ESPN recently announced the re-hire of Keith Olbermann, an outspoken liberal who wrote a book titled: Trump Is F*cking Crazy Person (This Is Not a Joke).
In addition, the leftist anchor has repeatedly called President Trump and Republicans “Nazis.”
ESPN has been engaged in an internal debate over its increasingly far left content but continues to say publicly that it is not too liberal. Indeed, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the network claims that all political opinions are welcome and the network is more about sports than politics.
But the network’s refusal to punish extreme lefty Jemele Hill and now the re-re-re-hiring of Trump-hater Keith Olbermann, makes it increasingly hard to believe network brass when they say ESPN is not a bastion of leftism.
Indeed, when Jemele Hill raised eyebrows for launching into politics and calling Donald Trump a “white supremacist,” ESPN actually put out a disclaimer saying that Hill’s opinions did not “represent the position of ESPN.”
Even as the network has fired several employees because they are conservatives (such as Mike Ditka and Curt Schilling), ESPN has fired no employee over their left-wing outbursts — including Hill.
Now, the “not liberal” sports network is once again bringing the deranged Keith Olbermann back to the air. Olbermann, who ESPN has fired several times already, has a long, long history of unhinged behavior. He has called Trump a “Nazi” so many times that it is hard to count them all. His Twitter feed is rife with F-word this and F-word that, and he is featured in hundreds of videos launching into one delirious tirade after another.
Speaking of Jemele Hill, ESPN hastened to distance itself from her comments about the president and even publicly scolded her for her comments saying that her rants violated the company’s policy. Yet they are re-hiring Olbermann who actually published a book saying that President Trump is mentally ill (and he wasn’t joking).
Indeed, Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis makes a salient point in asking how ESPN can justify re-hiring Olbermann for the umpteenth time:
If you fired Barstool after a single show because you found their past jokes inappropriate and offensive, how can you hire a guy who wrote a book calling the president fucking crazy, who regularly called the president a Nazi, and who has sent far more Tweets calling him a white supremacist psychopath than Jemele Hill ever did? And, again, this is a guy who is specifically acknowledging he isn’t joking. This isn’t satire or hyperbole being misconstrued and taken out of context, this is directly disparaging attacks on the president.
Put it this way, is there any way a conservative author would ever be hired at ESPN if he or she’d written a book called, “Hillary is fucking crazy (This is not a joke)” or, god forbid, written a book called “Obama is fucking crazy (This is not a joke).”
Of course not.
With ESPN’s proclamations that Jemele Hill violated their policies and that her views are not theirs, with the network’s decision to fire the Barstool guy for an off-color tweet, and for its oft-repeated claims that it is not the liberal network, re-hiring this man only goes to prove the lie all these proclamations. In fact, it can only mean that ESPN has endorsed Keith Olbermann’s psychotic, hate-filled, venomous rants. After all, his behavior doesn’t come as a shock to ESPN’s executives. It is well known and of long standing.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.