Jon Gruden ‘Resigns’ After Racist, Sexist, Homophobic Emails Revealed
A spectacular fall for a man who has been at the center of the football world for three decades.
The Los Angeles Raiders head coach is out after embarrassing revelations from emails that he sent to various NFL officials during his long tenure as an ESPN commentator. Given their nature, it was untenable that he could have remained in his position or return to the broadcasting booth.
New York Times (“Raiders Coach Resigns After Homophobic and Misogynistic Emails“):
Jon Gruden stepped down Monday as the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders football team hours after The New York Times detailed emails in which he had made homophobic and misogynistic remarks, following an earlier report of racist statements about a union leader.
His resignation was a striking departure from the football league for a coach who had won a Super Bowl, been a marquee analyst on ESPN and returned to the N.F.L. in 2018 to lead the resurgent Raiders, which he had coached years before.
“I have resigned as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders,” he said on Twitter in a statement issued by the team. “I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.”
Mark Davis, the owner of the Raiders, said in a statement that he had accepted the resignation. Rich Bisaccia, the Raiders’ special teams coordinator, was elevated to interim head coach, the team said.
Gruden’s departure came after a New York Times report that N.F.L. officials, as part of a separate workplace misconduct investigation that did not directly involve him, found that Gruden had casually and frequently unleashed misogynistic and homophobic language over several years to denigrate people around the game and to mock some of the league’s momentous changes.
He denounced the emergence of women as referees, the drafting of a gay player and the tolerance of players protesting during the playing of the national anthem, according to emails reviewed by The Times.
Gruden’s messages were sent to Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football Team, and others, while he was working for ESPN as a color analyst during “Monday Night Football.” In the emails, Gruden called the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, a “faggot” and a “clueless anti football pussy” and said that Goodell should not have pressured Jeff Fisher, then the coach of the Rams, to draft “queers,” a reference to Michael Sam, a gay player chosen by the team in 2014.
In numerous emails during a seven-year period ending in early 2018, Gruden criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions and said that Eric Reid, a player who had demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem, should be fired. In several instances, Gruden used a homophobic slur to refer to Goodell and offensive language to describe some N.F.L. owners, coaches and journalists who cover the league.
The report continues quite a bit longer and includes several more examples from the emails. In addition to the slurs, Gruden and Allen (who had been GM of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when Gruden was that team’s head coach) shared topless photos of Washington Redskins cheerleaders that, one presumes, were not taken consensually.
The casual homophobia and sexism hardly surprise me coming from a 58-year-old Catholic ex-jock from Indiana. Like it or not, it has long been part of locker room culture. The repeated racial slurs, however, are rather shocking. Gruden’s father was also a football coach, so he’s been around Black players his whole life. Because he was something of a wunderkind, he rose rapidly through the coaching ranks and got his first shot to be the head coach of the Raiders at 34.
That Gruden had to go is not at issue. But, as Judy Battista rightly notes, the fact that he felt that he could constantly put these thoughts into emails to others around the League is telling.
Gruden is hardly the only person in the NFL who thinks and talks that way. He is merely one of the most high-profile and well-compensated, and certainly one of the dumbest, for putting it all in writing.
“I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction,” Gruden wrote in a statement Monday night. “Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.”
That, of course, is laughable. Gruden didn’t mean to hurt anybody because he wasn’t even thinking of anybody but himself, his frat-like circle of friends, and their amusement. The rest — minorities, women, gay players — were collateral damage.
In fairness to Gruden, he thought he was making these remarks privately between friends. He was presumably careful not to say these things around women and minorities—or others who might be offended and report his conduct.
Gruden’s behavior and how it came to light casts a considerable cloud over the league’s efforts toward diversity. Those who have hired the female game officials he reportedly denounced, who supported player protests of racial injustice, who applauded Carl Nassib (a Raider, no less) when he became the NFL’s first openly gay active player – those people in the NFL have tried hard to rid the league of its good-old-boy ways. But Gruden was one of the most popular broadcasters on ESPN’s Monday Night Football among those in the NFL before he returned to being one of the league’s star coaches. These emails, which spanned years, until he made his triumphant return to the Raiders, undermine it all.
Most striking about this entire episode was Gruden’s casual use of language that the league wants you to think is now verboten in its meeting rooms. Gruden’s use of a racial trope when he criticized NFL Players Association leader DeMaurice Smith, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, seemed so unremarkable to him that he claimed over the weekend to not even remember sending such an email. That he felt comfortable enough using that language and so much more that he put it in writing — that he put it in writing to a long-time Washington team executive — says plenty about the atmosphere in which Gruden operated. He never expected to be caught, of course, and the fact that he used the language so freely says he knew it was acceptable to his audience.
Those “Inspire Change” messages in the stadiums ring a little more hollow right now, don’t they?
So, again, it really depends. While I am quite sure that Gruden and Allen (who is no longer connected to the League) are far from the only people associated with the NFL who harbor such thoughts, they’re the only ones directly implicated by these email exchanges. The only others noted in the above-cited NYT report were outsiders:
Some of the emails between Gruden and Allen also included businessmen friends, Ed Droste, the co-founder of Hooters; Jim McVay, an executive who has run the Outback Bowl, annually held in Tampa, Fla.; and Nick Reader, the founder of PDQ Restaurants, a Tampa-based fried chicken franchise.
But let’s not kid ourselves. While one would like to think racism is a rarity in a league whose players have long been majority-Black, Gruden and Allen weren’t the only ones. And sexism and, certainly, homophobia are almost surely rampant. Then again, that’s why Goodell and company have initiatives trying to stamp out these behaviors.
Gruden would likely have continued to get away with it were it not for another good old boy, Dan Synder, the owner of the team formerly known as the Redskins:
Gruden’s emails were in the NFL’s — and then the Raiders’ — hands because they were captured during the investigation into workplace conditions at the Washington Football Team. Bruce Allen, a former top team executive, used his company email in his exchanges with Gruden, the Times reported. Once the workplace investigation was completed, a source said, the league was told it should review about 650,000 emails that the law firm had uncovered. A team of senior league executives have been doing that for the past few months. Finally, last week, their findings were presented to Commissioner Roger Goodell. The Raiders knew of them for at least three days while the league waited for them to handle the burgeoning crisis — with Gruden coaching on Sunday and making ill-advised comments all along. Finally, with more emails coming to light on Monday evening, Gruden resigned.
The workplace conduct investigation yielded a $10 million fine for the WFT and an agreement that owner Daniel Snyder would stay away from running the team for an unspecified period of time. But there was no written report from the investigation. Attorney Beth Wilkinson, who led the probe, delivered her findings orally to the league, the league saying it was to protect the women who had come forward.
Given the content of the sliver of emails that were connected to Gruden, you’d have to be pretty naïve not to believe that what Wilkinson found connected to the Washington Football Team and the toxic environment Snyder allowed there was at least as troubling as, and potentially worse than, Gruden’s reported remarks. We might never know that — Snyder’s emails didn’t leak — but remember that the recipient of Gruden’s emails, Allen, apparently felt comfortable enough receiving Gruden’s vitriol that he let them arrive on his company email at Snyder’s team. Men like Allen are the ones who hire coaches and other executives. They are the ones responsible for diversifying the ranks of NFL decision-makers.
So, again, while that’s likely we don’t know that for sure. Bruce Allen is the son of long-ago Redskins coach George (Herbert) Allen and the brother of former Virginia Governor and US Senator George (Felix) Allen, he of macaca fame. That Gruden felt comfortable sharing racist tropes with him is hardly shocking. Absent further revelations, we really have no direct evidence that the racial attitudes, in particular, are widespread among League executives. (Again, I’d be surprised if Gruden’s views on women and gays weren’t the norm.)
Remember that power structure, and what the reported content of Gruden’s emails revealed about the thinking within it, the next time the hiring cycle begins or an employee alleges workplace harassment. Gruden isn’t alone in his thinking; his just came to light, to devastating effect. But there are others who think and talk like Gruden, and some of them have influential jobs, too. Some of them are likely hitting delete tonight. The damage all of them have done for years can’t be undone that easily.
Given how much trouble the US military has had in changing its culture along these lines, I suspect it’ll take decades for the NFL to be in alignment with its expressed values. We’re unlikely to ever have women players, unless the nature of the sport changes radically. We’re starting to see women as coaches and referees but, since the route to both of these professions is usually as a player, they’re going to have a tough time getting the experience and earning respect from the players.
His words speak to his character, as does his “apology”.
And, lest anyone forget, that investigation was a coverup, ending with the report kept secret and an owner “suspended” by putting his wife in charge. The NFL is a bad joke.
Now let’s do Pete Carroll of the Seahawks, the oldest coach in the league – compare and contrast.
Gruden doesn’t get to behave like this by pretending that he’s just a product of his times. Many of us who are his contemporaries are not racist and homophobic jerks, even if we were back in the early 1980s.
Given the amount of taxpayer support to the NFL is terms of tax subsidies, avoidances, paid military advertising, etc., I would think that should be totally cut off. Money will change behavior faster than investigations and castigations.
@Tony W: Exactly. Add 72 yo Gregg Popovich (ex-jock from Indiana) to that list of coaches who know better. I’m sorry but age 58 is not from a time long past that excuses can be made.
Bigots gotta bigot, and sometimes that means they gotta go.
I used to think that someday people will learn that e-mail is like a memo in the company files, not like a casual remark made in the hall with only one or two people close enough to hear. These days, I’m more inclined to think that they’re never going to learn.
“I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone. I just didn’t care.”
FinishedTFY Gruden.
@Tony W and @Scott: : While Carroll and Pop certainly seems to be progressive in their thinking, all we have to go on is their public personae. I would have assumed Gruden to be a good dude until seeing his private emails. Beyond that, I’m not saying that these words and attitudes are *acceptable* for a 58-year-old multi-millionaire with a college degree. I’m just saying that I’m not shocked that he has attitudes about women and gays that are pretty typical of our generation and, especially, within the macho culture of the locker room.
Dang, those emails were really nasty. I expected something more mild, to justify another round of phony caterwauling about cAncEL cULtuRe from Maher/Sullivan/Weiss/Tucker et al. Not that they won’t do it anyway.
@Michael Cain:
As pointed out by @James Joyner and others, the tell here is Gruden seemed comfortable dropping slurs into the NFL’s “company files.” What that says about NFL culture is…yikes.
From Albert Breer:
.
Hold on, there are non consensual top less photos of cheerleaders? That’s another level of misconduct. Is such a trespass legal?
@James Joyner: I mean, it’s not a super surprise. I used to run into a lot of language like that in MMO’s for instance.
AND, I’m older than he is, and I will at certain time pop with some choice words. But never stuff like that. I don’t know that I did it when I was young – it all seemed such a part of the macho act that I despised when I was 16. I was certainly neither gay-positive or trans-positive then.
I speak up because I’m so tired of the “this terrible behavior is normative. It is part of being a man and being manly.” stuff.
No. It isn’t. I am a man. I don’t do that. I have never called someone a “faggot”. I generally don’t scold people who talk like that around me, unless, you know, it’s within the company that I’m the owner of. Or in my home. So someone might say about me, “well, you never know what he’s like in private” and in some sense that’s fair. We’ve kind of been caught by surprise by this stuff sometimes.
(I’m not accusing you of saying it’s normative or masculine defining. I’m just sayin’)
And yet, I think it’s quite possible that Pete Carroll is like me in this regard.
Um…the guy is a Republican, and he fell into line on Trump’s complete mischaracterization of the Anthem Protests…what did you expect?
Overall a pretty good column Mr. Joyner, but you did make a not so subtle jab at Catholics in making a hasty generalization with “58 year old Catholic ex-jock” statement. I guess it is OK to mock certain religions these days. Is your point that all Catholics fit Mr. Gruden’s profile and are not worthy of respect? I would say this is a display of bigotry on your behalf.
@SKI: Truer words never written.
As others have pointed out, it’s not so much what he said, which was awful. To me, what’s shocking is how easily he wrote all that stuff in an email to another NFL Executive I wouldn’t be caught in such a scandal, ever, because it’s outside of my reality to write such emails. It would actually be painful to me to write those words and mean them.
I don’t get the casual, but deep, racism and sexism so easily displayed.
If you drop the racism, this sounds me when I was twelve. F—- was a bad thing to say, but we said it. P—-y was just a thing you said and had said to you 24/7. It was just a bad word if adults caught you. And if there were any photos of topless women in the vicinity, I would have been very eager to see them.
It’s hard to square how any adult could sound like me when I was 12 or even find it a familiar part of their adult life.
@Michael Cain: There was a very popular administrator at my local university who was sunk by her impolite (not racist; not sexist or homophobic – just rude) emails among her immediate peers that came up through some FOIA request. I commented at the time that if she had just walked down the hall into their offices to talk smack about people she didn’t like she would still be running the school.
@Dude Kembro: I hope he goes into quiet retirement, but part of me wonders if he is the next MAGA celebrity. It is going to be hard to go from being in the spotlight for all those decades to being at home by his lonesome.
@EddieInCA:
I feel like there is a word for that… it’s on the tip of my tongue… sounds like “privilege”…
Oh wait, that is the word. When behaviors have most likely be excused (if not encouraged) for someone’s whole life, it’s amazing to see how normalized it can become.
While not Catholic nor an ex-jock, I am 58 and from the most RW part of Canada. I’m not some old crusty git who can’t change his ways. And I don’t think that would cut it as an excuse for me anyway.
@James Joyner:
At least wrt Pop, I’ve read multiple stories that imply there is little difference between his public and private personality.
Carroll seems pretty straightforward as well, but I haven’t read as much about that. (and his 9/11 conspiracy nonsense annoys me.) Otherwise, he seems genuine.
But Gruden? Good guy? He struck me as typical old school football junkie with little nuance or depth to him. And, as a football guy, he seemed like kind of a moron. Never a good sign when that’s one’s area of expertise.
@Dude Kembro: Dude, the problem has never been that there are homophobic, misogynistic, racist people in the NFL (or NHL or MLB or NBA or MLS or professional wrestling for that matter); the problem is that without diligence and care, people will DISCOVER that these industries have “personnel problems” high in the organization. Gruden matters because he revealed what the league is, and they threw him under the bus for the same reason.
“Then again, that’s why Goodell and company have initiatives trying to stamp out these behaviors.”
Please. Spare me. The next Super Bowl half time act includes Dr Dre, Snoop Dog and Eminem. Ever listened to their lyrics?? Far, far worse than Gruden’s remarks. And boobie photos……………….in Las Vegas. The city the NFL picked to put a new franchise in for purely commercial reasons? I’m shocked! Shocked!!!
You are correct that its pervasive in sports. No doubt at Alabama, too. Gruden just got caught. So he must be sacrificed. Various NFL and NBA wife beaters, common thugs, misogynists, homophobes (I ain’t playing with Magic, anyone? Unlike Carl Malone, at least a certain hick from Indiana knew better.) get a pass and still play. See: Kevin Durant. See: Ray Lewis. See:……………
WTFU
The show must go on.
Look – this guy is not even a very good coach. Now he will become a martyr on the Right.
He won one big game, with Tony Dungy’s Defense, and against a Raider’s team he had only recently coached, which meant he knew their tendencies.
Since then…really nothing.
I’m really just amused by all the people who lied about what Kaepernick was doing, in order to push their political agenda, now defending Gruden’s abject bigotry. You can take the good ‘ole boys out of the plantation, but you can’t take the plantation out of the good ‘ole boys.
@Tim Gimin:
I have a very, very hard time reaching the conclusion you did, based off of Dr. Joyner’s words. I can’t find anything in this post that ‘mocks’ Catholics, or encourages mocking, nor did he make any statement that “all Catholics fit Mr. Gruden’s profile.” Regarding the ‘worthy of respect’ comment, Dr. Joyner’s post takes pains, multiple times, to point out that while Gruden’s behavior isn’t shocking, his public persona until this point (including being a Catholic) was one of an OK Dude.
I really think you are purposely being falsely outraged by this post, but in case you are sincere, here is my take on this small quip:
1. 58 years old, meaning he is at the very, very tale end of the Boomer generation, and grew up in a nationwide culture in which mocking other races, cultures, and sexual orientations was the norm.
2. While being raised in that homophobic and racist national culture, he was raised as a Catholic–a church that until like 2018 was pretty explicitly anti-homosexual. Indeed, my understanding of Catholic tenants (my wife is Catholic, I am not) leads me to believe Church teachings are still pretty anti-homosexual, even if the current Pope is a bit softer than his predecessors. Please do correct me if I’m wrong that the church is explicitly anti-homosexual.
3. While being raised in that nationwide culture that was anti-minority, anti-homesexual, and a church culture that was also anti-homosexual, he furthermore grew up in a state that while (at the time) was pretty middle-of-the-road politically, has had a conservative cultural bent since roughly post-Prohibition.
Therefore, adding in all these factors, Dr. Joyner was not too surprised Gruden was racist and homophobic.
On the flip side, if Gruden was 32, raised by two hippies outside of San Francisco and was a practicing Unitarian-Universalist, views such as his would be a bit shocking because it doesn’t conform to the normal San Francisco Hippie Universalist persona.
Hope that explainer helped.
@keef: So, you woke up, and said “today, I shall defend a bigot.”
I’m not surprised.
Hey y’all, I bet you can’t spot the angry white dude who’s salty that he can’t tell racist jokes in public anymore in the comments…
Countdown to “Why can rappers say the ‘N-word’ and I can’t?!”
@Gustopher:
It’s just his economic anxiety showing.
@EddieInCA: “I don’t get the casual, but deep, racism and sexism so easily displayed.”
The ease seems to me to be a sign of an institutional-level problems. Gruden could write those things because he felt he was among people who share his world view–and that they didn’t represent a minority in numbers, power, or both.
@keef:
Comparing an art form to a person’s unfiltered thoughts delivered via e-mail renders moot your entire post.
Have a nice day.
@Gustopher:
I suspect @keef has sent a number of emails that make him nervous, now. He feels the walls closing in. I mean, sure, being a Wal-Mart greeter isn’t coaching the NFL, but when he has on his blue vest he is the representative of the Wal-Mart corporation.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Reminds one of the fact that George Floyd could be murdered in front of other cops who just stood around and watched. Derek Chauvin read the room.
@Michael Reynolds: Yeah, no kidding.
Wow…putting aside that Keef wants to justify Gruden’s racist words and passing along of cheerleader pics where they are topless, I just chuckle at the thought of Keef struggling to name drop rappers who he thinks make his point. Eminem and Dr Dre????
While not completely irrelevant over the past 5-10 years, it would have been more interesting if Keef name dropped Nipsey Hussle (there were riots after his death, certainly a more relevant artist with the youths of today than Dr Dre and Eminem, lol), or heck, Cardi B, or Niki Minaj.
Cardi B is a more current artist whose work resonates with today’s youth, or even Niki Minaj is still an artist you can name drop to show that you are hip and down with it and up to date on what kids are into today, lol. Heck, Minaj, of the I have a friend with swollen balls fame even got into a tiff with the White House!! Not to mention her song WAP, which probably caused a few parents to clutch their pearls when they figured out what the song was about (again, lol!!).
Michael, you do the WM greeters a disservice comparing them to Keef, if I walked up to a WM greeter and mentioned Cardi B or Niki Minaj I bet some of the greeters would say oh yeah, my niece or nephew listens to her, not a fan but I have heard of Niki M or Cardi B.
Keef just sounds beyond out of touch with the modern world. Not a good look, reveling in your ignorance might get you some backslaps on certain forums but it just comes off as rather sad to most everyone else. Keef, even in the middle of nowhere America folks have easy access to radio that plays top 40 hits, and stuff like that.
Keef, the next time you want to drop the names of a couple of musicians into one of your posts do yourself a favor and listen to what folks are listening to now, not what they were listening too at least 15-20+ years back (pretty much a whole generation of kids have come of age not being heavily exposed to Eminem and Dre because other artists over the years have risen up and get all the air play on the radio).
Anyway Keef, thanks for providing me with a hearty laugh today. Happy Tuesday.
@inhumans99:
To be fair, Eminem is still relevant–just not like he was with a previous generation. Of course, he’s also a hero to White men who use him as a Trojan Horse to make a racist point about a white guy being better at the Black activity.
Kendrick is also part of the halftime show, released the BLM anthem, and called out Fox News, specifically Geraldo, on his Pulitzer-winning album. That would seem like a relevant example. But it’s possible keef doesn’t know who he is.
@Modulo Myself:
This is a good point and one I should have made in the OP. That is, I’m not shocked that the dude has retrograde views on sex and sexuality. And, truth be told, “pussy” in the sense of being weak-willed was common in military culture a decade ago and is, I’m sure, still there in private spaces. But the way Gruden expressed some of these thoughts—in writing, no less—is beyond juvenile.
Slave owners were also around Black people their entire lives, and doubtless also said many racial slurs, repeatedly.
There’s obviously a huge difference between slave owners and the NFL management, but any time you see white business owners and largely minority laborers, it should make you stop and think about the racial attitudes at play.
@Kurtz:
Yup. Also along those lines, I know a lot of White folks who loved Chris Rock’s “N*ggas vs Black People” bit for all the wrong reasons.
(Rock has since disowned the bit because of how beloved it became within certain circles)
@inhumans99: I suspect that he probably doesn’t know Cardi B, but even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to say bad things about a hot chick. It’s against the code.
@Neil J Hudelson:
Might depend on the region, too. I live in a college town and the openly Catholic people I know are pretty darn liberal (sometimes with exception of their abortion stance).
The leadership is different, aside from the current Pope as you pointed out.
@mattbernius:
I think that was part of Chappelle’s abrupt disappearance at the height of popularity of Chappelle’s Show. It was likely multi-faceted, but I’m pretty sure that was part of it, even if he didn’t say so specifically.
To put an exclamation point on your comment, you describe one reason the ‘far left’ takes the actions it does wrt speech. Keef shows another reason. Once speech is out in the world, people tend to use it how they want, even if it’s their interpretation is the opposite of the intent of the speaker.
@Tim Gimin: Insert Jim Wright’s “not all”.
American Catholicism is just…weird. The bishops and above are arch-conservatives. Much more so than the current Pope. But the laity is basically liberal these days. It’s like the entire right-wing of Catholics outside leadership went evangelical, despite their leadership. Very puzzling to me.
I found out about this last night at one of my jobs because my GM kept ranting all night about how one joke email from “+10 years ago” got the coach fired. Which conveniently segued into how gays blacks and other pansies need to stop being so sensitive. How this is the pussification of America and other stupid stuff. When informed it was more than one email and the that they covered a 7 year period ending in 2018 he just kept quite for a bit until I went back into the back of house and less then an hour later he was yelling about the same thing…
The whole experience was kind of bizarre. I’m used to correcting right wingers on facebook only for them to post the same lying meme a week later. I’ve never had one reject reality in person in such a short period of time. When I started pointing out the facts again he (the GM) just talked over me and pretended I was there…
It’s pretty clear to me as a non sports fan that the Raider establishment is using this as an excuse to “fire” the coach as he hasn’t been producing for the money. This gets the raider’s an out to remove the coach without having to pay for early termination of contract.
@EddieInCA:
In the software industry the sexism rears its ugly head all the time, right out in the open in a lot of places (the racism is couched a little more obliquely, as “communication issues” (which can be real) and “cultural issues” (which is usually just pigment, but there are a few real ones)). It always comes down to what management is willing to accept.
Even some “woke” companies, such as Google, have this culture, although in Google’s case it seems to be more “tolerating intolerance” than the culture at large (read up on James Damore’s 37 page “memo” about “political correctness” and how women are not as good of programmers because their boobs get between the brain and the keyboard… ok, I am paraphrasing there).
(Aside: Damore should have been fired immediately upon the discovery of his memo, if only for bad writing. Communication skills are important, after all, and you don’t need that many pages to say “Google should be a he-man woman-hater’s club, but instead they are persecuting conservatives”)
If you allow people to be bigoted assholes, people will be bigoted assholes.
All of which leads me to ask: what about the people who received this bigot’s emails? When do they “resign”? Surely, they cannot all be his underlings. Did the owner somehow not know? Why isn’t he being forced to sell the team?
quiet
pretended I wasn’t there..
Man I wish I had an edit feature…
I don’t know any business where you could get away with calling higher level people those kinds of names and still have a job…
@Matt:
Did you ask how many racial slurs you are allowed to use on the job, and which ones?
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
Recall that before Francis, the previous two popes were conservative, with Benedict being an arch-conservative. For years Benedict led the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and did whatever he could to stamp out the changes of Vatican II. That position also gave him great influence in the selection of Bishops. Arguably the only moderate to liberal Bishop the that was appointed during the the JPII/Benedict era was Cardinal O’Malley in Boston and that was only due to child abuse scandal.
Bishops do serve at the discretion of the Pope, but tradition has it that removing one should be for cause. That’s why when one is removed, they are usually recalled to Rome and given another job. Kind of like civil service. Yes the American bishops are pretty conservative, but there are fewer conservatives and more moderate/liberals than there were a few years ago.
@Gustopher: I have female friends who work in some of the biggest tech companies in the USA and they all regularly experience sexism in some form or another. They all work on the software side which is dominated by males. Males who rarely accept that females can do the job as well as them.
@Gustopher: Well that’s “different” because “the emails were private and should of never been leaked”..
I would like to note I was/am having trouble talking because I’m fighting an infection in my upper jaw that spread into my sinus cavity and lips causing massive swelling. It’s hard to talk with the pain while having a top lip that is over 2x it’s normal size.
@Gustopher: Your questions at the end get back to the whole *he wasn’t fired for being a misogynistic bigoted homophobe; he was fired for showing what the NFL culture is* issue. (And at a larger level, causing America to need to reflect on why we aren’t outraged at the fact that this has been going on for decades–your whole “when will an owner be forced to sell his team” point.)
@Gustopher: I have such mixed feelings about your comment about the software industry in Silicon Valley.
On the one hand, yes, there is a gender imbalance problem. Big time. And yes, James Damore’s writings were firing worthy. For sure.
AND, I worked in Silicon Valley in the software industry for a long, long time. As a programmer or “engineer” as it is normally termed here. There was a big gender imbalance. And, there were always women working in technical positions at the companies I worked at, except for one with three employees, and another which I didn’t like much for a variety of reasons, and I left after a year or so.
But in none of them did I hear any slurs regarding women. I’m quite serious. I’m sure that women got subjected to it at times. That’s the odds. But not in front of me. Not in public. It’s an easy firing decision in response to something like that under California employment law. And given that I knew multiple women who had been promoted to management positions, I feel pretty good that management didn’t have a big structural problem with women.
That’s not to say they had no problem. Because everybody has this problem in our culture: We think of math as something men do. Every single person in the culture thinks that, and that hugely affects things. It affects men. It affects women. It affects grade schoolers. It affects seniors. It affects people you really wouldn’t expect it to. It isn’t changing very fast, either.
However, I want to repeat. I never, ever heard any slur or demeaning moniker or language come out of anyone’s mouth or email in all my time here.
A discussion of Damore is interesting, but would take at least 5 more paragraphs. I think a careful reading of what he wrote, with the understanding that he is spectrum and only intended surface meaning, would show the absence of any slur such as “pussy” or whatever. Which puts them far away from the behavior described in the OP.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
The bishops have a giant scandal that gets brought up all the time. A liberal response is to listen to valid criticism and seek to change. The conservative response is to bluster, shout and point fingers in ever other direction.
So no puzzle, really, just a reinforcement that a person’s goodness can in no way be measured by their religiosity
“And if my thoughts
Could all be seen
They would put my head
In a guillotine”
Now, with social media and the internets, it’s all possible.
So when will Catholic confessions become public? Gruden statements reprehensible but it’s like the cop finding a dead body in the trunk without a warrant. Which is the worst offense? Society has said the former. We let go a guilty man because there is a more important issue. Let’s say Gruden’s shrink released his private musings, do Raiders still fire him? Probably. But is that right?
We are going to have a generation of folks so uptight and mentally constipated because they can never utter in private any words that may harm someone.
A cagey entrepreneur will open up a “bulrushes” site for all the modern day Demetrios
@The Q:
What’s with the non-analagous analogies and Gruden apologia?
Regardless, Gruden leading a team of mostly Black players after racist comments is untenable from a football perspective. Coaches have lost the confidence of players for less personal reasons. See: Gase, Adam or any other Jets coach since Parcells.
@The Q:
Let’s say the therapist does that and Gruden sues his face off. Should Gruden prevail? Ummm… yeah.
You neolibs kill me. If you were posting in the mid 60s you would have been apoplectic that a man who used the n word passed the greatest civil rights bills since Lincoln. But I guess his private conversations with Richard Russell or Stennis weren’t published otherwise you’d be chirping for the head of this southern red neck racist, leaving it to Humphrey to pass the bills which would have failed but all you SJW would be happy you got LBJ’s scalp.
For the record, Gruden’s a huge ahole, deserves his disgrace. But you ideologues totally missed my greater point. At what point can anything anywhere at anytime be off limits now? Will we be afraid to even have PRIVATE conversations for fear of disclosures.
Sure you can sue your shrink but the damage is done. The IRS somehow got breached and tax information about billionaires was released. I’m all for it, but what if that was YOUR info that was released to the world. Not so good.
Again, a wingnut somehow records confessions, releases the info. And if it’s controversial, you will lose your job if you aren’t PC notwithstanding how it was obtained.
I’m sure, thousands of people are scrubbing their email accounts right about now lest one or two stray comments destroy their entire lives as a “blonde” joke from 1992 brands you a cisgender fascist misogynistic sexist.
@The Q:
I get over 400 emails per day. I replay to 25% of those, and I write another 50-100 per day. Currently, there are 6521 emails in my inbox, and over 6 Terabytes of emails going back to 1998.
I can guarantee you that in those millions of emails to me, and from me, you won’t find the words “fa**ot”, “Ni**er”, or any racists “jokes” or comments. Guarantee.
@The Q: And over in reality, in fact most people do not drop f-bonbs or other slurs in their work emails.
Nice try, Karen. #epicfail
EddieinCA, well aren’t you special. You want a cookie?
@Jay L Gischer: Every single place I’ve worked there have been at least a few assholes who step right up to the line with what they say, and then go way past it with what they do (but the latter is often harder to prove intent on)
And it always comes down to leadership. What does leadership tolerate.
At one recent job, I had to explain to people that “bitch” was inappropriate, particularly as a noun. This was a well known company. Along with open comments about how women can’t code because they’re too emotional.
Brogrammer culture pops up throughout the big software companies. Too many incel freaks. And worse, they somehow feel comfortable around me because I’ll drop the occasional f-bomb.
@Dude, gee, you must be the only one on earth who has perfect friends who are perfect people who never have racist thoughts and are in private, exactly what they appear to be in their business emails. Trust me, unless you’re a naive dolt, some of those you communicate with are bigger racists than Gruden. They just are smart enough not to get caught.
Again, you simplistic neolibs are so hell bent on proving your racial purity that you gloss over my main point.
Gruden is a dipschit. He deserves the social opprobrium and shame he is getting. What don’t you get about my agreeing with those outraged demanding his firing?
You people keep pointing out it was a “business email”. What if these were taken from private emails to Allen’s non team personal yahoo account?
Would any of you say “Geez, well since he didn’t send it to Allen’s business emails, he gets a pass.” We all know the outrage no matter the source. The result is the same. Bye bye Gruden. It matters not if those emails were publicly sent to the WFC or to Allen’s private acct. Some of you suggest “I never say racist stuff on a business email”. Well, no sh!tFew do. That’s not my point.
Nixon broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, stole the notes, then used them to portray Ellsberg as a kook.
If Ellsberg would have said he hates queers or other non PC utterings, I am sure the gang here would have excoriated him as a homophobic liar and given a pass as to how Nixon got the goods on the “the anti gay traitor”.
PS EddieinCA, like you I’m a City boy. I believe you went to Roosevelt or some other Eastern league school? The school with the small track and small football team? Marine League ruled back then. Maybe you guys could beat up on Hollywood High?
@The Q:
Good.
Social Justice Warriors are not, by and large, Neoliberals. They tend to inhabit the progressive wing of the party, not the neoliberal wing.
Let me guess: you think Glenn Greenwald isn’t a fucking moron, and that Matt Taibbi is making more and more sense.
Also, you clearly want to use the word “nigger” in conversation. If that’s what makes you happy, go for it. Hang out with your “nigger” loving friends and say it to each other. Take out a billboard, if that’s your thing.
I recommend having some significant accomplishments in the area of civil rights to blunt some of the inevitable criticism. Even then, there might be some confusion, but no more than if you were to keep using a moniker that suggests Q Anon.
Martyr yourself on the cross of the SJW fiends! Then people will know you’re a real man who tells it like it is.
@The Q: Years ago, when then-Clippers owner got caught up in a scandal because of some horrible, racist language he used in private conversations that were illegally recorded, I found it problematic. On the one hand, it violated our societal standards of justice. On the other, he simply had to go. No way such a man can own a team in a league that’s 75% Black.
Here, though, there’s really less of a concern. He sent these to an NFL official using his team account. I’m a little queasy Gruden got caught up in a fishing expedition that had nothing to do with Gruden but these were things that he wrote down and hit SEND on. Repeatedly. It’s not remotely a “private” conversation.
@James Joyner:
I would not really say that it was fishing expedition though. The emails came about as part of a legitimate investigation into harrassment at an NFL team, when said harrassment seems to go to the highest levels of the team then the president’s work email seems a reasonable part of the investigation.
@The Q: You are, dare I say in this context, significantly moving the goalpost by going to confessions and therapist’s records to make your point. E-mails (or, for that matter, old-school handwritten letters) are not the same level of private as the things you are citing.
@The Q:
FWIW, I don’t say it on my private e-mails, either. I have been known to use profanity in texts, however (but not racial or anti-gay slurs).
I am not even sure as to your point, save that you are concerned about how some hypothetical revelations and their consequences.
I am not sure how this current event equals the inevitable decline of doctor-patient confidentiality or the breaking of the confessional seal.
@Pete S: I agree with this assessment.
@keef: Shorter Keef: “Anything a white guy does is okay because I hate blacks.”
@Gustopher: “but no more than if you were to keep using a moniker that suggests Q Anon.”
To be fair to this tiresome old windbag, he was using Q long before the Anon existed. Believe it’s a Star Trek reference, but who knows…
@wr: I know, he’s been The Q since men were able to use racial slurs with impunity. But times change.
@The Q:
Every sentence you just wrote is wrong. I went to Franklin. Northern League. Normal sized track. Normal sized football team. Marine League? That was 4A. Franklin and the Northern League was 3A. Banning, from the Marine League won the 4A title 76-78, my high school years. The 3A title was won, ALL THREE YEARS, by a Northern League team, Wilson High. In fact, Wilson went 39-0 for the three years I was in high school.
Try harder.
@inhumans99:
I hadn’t paid any attention to Eminem in 15 years. Somebody steered me at Godzilla from last year.
OMFG is it jaw-dropping. It is eerie. No one can rap that fast, that many words, in so short of a timespan. That should be theoretically impossible.
Especially with the precision he brings. I was floored. Awed.
I brought up the lyric version of the song and at the end the screens flash by faster than I could finish reading. I had to pause repeatedly.
Dude raps faster than I can read!