On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 5:13 AM, Jason Carpio <[email protected]> wrote:

>  UPDATE: ESPN 'reminds' Paul Azinger to lay off President Obama on
> Twitter>
> ----
> http://usat.ly/owRGu6
>

Azinger has made some conservative/republican leaning comments on air in the
past (he seems to be a Ron Paul fan). I always would rather see as lenient a
policy as possible with this kind of thing. You want to minimize divisive
and harsh comments on sports telecasts since you don't want to alienate big
portions of the audience, many of whom tune to sports to get away from
serious things. Golf in particular (second perhaps only to auto racing)
skews Republican, and that sentiment bleeds through from time to time (I
remember one year they identified Scott Simpson, best known as Bill Murray's
pro partner at the AT&T, as being the only registered Democrat on the PGA
Tour).

But they should give these guys even more leeway when it comes to comments
they make off the air. Assuming he does not make threatening or
over-the-line comments (from what I can tell, unless he deleted something
harsher, all he did was repeat two lame and tired one-liners conservative
friends have been emailing me all week: Obama has player more golf than me;
I created more jobs than him; and earthquake in DC was a result of Founding
Fathers rolling over in their graves. If they want to have a "no politics"
policy on air I guess that is fine (I just don't like it when announcers try
to throw political commentary in subtly, almost trying to influence the
audience without them knowing it), but this kind of over-control of their
off camera comments seems excessive to me.

-- 
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