News-Record.com

ESPN.com. columnist Jemele Hill was suspended last week for likening the Boston Celtics to Hitler in a piece about her disaffection for the Beantown's NBA champion basketball team.

Hill is a talented young writer whose career included a stint at the News & Observer of Raleigh. She still should have a bright future. But you should never, ever, use Hitler as a punch line in journalism.

What is and is not offensive in today's society is moving target. In the entertainment world, Jerry Seinfield as gotten away with it. The animated Fox show "Family Guy" seemingly exists to lampoon everyone from Hitler to Jesus (and, so far, gets away with it on dozens of channels daily, counting reruns). The hit Broadway play, "The Producers," gets away with it, being based as it is on a zany play within a play called "Springtime for Hitler."

But in serious journalism it's a one-way street to trouble.

Hill, a Detroit native, was trying to convey how a Detroiter could never pull for the Celtics. (For folks in my neck of the words, Duke and Carolina fans express similar sentiments about one another's teams.) Hill originally wrote in her ESPN.com column: "Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan."

The reference susbsequently was edited out of the column. But the damage had been done.

Hill wrote in an online apology:

"I deeply regret the comment I made in a column Saturday. In expressing my passion for the NBA and my hometown of Detroit I showed very poor judgment in the words that I used. I pride myself on an understanding of, and appreciation for, diversity — and there is no excuse for the appalling lack of sensitivity in my comments. It in no way reflects the person I am. I apologize to all of my readers and I thank them for holding me accountable. This has been an important lesson for me and illustrates that, like many people, I still have a lot of growing and learning to do."

Some in the profession have called for Hill's firing, and compare her reckless words to Don Imus's well-chronicled comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Hill, incidentally, called for Imus to be fired after his "nappy-headed ho's" remarks.

Frankly, I don't think this is a firing offense. It's hard to construe Hill, an African American, meaning to equate an African American team, coached by an African American, with Hitler. Or to compare her comments with Imus's, which were calculated as a personal attack on individuals members of a team.

Still, it was a clumsy, ill-considered analogy meant to be funny. It wasn't.

If I were Hill's editor, I'd sit her down and tell her never to use Hitler in an attempt to be humorous.

I'd suspend her, as ESPN has done (for an unspecified amount of time). Then I'd fully expect her never to forget this episode as long as she lives.

Update: Richard Prince cites a BET video that raises, again, the specter ofa double standard on what's offensive.