FEATURED JOBS
The USA Today reported on-line today that ESPN has removed fantasy football leagues with anti-Semitic names from its website after a complaint from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Some of those names included “Jews are Immoral,” “Jews are Terrible” and “Jews love pennies.”
“They may have been fantasy leagues but the hate is all too real,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center told USA Today. “This is another example of bigots leveraging Internet portals to demean their ‘enemies’ and recruit for their causes. Unfortunately, the targeted enemy in this case was a Jewish who was about to sign up his son to ESPN Fantasy Football.”
Cooper said ESPN “responded quickly and in good faith to our concerns.”
ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said: “Offensive hate speech like the examples discussed here have no place on our site. While we have systems in place to protect against inappropriate team and league names clearly with millions of users and deceptive ways around the safeguards, we can never completely eliminate it.”
I think this the right – and only decision – that was done swiftly and authoritatively. I applaud and support the removal of offensive speech in this manner. My only question is that if they’re saying these “examples have no place here” yet they allow names like Redskins and Chiefs which are demeaning to Native Americans.
Do you think they are on the same level?
Comments (0)