his wife of over forty years. Killed her as if they’d taken aim and fired a bullet into her heart,” Roth writes.

This winter, Roth’s fictional scenario played out in reality, via ESPN and a contributor to The New York Times. Hardly anyone noticed. Why should we care if an ordinary man’s life is ruined for no reason?

The new Coleman Silk is Doug Adler, a (former) ESPN sports announcer whose career was demolished because of a frenzied overreaction to his (correct) use of a single word: Guerilla. Adler was calling an Australian Open tennis match between Venus Williams (who is black) and Stefanie Voegele when he said,“You see Venus move in and put the guerilla effect on. Charging.” Adler noted that “guerilla tennis” is a commonly used phrase and has been ever since a famous 1995 Nike TV spot of that title in which Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi hastily strung a tennis net across a busy city street and started playing right there.

When Adler made his “guerilla” remark, a few Twitter users accused him of using the word “gorilla,” their complaints amplified considerably by New York Times tennis writer Ben Rothenberg. “This is some appalling stuff. Horrifying that the Williams sisters remain subjected to it still in 2017.” Wait, the Williams sisters, plural? Who said anything about Serena Williams? Rothenberg took one misunderstood word, turned it into an imaginary insult, then doubled the fantasy slur. When what Roth termed “the ecstasy of sanctimony” takes over, logic bows its head and retreats. Rothenberg’s Tweet was re-Tweeted 142 times, reaching many thousands and apparently Adler’s bosses.

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How an ESPN Announcer's Career Was Destroyed by a False Accusation of Racism | Intellectual Takeout