thelesterlee
ESPN is the self-proclaimed ‘leader of sports’ that has found itself in the news every day this week as their employees take turns being racist as hell. This week, it’s Stephen A. Smith’s turn to spread xenophobia.
Stephen A. Smith on Shohei Ohtani: “I don’t think it helps that the number one face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying in this country.”
WTF pic.twitter.com/dTzvZuMM6U
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) July 12, 2021
First Take ruined sports programming. Stephen A and Skip Bayless started shouting about Tim Tebow or whatever and now every sports show decided to lean more towards ‘entertaining’ than ‘informative’ except First Take isn’t even close to entertaining.
Stephen A Smith has leveraged the success of First Take into becoming the star of the network. He’s doing Euro League soccer coverage. He’s doing UFC fight night. All while shouting in the same tones about everything.
So when Smith sits on his ‘hit’ TV show and says that baseball’s no. 1 star needs to speak English, I have no choice but to point at ESPN and blame them for allowing this man to even comment on baseball when we all know that Smith hasn’t watched a baseball game since the Bush administration.
One of the biggest baseball stars of the last 20 years was Sammy Sosa and I’m still not entirely sure what his voice sounds like. My man was snacking on HGH gummies and smiling after hitting 700 foot home runs and lying to Congress. King shit.
Why would it matter if Shohei Ohtani uses an interpreter for post-game interviews? The fuck are you expecting him to say? Have you ever watched a press conference? It’s robots repeating ‘the team played hard’ over and over again.
I still don’t understand why people needed Naomi Osaka to talk to the press so badly as if fans’ enjoyment of players has anything to do with the lame bland nonsense they tell reporters when in reality it has everything to do with what they do on the field.
Here’s a quick rule of thumb for your takes: if Will Cain and Clay Travis agree and defend you, you are 100000% in the wrong.
Stephen A Smith apologized 4 times within 24 hours of his odd xenophobic take which only put a spotlight on his OTHER xenophobic take he had when he discussed Team USA’s loss to Nigeria in an Olympic exhibition match.
This is exactly what needed to said about TEAM USA!!! pic.twitter.com/duH385AlwR
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 12, 2021
This video is posted on his personal Twitter account. He’s proud to sit there and intentionally mispronounce Nigerian names and shit on an African country for no reason.
What is going on here? Why is Stephen A Smith turning into Tucker Carlson?
This is ESPN’s fault. The execs at that network have convinced themselves that no one can speak about a topic except for SAS. After the exile of so many great talents over the last decade, ESPN truly does not have anyone on staff to even talk about baseball.
Nope, Stephen A. Smith has to attempt to diagnose why MLB has lost popularity but instead of pointing the finger at the company that stamps his paychecks for gutting any and all baseball TV analysts, he decided to point the finger at Ohtani’s work visa and accent.
How often do we point out that celebrities get too rich and famous and quickly become alienated from the people that support them? Stephen A Smith has become too big. When SAS first started at ESPN, he would’ve congratulation Nigeria and a team of black men for not only competing with USA but getting the W.
Now this motherfucker Stephen A is mocking Nigerian names like he’s hosting a Barstool podcast with some thin-lipped, easily sunburned, 20-something whose entire sense of humor is pretending to not know anything so he can trick his audience of college kids into thinking being dumb is cool, funny and lucrative.
It’s time for ESPN to blow it all up and start the rebuild. Get new diverse talent out there. Perhaps people who with the sports they are discussing. Also, arguing is shitty TV.
It’s okay to have TV shows where people agree and speak with numbers and stats and facts and don’t rely on theatrics and semantics to make their point. Oh, and don’t make fun of Africans.
Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts, critiques or concerns, drop a comment below or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee.
