Tuesday, May 30, 2017

500 Minus One

Takuma Sato, a Japanese-born race car driver, won this year's Indy 500 this past weekend.
Denver Post columnist Terry Frei tweeted that he was "very uncomfortable" with a Japanese driver winning the race on Memorial Day weekend.  
Frei, whose father fought in WWII, apologized for his remarks, but it didn't save his job. The seven time Colorado Sportswriter of the year was fired for his "racist" comment. 
Columnists, by definition, are supposed to have and express opinions.  Newspapers used to regularly print disclaimers saying the opinions expressed were those of the writer and not necessarily those of the paper.  Now, apparently it is OK to fire someone for an on-line tweet that didn't even appear in his column.
Personally, I thought Sato's win was interesting, but not particularly disturbing. But, I also had a father who fought in WWII, so I can understand Frei's comment.  His firing bothers me a lot.

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