ADDED: "The emails were so vulgar that most of their content could not be printed here," writes the NYT.
The emails were so vulgar that most of their content could not be printed here. But if you can imagine how a 14-year-old, puberty-driven boy might discuss girls to his 14-year-old, puberty-driven friends, you pretty much have an idea of what Scudamore — a 54-year-old father of five, including two daughters — considered appropriate banter in his work email.
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48 comments:
Well it's kind of amusing that this appears in the New York Times, which has had its own issues with women in the last week or two.
And for our host--whatever Scudamore is he's not "another basketball villain". The sport involved is football in England's Premier League (professional soccer to we Yanks).
English football has long been the home of the lager lads, and booze and sex are their main preoocupations--other than attending football games, singing for the home team, and being general hooligans.
crude jokes, comments in which he questioned “female rationality” and sexual innuendo about women.
"Now don't try to reason with me."
- New Yorker cartoon, wife to man.
You may want to read the article a bit more closely, it is the British Premier League, or soccer football.
So now it's sexism that will get you booted? Lets look at the ball players, and see how many of them are cheating on their woman and/or have spoken ill of the ladies and void their contracts.
If any basketball player doesn't support gay marriage he shouldn't be allowed on the court.
Soccer, not basketball, this time.
Although they persist in calling it football.
I read the article.
Another invasion of privacy.
The guy probably forwards a bunch of stupid jokes, thinking his friends will be amused.
I get tons of crap from well meaning friends, most of it not funny, just stupid.
But then, I have an Aristocratic sense of humor
What did he say?
Must be pretty bad if no one will print it,...
Premier League isn't basketball, it's soccer.
Sorry. Some damned ball.
I'm a girl. What do I know?
They have brain scanners that can tell what you're thinking.
They don't use them at airports yet because they don't work on women.
Ann: "Ann Althouse said...
I'm a girl. What do I know?"
Precisely.
It's always amusing when the "skirts" (pronounced "skoits") start talking sports.
Those adorable dames.
BTW, watching First Take today I saw Stephen A. Smith, a prominent sports analyst, made the exact same points I made days ago about the upcoming NBA owners vote: It better be soon, it better be public and it better be unanimous.
I believe the owners will do just that. They just HAVE to know that they are playing with fire with this Sterling situation. Smith went on to say that in addition the owners had better be unequivocal in ousting Sterling, another point I have put forth. No half-hearted measures will suffice to cool the heat and might just spur the pace of dissention which could thunder across the normally quiet hills of the NBA.
It's nice to be prescient once in awhile.
"If any basketball player doesn't support gay marriage he shouldn't be allowed on the court."
Not just support it, but refer to it as "Holy Matrimony."
"comments in which he questioned “female rationality”"
I like this guy already.
Somehow I feel this will not be as big an issue.
Not with Sterling and Punch to punch around.
And Jill filing her teeth to a razor edge.
And all the other idiots we have not yet heard from.
Note to Crack: They may not be reporting what he supposedly said because of the British libel laws. No "public figure" slack is cut for the papers there. So they tend to be indirect if the evidence is not very clear. Or maybe not. Just a guess.
Oh come on Althouse. Didn't we both learn to cite check on law review? Don't lawyers read the fine print?
I love the English tabloids--read them for amusement whenever I'm over there.
There are a few "constants" in their material. One of them is the sexual escapades of football players and their wives, girlfriends and mistresses. There are the boozy extracurricular romps in posh suburban mansions; there are the wives who charter a private jet to go shopping in Berlin or some such.
Then for variation there are all the police constables who are up to no good with some frisky suburban housewife. That along with the birth of a three headed dog or two, and thirty pages of stuff about every football team in Britain completes an average day's tabloid. And they are sold and read by the tens of thousands.
And you can't say, "I'm just a woman, how should I know" when the New York Times soccer writer who wrote the piece has the first name "Juliet". As the Brit tabloids might say she has got her knickers in an awful twist over the "awful things she can't repeat or print" in the pristine pages of the Times.
Say Juliet, could you print what Pinch Sulzberger said to Jill Abramson 10 days ago? I thought not.
"The old-boy network of the Premier League, which has grown ridiculously rich under Scudamore’s leadership, had spoken.
It did not listen to all of the voices — men and women — pressuring Scudamore to resign, including Rachel Brown-Finnis, a goalkeeper for England’s women’s national team, who said Scudamore’s emails were an “insult to all women.” It did not care that the sports and equality minister criticized the emails or that Prime Minister David Cameron allowed that anyone in his cabinet caught exchanging those kinds of emails would not remain on the job."
I guess the Brits aren't quite as far down the tube as I thought. We must have stolen a march on them.
the Premier League considered Scudamore’s contrition and decided the issue should end there.
good
Yawwwn.
Guy makes mild jokes about women. Woman who "started banter" not offended.
Stop the presses!
NYTimes fires woman and depicts her as a bitch while paying her less than a man and calling the country racist and sexist.
Start the presses!
Flood the zone on a white patrician sexist! Force conversation elsewhere!
Will we see weeks and weeks on this like Augusta?
Last sentence indicates so.
"I'm a girl. What do I know?"
That's no excuse. You need a fact-checker. I suggest you offer the job to Jill Abramson. I gather she needs one, and no man is ever going to offer her another.
Absolutely shocking that very rich people get away with behaving badly. You never see that in sports!
The real shock is the NBA lowered the boom on Sterling. If he had said something sexist he probably would have gotten away with a much lesser penalty. For that matter if he had said racist things about, oh, I don't know, Polynesians, he probably would have gotten away with it too. Insulting 75% of the players and the core of the fan base was just too much to ignore. (Sterling knew as much which is why the bad words came in a private conversation and he was staying on the award giving side of the local NAACP.)
Since when does not being PC 100% of the time make someone a villain?
These witch hunts over absolute trivia are far worse than the trivia. Brings to mind kindergarten tattle-tales - "Miz teacher, Billy said a bad word!"
"Lets look at the ball players, and see how many of them are cheating on their woman and/or have spoken ill of the ladies and void their contracts."
If you can stand the pain of watching an episode or two of VH-1 Basketball Wives, all your suspicions will be confirmed.
"Lets look at the ball players, and see how many of them are cheating on their woman and/or have spoken ill of the ladies and void their contracts."
If you can stand the pain of watching an episode or two of VH-1 Basketball Wives, all your suspicions will be confirmed.
I'm American. I don't know anything about soccer other than the fact that the best athletes in the world aren't soccer players and it's popular in Europe. Funny that he makes fun of woman since soccer is a girl's sport.
The Times being the Times, my guess is the internal mindset is arrogant to the point the higher-ups really don't see any irony in highlighting this story following last week's Abramson kerfuffle.
The Premier League has said it is mounting a serious investigation into its chief executive Richard Scudamore's emails, in which he joked about his friend's "shaft", girls who let him "play upstairs", and "female irrationality" when women have children.
Althouse calls him a "villain"? Based on this?
His emails to friends from his Premier League account, which were recently leaked by a former personal assistant who said she was “humiliated, belittled and disgusted” by their content
Maybe he is a sexist pig. But without actually reading the e-mails, who knows?
What I do know is that reporting bad speakers to the "authorities" so they might do "investigations" reeks of evil.
I think the secretary should be named.
I see her behavior as far more poisonous and dangerous.
He wrote emails with dirty jokes and sexual innuendo to friends. Nothing to see there. If he repeatedly directed offensive jokes to his subordinates (which he didn't), that's a different story.
The only thing that should remotely subject him to the Sterling chamber is his comment on "female irrationality," but even that comment is not properly attributed by the Times.
He wrote about female irrationality "when women have children," which requires more context to know what he is talking about. What I expect he sees as irrational (baby this, baby that - Enough already) is sort of what makes the world go around, but his private rantings are not those of a hateful person.
That NYT article is embarrassing. Hardly any journalism at all, it's largely fact-free.
Who was the secretary? Why did she leave her job? What was in the e-mails? What were the findings of the investigation?
Much better reporting here.
I would think this is relevant...
“(she) was not exposed to them in the course of her duties but had to search for them in a private email account that she was not authorized to access.”
If the NYT is going to start doing feminist rants instead of liberal journalism, at least put on your tampon earrings so we know what the hell you are doing.
"He wrote emails with dirty jokes and sexual innuendo to friends. Nothing to see there…."
Keep telling yourself that…
A lot of men must be sweating over what they know they've put into email over the years, what they have said about women.
Women are irrational. Althouse is quite rational (for a woman), but even she lets her lady parts take over when the issue turns to contraception or gays or feminism or whatever. I wonder what simultaneous thoughts were flooding her mind when she read the article, causing her to miss the obvious fact that this story had nothing to do with basketball. Was she thinking about babies? Shopping? Sparkly things? Dogs? Men in shorts?
Poor, sweet, delicate Althouse.
Am I going to get fired now?
The core of the nba fan base is upper middle class and rich white people.
The really important question is what does he think about Jill Abramson being fired from the New York Times? Nothing else matters.
Suppose he did say something bad about women. Suppose he made sexual innuendo about women and implied they are irrational when they have kids. So what?
How many feminists have said nasty things about men, and white men in particular. Ditto blacks. How many gays have said mean spirited things about Christians?
You want to talk about white entitlement? what about protected class entitlement? They get to be as racist and sexist and inflammatory and engage in hate speech as they want so long as the target is the rich white male.
Free speech means you get to say those things about white men. But it should also mean that people get to say things about you.
"Am I going to get fired now?"
If you were in a position of power in a business and you put this in the company email, they would probably have to fire you in order to protect themselves. You may say you were using hyperbole or some other literary device, but they'd be using the device of defending themselves from liability.
CE: What did he say?
The Times won't tell you but the Mirror will.
Some old sports fart trading lame sex jokes with his buds? Well, I never!
Work/life mantra going forward: Nothing is private. Nothing is private. No writing, no speech, no thought. Nothing.
Just keep repeating that and you'll be fine.
Miss freedom much?
Remember, Europeans are more sophisticated about these things.
Apparently Oprah and Magic Johnson are not interested in taking over this guys job.
It's always amusing when the "skirts" (pronounced "skoits") start talking sports.
Related: Leo Gorcey. Girls, pronounced, "goils." Around 7:41 into the video. Also "heard," pronounced "hoid," at 10:19. Love those New York accents of yesteryear.
http://tinyurl.com/qcnpb2v
Oh, Christ. What do these bitches have sand all up in their vaginas about this time?
The victim parade has become tiresome. Let the mockery commence.
Hmmm ... 54 .... Sounds like another case of WBS to me.
Wacky Boomer Syndrome
I heard about this because one of the men (did I need to write that?) he exchanged with is a prominent sports law partner at a multinational law firm. The repercussions for the lawyer may be greater, since law firms are more sensitive than football clubs about this sort of thing.
In 1999 the premier league earned ~70M Pounds from TV rights. In 2014 it will earn over 1.4B pounds. No way does the Premier League cut this guy loose.
So he's a guy and should have remembered that his secretary got copies of his messages. I am just wondering why the secretary has come out with this information. I know there is a pay day in there for her somewhere.
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