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Easterbrook Fired from ESPN

Instapundit reports that Greg Easterbrook has been fired from ESPN for his distasteful comments about Jewish movie executives earlier this week.

Eric Alterman at Altercation says we should accept Easterbrook's apology. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek writes Romenesko to say he knows Easterbrook very well and he is not anti-semitic.

Atrios says he didn't want Easterbrook fired either. He says, "I just am pretty disturbed that he didn't confront the main issue - or that he even embraced it - and his defenders gave him a pass."

For those not familiar with Gregg Easterbrook until this (and that includes us) he is a senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, with a column at ESPN.

Here's the column that started the embroglio (which, by the way, wasn't published on ESPN). The column was a review of Quentin Tarrantino's new movie, Kill Bill. Here are the comments at issue:

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

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