Wednesday, August 23, 2017

ESPN Pulls Robert Lee From UVA Game

Robert Lee
An Asian-American ESPN broadcaster named Robert Lee won't be working the University of Virginia's football team's season-opening game as planned because of the similarity of his name to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's in the wake of the Charlottesville violence.

The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that led to violence and the death of a counterprotester in a car ramming attack was held because of the city's decision to remove a statue of Lee.

ESPN said in a statement, "We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties. It's a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue."


ESPN said that Lee will work another game in Pittsburgh instead, and noted that assignments are switched all the time.

Wednesday morning. former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee shared a series of tweets mocking ESPN's trigger-happy decision-making.






ESPN has been strongly criticized -- primarily in conservative circles -- for injecting political issues into sports coverage and for allegedly taking sides in various controversies.

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