Shock: Days After ESPN Releases New Guidelines on Political Statements From Employees, They Bounce Conservative-Leaning Host In Favor of Liberal-Leaning Host

Sage Steele, whose name was really built for either a porn star or a sexy elite assassin employed by Lex Luthor, was one of the few conservative-tilting people at ESPN. She's complained that #Resistance "protesters" caused her to miss a flight, and that black people were "hypocritical" on racism, and that some of the worst racism she's encountered has come from blacks. (She's black herself.)

A few days ago ESPN issued new guidelines on what was permissible commentary on political issues from ESPN hosts on "public-facing media" (that is, any public statement, on Twitter, FaceBook, what have you). They said they wanted their "hard news" people to refrain from such commentary unless it was sports-related.

On the other hand, they encouraged non-hard-news people to connect sports with politics. "People are talking about politics in a different way now," the directive said, by which they meant the leftwing is now politicizing everything, and then concluded that ESPN must embrace this "new way" of injecting leftist politics into everything.

By the way, I have no idea what "hard news" is in the contest of sports coverage. It's a field consisting primarily of inventing awesome catchphrases like "Booyah!" and "Off the schneid."

Well, now Sage Steele is out of her job.

Leftwingers only thing conservative statements are "political;" their own claims are just the Holy Truths of #Science. Ergo, the first person to be purged is Sage Steele, though they claim she's still "very much employed" by ESPN.

She's just not hosting the show she used to host.

She'll be part of ESPN's "Sports Center On the Road Initiative," and if that's what it sounds like, all I can say is, Everyone loves being kicked out of a gig where they show up at the same place every day in order to be put on a bus and travel around the country. People love traveling every day of their working lives.

Outkick the Coverage discusses this:

The next day [after issuing the new guidelines encouraging employees to talk about the politics in the guise of sports] MSESPN did what MSESPN does -- it replaced a prominent conservative voice, Sage Steele, with a prominent liberal voice, Michelle Beadle. You'll recall that Beadle has spent much of the past several months on Twitter denigrating Donald Trump and those who voted for him. If Beadle had Tweeted the same things about Barack Obama and his voters, she'd be fired. But say it about Trump and his voters -- millions of whom watch ESPN every day -- and at MSESPN this is cause for promotion.

After the news went public of her removal from NBA coverage Steele trended on Twitter, being ripped by a mostly black audience for the audacity she has to not be a left wing liberal in sports.....

Apparently she got ripped in sexist and racist terms on Twitter yesterday -- the left celebrating the purging of a Race and Gender Traitor -- but no one stepped in to defend her. Not even ESPN, for whom she is supposedly "very much employed."

No one came to her aid in the sports media as these attacks ripped through social media all day long. There was total Twitter silence from MSESPN. You know, MSESPN, the same network that tried to make it appear that only women in sports media ever get bad things said about them online when they staged a viral video about mean Tweets to try and bolster their liberal talent's name recognition. Why is it when people with conservative opinions are attacked on social media the entire sports media goes silent? Why does MSEPN only protect liberal and left wing political beliefs? Especially when, let's be honest, it takes much more bravery for Steele to not trot out the same bland liberal political cliches.

Outkick the Coverage has previously speculated that ESPN's boss of bosses, Disney CEO Bog Iger, wants to run for president, so he's cooking himself up a leftwing media empire as his resume for the left, and his messaging center.

I hate being right all the time.

Update: Yeah, the "On the Road Initiative" is what I thought it was.

SportsCenter on the Road powered by Ford, which brings ESPN’s signature news and information program out of the studio and to sports events, will add more locations to its schedule over the next year. The initiative, which includes traveling anchors, crew and a set to events, began in early 2015 and has originated SportsCenter programs from more than 30 locations.

So she's lost her regular hosting gig and now will just do a whole bunch of traveling.

And as anyone can tell you, what a life it is to constantly be away from home and living large on room service and hotel pay-per-view.

Booyah!, ESPN. "Unconscious." Cool as the other side of the pillow.

PS: To see @michelleDBeadle's political tweets in the past month, see my Twitter feed for the past 20 minutes, where I've been RT-ing them.

I guess ESPN is encouraging people to "connect sports to politics" -- but only some sorts of politics.

posted by Ace at 04:36 PM

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