Roland Martin is being suspended for tweets he made during Sunday’s Super Bowl. It wasn’t about the game that he was tweeting. It all started with the David Beckham commercial for male underwear. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t care for the commercial at all. I thought David Beckham looked ridiculous and I even asked WHY is he promoting underwear instead of something else? I felt he was posing like a female supermodel instead of a male athlete. But, what do I know? Fashion and modeling are out in left field for me. Never paid much attention to either one. But Roland Martin’s tweets took his dislike a bit further.
His tweets were construed as anti-gay and promoting gay violence. What exactly did he tweet? The offensive tweets in question were:
“If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl” AND
“Who the hell was that New England Patriot they just showed in a head to toe pink suit? Oh, he needs a visit from #teamwhipdatass”
Three Days later CNN issued this comment and suspended Martin: “Roland Martin’s tweets were regrettable and offensive. Language that demeans is inconsistent with the values and culture of our organization, and is not tolerated. We have been giving careful consideration to this matter, and Roland will not be appearing on our air for the time being.”
I have to say I was surprised to see the network take such swift and decisive action regarding Martin’s tweets and the offensive meaning behind them. It does give me hope, that as a society, that things are moving in the right direction. After reading what the protesters said about Ellen being spokesperson for JC Penney, and the Washington State pastor who feels that people supporting same sex marriage are doing the devil’s work, it is refreshing to see an organization that will take action against intolerance of others.
Sometimes I think political correctness goes too far and becomes absurd, but in this case, I think CNN is to be commended for taking a stand. Promoting hate and violence against one group of our society, because they are different, is wrong. And, as a black man, who belongs to a group of people who have been discriminated against for over two hundred years and suffered great intolerance, Martin really should know better.
Let’s hope Martin uses his time off to reflect on his prejudices and work on changing them. Hopefully, others will learn something from it too.
If you want to see the entire exchange of tweets go to this link: Roland Martin Tweets
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