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Loading ...ESPN removes offensive ad
02.03.2009 2:16pm EST
(New York City) ESPN has removed an ad condemned as homophobic by LGBT rights groups.
The ad on the sports network’s Web site was intended to promote its NBA programming. It featured NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and sports commentator Mike Breen.
In the ad, Breen attempts to fist bump O’Neal, but Breen refers to it as a “fist kiss.” O’Neal recoils in revulsion saying to Breen: “You’re a weirdo man. Stay over there. Fist kiss. Disgusting.”The ad first appeared on the weekend and drew complaints Monday from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Human Rights Campaign and 365gay brother publication AfterElton. Both AfterElton and 365Gay are owned by Logo, a division of MTV Networks.
ESPN, which in the past has reached out to the LGBT community, has now pulled the ad and issued a public apology.
“Our intent is to send a positive message about the camaraderie of sports and to do so as creatively as we can. However, we understand your perspective on this ad and would like to apologize to the members of the gay community. In addition, we have decided to remove the ad from the campaign’s online executions,” said Rob Tobias, ESPN’s Vice President for Media Relations in a statement.
“ESPN has a long-standing tradition of supporting diversity in the workplace and beyond. We are fully committed to continuing a dialogue that welcomes and recognizes diverse perspectives,” the statement said.
GLAAD said it was pleased with the speed in which ESPN acted.
“We are pleased that ESPN realized that this ad was problematic and decided to remove it so quickly,” said GLAAD President Neil G. Giuliano.
“Ads that exploit these kinds of clichéd stereotypes may elicit cheap laughs, but they also send a message that some people are less deserving than others of dignity and respect. We will continue to work with ESPN to promote media images of the LGBT community that are fair, accurate and inclusive.”
O’Neal, like ESPN, does not have a record of homophobia.
In 2005 he intervened in a gay bashing on a Miami Beach street. The 7-foot-1 star saw a man yelling gay slurs throw a bottle at a gay couple hitting one man. The suspect then got into a car and sped off, but O’Neal followed.
He flagged down a Miami Beach police officer and the suspect was arrested on charges of aggravated assault and assault with a deadly weapon.
While ESPN has pulled the offensive ad from its Web site, it remained up Tuesday on YouTube.
I am glad this ad got pulled. When I come out to my family, I want to be thought of as a man, a human being, a stepson, a brother, a nephew, as a friend to someone, not reduced to implied images (thanks to the crude ad) of fists (which I refuse to get involved with) and maybe other things getting shoved up his turd-tunnel.
This ad is taking away the humanity of gay men and depicting them as “weirdo men”. While I don’t object to whatever it is other gay men have got to do, just don’t connect me “image-wise” to a place where fecal matter is formed and base your opinion of me as a gay man on that “so-called ad” if you are family or friend who is straight and “not familiar with me as a gay man” but only as a relative.
I wish the gay community wouldn’t haggle over such trivial things. We have important issues to address, and this isn’t one of them.
quite the tempest in a jar.
Hmmmm…Morgan, I didn’t see any anal fisting connection there. I suppose some people will project anything on something that may seem suggestive to them.
Yes, I did see a sissy joke there. Perhaps even a reference to two guys kissing — with fist or lips being (by inference) referred to as “disgusting” between two men. But that is all.
Sorry, didn’t see anything anal in it at all. Not that there is anything wrong with that if you douche and your partner wears a condom.
After all, oral sex involves an hole too. One that, it might be said, involves pre-fecal matter functions; occasional vomiting of such; bad breath, and germs — which could be considered disgusting as well. Vagina’s are another oral cavity, they involve decomposing blood “periodically” and toxic shock syndrome far more often than anuses.
So Morgan, any hole can be disgusting if you really focus on it in a negative way. Even hands are problematic considering where they’ve been in your life.
Believe me, if your relatives think of you as a disgusting butt bandit…it won’t be because of some lame ass commercial. It will be because of every school yard put-down they’ve heard from grades K thru 12 and beyond.
Sex education and respect for different sexual orientations needs to start in school at the beginning. If a kid in the first grade is old enough to call another kid a faggot, then he is old enough to know how hurtful that is to a member of the GLBT community.
PS – I’m glad ESPN pulled the commercial, it was juvenile. But Morgan, please, don’t be so offensive to people who have a different sexual expression than you by sounding no different that the homophobes. Work on that a little.
Since when has propaganda not been important? Take a history class. This is very good news!
Such protests look extremely trivial to me. Small wonder that our opponents refuse to see that we are struggling for equal rights. They’ll think we’re merely trying to stop free speech so we won’t be offended. Just wait. This will be used against us.
This is NOT AT ALL trivial. This constant perpetutation that affection between men is somehow repulsive or at least something to be laughed at, made fun of or vehemently defended against – is the exact reason that so many GLBT youth endure constant taunting and harassment (if not outright violence). It’s bad enough that we have many very weak political and religious leaders in ths country that add constant fuel to that fire and there isn’t very much we can do about that quickly – we can at least call the media to task when they do the same. What I find annoying is implying that everyone’s sensitivity level is, or should be, the same. An adult GLBT person who has survived all the rough years is not necessarily in the same position as a GLBT youth today. We also don’t know what other co-factors these kids have to endure. It’s small wonder that even with the heightened level of GLBT visibility in our country today that there are still so many youths that attempt or commit suicide. You have shows like South Park that use the word “gay” interchangeably as both a statement of fact “Big Gay Al” and an insult “dude, that’s so Gay!”. YOu have religious leaders that are constantly undermining their self-esteem (Heir Ratzinger comes to mind). Add to this new social dynamics that simply did not exist years ago (online websites that discuss peoples personal business etc.)Instead of dismissing these concerns as “trivial”, why not support a productive response to them – if not, you are more a part of the problem than the solution..
>This is NOT AT ALL trivial.
I agree with you. What bothers me, though, is that it’s an issue that takes some sophistication and experience to comprehend. What I mean by that is that Joe and Josephine Average American–people who haven’t had to think about this stuff daily, like most gay people have–probably can’t connect the dots between homophobia and gender-role oppression. So, they could probably be very tolerant to the point of supporting our equal rights, but then turn around and think that it’s perfectly “normal” to recoil at a same-sex sign of affection.
What’s the point?
The point is that we can get more traction on this issue with discussion than we can with protest, boycott, and demand. I’m not opposing the protest that was made of this commercial, but, without follow up explanation, willingness to talk it out, and so on, then I’m concerned about it appearing as if we’re just the PC behavior/speech police trying to control other people.
Having Shaq participate in a round-table discussion about homophobia and gender-role oppression in professional sports and airing such a show at a prominent time would have been a LOT more impressive to me than issuing an apology and yanking the commercial.