Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [355]
Anyway, Kevin Jackson told me the column posted with that Hitler line in it. He didn’t edit it but saw it online and went in the system and wiped it out. It was only up for an hour and an half, but in that short time, everything just went poof. Everything went crazy. The Boston Herald picked up the story, a Boston TV station picked up the story. It was all over the blogosphere. It then went national. Kevin told me, “I know what you were trying to say, but at this point we’re in containment mode. Go ahead and board your flight. We’ll talk more about this when you land.”
When I got off the plane, the first person I called was my manager. As I’m talking to him, Rob King, the editor in chief of ESPN.com, called and told me, “You’re not going on the air today. I think you need to come to my office.” I was petrified. I’m thinking, “Oh, my God. Am I about to lose my job?!” You see your career just flashing before your eyes. Nobody at ESPN said I was going to be fired, and on the plane ride to Bristol I was trying to reassure myself, thinking, “Okay, I can get out of this situation. It’ll die down. Today’s game will go on and nobody will care because they want to watch Game Five.” That changed once I got to Bristol. I met with Rob, and while he comforted me, I didn’t leave feeling good about my job security.
I flew back home to Orlando. My manager called me with updates every time he talked to a higher-up. He told me, “Everyone knows you didn’t do it intentionally, but people are thinking you should have known better. But I’m containing things. Everything’s okay.” Once again, I thought it would die down, but it just seemed to pick up more speed. A Boston Herald columnist essentially called me an idiot, and they had another news story quoting Rob, who said, essentially, ESPN was taking the matter seriously. Sometime after that, Rob called me and told me I was suspended for a week—no writing, no TV. I understood he had to suspend me because I put him in a tough spot. I’m not angry about it. It was my fault. I got what I deserved.
Once I was officially suspended, I stayed away from the Internet for about a week. I was embarrassed and humiliated. I was deeply concerned about my professional reputation. I didn’t want my colleagues or friends in the business—many who are Jewish—to think less of me or believe I was an insensitive jerk.
Then the same day I was suspended, I started getting these phone calls at my house—people calling and hanging up, one after another. I didn’t understand it. It seemed bizarre. Why are people calling just to hang up? Then one of my friends sent me an e-mail telling me that a Boston radio station gave out my phone number on air and posted it along with my home address on their website.
That was the only time I was really pissed off. Then someone at ESPN told me that same radio station, just before Game Five, had a poster up outside of the Celtics arena that said “Fire Jemele Hill” and they were handing out fliers expressing the same sentiment. That was kind of strangely cool, but giving out my address and my number jeopardized my safety.
During my suspension, I was put on military silence with the media. People think I didn’t talk because I didn’t want to face it. I wanted to face it. I wanted to do interviews, but ESPN didn’t think that was best. They wanted it to die down and thought if I started responding to media requests, that would keep it alive in the news cycle. I just thought people needed to hear from me. I wrote my own apology statement. No one at ESPN did it for me. I wrote it on the plane from LA and gave it to an ESPN PR person on Monday when I got to Bristol, but they didn’t release it until Tuesday. So then some people assumed I wasn’t sorry or contrite, and I only wrote it because I was told to. None of that was true. Thankfully, I got the opportunity to do an apology column once I came off suspension. I just hope that showed people what was really in my character.
I’m never going to forget what happened. Besides, I couldn’t if I