Was it silly for ESPN to pull Robert Lee from broadcast?

People named Osama have been going through a lot. People named Hussein have gone through a lot. But ESPN reassigning a broadcaster because his name is Robert Lee?

Late Tuesday, ESPN said that Robert Lee would be removed from its broadcast of University of Virginia’s first football game. The reasons, unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, are obvious; white nationalists clashing with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia reignited a national debate over whether or not Confederate statues, including that of General Robert E. Lee, should be removed.

With today’s Internet culture and everything that goes along with it, if Lee, an Asian-American, had announced the game, the immediate reaction could have been memes and jokes that may have followed the part-time ESPN announcer. Awful Announcing would have likely picked up that story — after all, it ran a story about the decision to pull Lee from the game.

But let’s go to an alternate universe with Danny O’Neil and consider what would have happened if ESPN didn’t pull Lee from the game. People would have likely started noticing pretty soon. That would have raised questions over whether or not ESPN was making light of, or joking about, the situation in Virginia. Was it intentional? they would have asked.

It may seem silly now, but was it necessary?

Listen to 710 ESPN Seattle’s Danny O’Neil and KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross discuss the topic here.

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