More Beckmann [LOCKED]
The last Beckmann thread got locked up and pretty heated, this really has more to do with the after effects of Beckmann's "fried chicken" article. Jeff Moss of DSR has an article with some info that is likely pertinent here as a follow up:
- Beckmann claims to U of M not to have written the article, but merely signed off on another person's writing
- Hoke was livid and wants Beckmann gone lest this affects recruiting
- Dave Brandon and the athletic department wrote Beckmann's apology, the first of which Beckmann rejected in favor of a revised and more mildly worded one
there is plenty of language about developing stories and such, but it seems like there might be more to this story than just the orignal article and apology. granted, Moss is a bit of a a**hole on the detroit sports scene, mostly using twitter to instigate flame wars with the older generation of detroit sports reporters, but i think he knows his stuff and does a pretty good job.
Moss does report that he had an interaction with UofM trustee Denise Illich who was instrumental in getting Greg Henson's career changed for not toeing the company line with the red wings and tigers.
http://detroitsportsrag.net/the-kentucky-fried-mossisms/
EDIT: i am considering this On Topic because it includes info about Hoke, recruiting and Brandon.
Mod edit: This isn't even not having nice things, this story is just too political for the confines of the MGoBoard. Unless there's some kind of movement from the powers that be, Beckmann posts are going to come down from here on out. JGB.
If Hoke thinks it will affect recruiting, get rid of him...
Unless you're Gordon Gee
Wait, can Hoke fire Gordon Gee?
Hoke doens't have to fire him per say, he just has to provide a strong impetus for his firing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Fallacy
What are you getting at? Hoke may fire Brandon or maybe an English teacher because he/she gave a player a B- on an essay?
A Slippery Slope arguement is not valid unless you establish other facts.
If Hoke wants a commentator gone because he said/ signed off on potentially racist comments, then why keep the guy arround? What does he do for M anyway?
Are slippery slope arguments normally valid?
Show me one instance of a college football coach having too much power over a small to medium sized town obsessed with college football. It just doesn't happen.
I don't understand. Fire Hoke, why?
/s
FIRE THIS MAN
God what an idiot. He rejected the AD's apology in favor of a more mildly worded one? And claims that he didn't write it, but just took someone else's writing? As though that makes it suddenly ok, that the racist views he championed aren't his own, but just something that he wanted people to think was his own? The sooner he's out of a job the better.
The fact he reworded that apology is good for us though. It means he didn't do something a supervisor told him to do, so Brandon has something to point at to support firing him.
Also, does the guy even have an employment contract? Usually, only top executives at major companies have one, but I don't know anything about Athletic Departments.
...at this point, it doesn't matter. Nationalities, races and ethnicities are federally protected from discrimination. Beckman's article can be interpreted as harrassment. Regardless of employment contract or not, Michigan is within their full rights to terminate with cause. The catch 22 is if you take him down for that reasoning, to save your butt from anything coming back to bite ya, I'd imagine you'd probably have to give the heave-ho to all directly involved in allowing that article out there (unless it was an op/ed)...
*Not an employment/civil rights lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once...
I thiink your statements are a bit misguided. The only issues M faces are the PR varieties. Beckman's comments are not tortious at all, and cannot be considered harrassment or descrimination. Also, everyone is protected from descrimination, not just minorities.
How can his statements not be construed as discrimination and harrassment at all (I am actually curious and not trying to argue with you)? You mention tortious, but I have little to no knowledge of tort laws, but isn't that more related to like defamation and negligence?
After graduating, I've worked multiple places at Michigan, although never the Athletic Department, and regardless of state law it is damn near impossible to get fired from this place. First off it takes a lot of effort to commit an offense that gets you a formal letter in your file. About the only ways to really get fired fast are privact act violations since they open the University to expensive lawsuits.
Beyond that, first you need to commit an offense worth writing you up over. It normally takes a lot of effort to commit such an offense and even if you commit it, it takes a boatload of paperwork to write you up for it. After that you need to have all kinds of meetings about a plan of action to ensure this doesn't happen again, better aligning your work policies with those of your supervisor, etc. If the offense happens again a lot of times you don't even get fired, just a higher level of HR steps in. Other times the employee will preemptive run off to HR and ask for extra training to perform their job, which means they get a second, third, fourth, or even fifth chance while they undergo more training.
Eventually of course you can be fired, how in most cases it is easier to make the person's job unpleasant enough they quit or go elsewhere in the University (move their office, reorganize your unit a little and give them unpleasant duties, etc). Or you just don't apply to get their posistion refunded if they're term based. I've been in situations where it took us months to get someone out the door. Depending on how good an employee is they can linger forever if they play their cards right.
...fire with Beckman for some time now. With the political and social content of his radio show, it was inevitable that he was going to do something at cross purposes with 1000SSS. BTW, it matters not what brand of politics or social commentary that Beckman espouses. Any sort is problematic for someone whose job depends on him being perceived as entirely non-controversial to the entire Michigan fanbase.
I don't understand why UM, a public institution that tries to avoid controversy because of that, has allowed Beckmann all this time to be both the voice of Michigan football while keeping his other job as a right-wing talk show/host columnist. That's bound to lead to trouble. Beckmann should choose one or the other.
And I would say that if they had a left-wing talk show host/columnist as an alternative.
I know absolutely zero about the poltical leanings of Jim Brandstatter. The same with George Blaha (voice of MSU football). That's how it should be.
If I was Brandon, and I'm protecting a billion dollar brand, I'd rectify this situation quickly and find a nice retirement package in Beckmann's future.
/LOST
Agreed. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that sports personalities for major sporting entities not also try to make a living peddling political opinion. Choose what you want to do.
Let go of Beckmann because of his overt political views? You'll have to fire 85% of the UofM staff and faculty for being obstinate liberals. And I suppose Schembechler should have been fired? You surely knew he was a conservative.
I don't know why we don't look at this model and admire it: Schembechler was a die-hard Repulblican, and I believe Carr an equally adamant Democrat. I'm sure they had significant disagreements, but they never let that interfere with their judgment of who the other person was. They were intense friends who admired one another. Same goes for Bo and many of his former players.
Having political views and publishing overtly racist colums are two different things. I do not know if you are a Republican, but Conservitives have had a very difficult time understanding that Beckman is not in trouble for being a Conservative, he is in trouble because he is tin-eared to racism.
Political views vs. racist column is not the point I'm arguing. My reply was to a post which stated that Beckmann should be removed (essentially) because he has overt political views, not because he wrote a racist column.
I am going to conclude that given a) your angry mob hatred of Beckmann, and b) your absolute affinity with throwing the word "racist" around as a weapon, that you are probably a democrat. If I'm painting with the same broad brush as you are, I would say Liberals are having a hard time disguising their hatred of Beckmann based on his political views, and looking for any reason possible to fire him (and have been doing so for years).
Keep in mind, all that was "according to DetroitSportsRag.com sources". This isn't necessarily a news report.
Agreed. I've followed Moss on Twitter a bit and he's quite the blow-hard. He may be dead on with his information, but I'd like to have it confirmed by a reliable source before passing judgment.
He seems to validate Moss on this one. I think that Moss reports factual stuff about the local sports personalities. Most of them are idiots so nothing shocks me. But once he goes on to his ranting it's like a vulgar version of Valenti after the Sparty (HR PuffnStuff, Hurricane Katrina) meltdown against ND.
If Hoke wants him gone, can his ass immediately. This isn't the first time he's said something stupid and ignorant regarding race, and if he's too lazy to check something before signing his name to it that's no excuse.
Thanks for the memories and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
I agree. Mixing sports broadcasting with politics is stupid to begin with (e.g., see Rush Limbaugh and MNF), and at this point the risks of keeping Beckmann far outweigh the rewards.
Hell, even if he's telling the truth that he just signed his name to something written by another person, that's pretty pathetic in itself. (Plus, maybe read it first, Frank?)
Dump him.
There is no reason to believe any of this. Jeff Moss is a very angry hater and has nothing positive to say about anyone or anything. He is not reputible and is in general hated in the industry. I don't think there is any reason to take anything he says seriously.
He's a flame war artist.
I really, really miss Bob Ufer.
.... and Tom Hemingway
Edit: if indeed he denied having written the column...
<academic>
His "I'm not racist; I'm just a plagiarising fraud" defense is pathetic, and immediately proves him unworthy of any professional association with an institution of higher learning. Bye bye, now.
</academic>
is really not calling a good game anymore anyway. He often is unsure of player names and makes more "Lunquist mistakes" than Lunquist does. He really does seem that in touch with the game anymore.
if you have a problem with "political correctness" you have a problem with people different from yourself. Can the guy and move on. There is no room for antiquated racist thinkers. This is Michigan.
was that it appeared his goal was to make a broader point about political correctness, which may or may not be a fair point, but why in the world would you choose this situation to make that point when it was clear to everyone in the world and Sergio even admitted that Sergio's comments were MEANT to be hurtfull.
Pretty hard to claim political correctness was at work in such a case.
If Gary Moeller can get fired for getting shitfaced in Southfield, then Beckmann should be fired for being SOBER and thinking that writing that article was a good idea. If this article isn't an indication of early onset dementia, I don't know what is.
Also....Gus Johnson? (I can dream)
Technically Moeller wasn't fired. He was ordered a one year leave of absence to get his "issues" together but he rejected that and resigned instead. But I get what you're saying.
I don't have a problem letting Beckmann go over this, but I'm not sure where you see evidence of "early onset dementia" in this.
However, I also think that the climate of political correctness make dialogue about this topic, along with homosexuality, abortion, religion, politics, and several other issues close to impossible. It would be great if there was a climate for true debate and dialogue, but if you take a position outside of what is PC, you are pretty typically marginalized as being a bigot, racist, 'phobe, wingnut, etc. I dislike that all these topics are verboten at mgoblog, but sadly, I understand why.
I agree. In today's world of political correctness (which for a lot of the time has been beneficial) There is no real appropriate climate for intelligent discourse for these kinds of topics. If one chooses to discuss these topics and share their view point respectfully, I believe we'd see more progress. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, and will continue to not be the case.
Take Phil 355. You'll see.
There is no such thing as a politically correct position on controversial issues; that's a fantasy of the ever politically incorrect bigot. But there are such things as respectful ways to disagree about sensitive topics, and Beckmann didn't even try to find one.
This is demonstrably false. Whenever issues of race, gender, religion or sexuality come up in the public discourse, there is a clear politically-correct position to take - the strictly neutral, everyone-is-equal-in-every-way stance. Taking that stance effectively guarantees no media criticism. Deviating from it all - no matter how good one's intentions might be - can be very dangerous.
I am kind of tired that people are buying into Beckman's view of Policitcal Correctness. He is saying that being offended by racist comments is being to PC, that is a straw man. He then goes on to expand upon the racism. Again, if you think the problem here lies with the readers being too sensitive, perhaps you are also a racist and like my grandfather, just think you are not.
This reply, in which you accuse them of being a racist because they want to discuss the topic, could not be better validation of the points they are making.
The poster expressed frustration with people buying Beckmann's line on how political correctness functions in society, which Beckmann used as cover to make a bunch of racist comments. Then the poster suggested that if you cannot see how the comments are racist, you might be blinded by your own bigotry.
I guess you want it laid out why the comments were racist. Is that right?