Clickbait, Slippery Slopes, and ESPN’s Robert Lee

Stephanie Weaver
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

This story about ESPN reassigning Robert Lee to cover a different football game is an excellent example of the problems of clickbait culture — news sources start with the deliberately inflammatory headline, then tone down the rhetoric in an article that fewer people actually read. Consider the New York Times coverage. The title: “ESPN Pulls Announcer Robert Lee from Virginia Game Because of His Name.” Later in the article, though, Matthew Haag clarifies, “ESPN executives and Mr. Lee decided that for his safety it would be best to have him work on a different game that Saturday.” ESPN did not fire Lee. They are not booting him out of their system entirely. They moved him from announcing one game to another.

This has been treated as an instance of political correctness run wild, epitomized in Dana Milbank’s Washington Post op-ed “Today, Stonewall Jackson. Tomorrow, Michael, Reggie, and Jackson Hole,” alternately titled“All Things Confederate-ish Must Go.” I might actually use this piece later in the semester to teach my students about logical fallacies, because, boy howdy does Milbank indulge in the slippery slope. But it reflects a deep fear that many are feeling in this moment. This fear is usually stated as “Where does it stop?” but I think it might be better framed in terms of, “I don’t know what offends people anymore.” And to many (myself included), being offended that a man is named Robert Lee and is doing something in Virginia is ridiculous.

But this isn’t about potentially offending people. This is about Robert Lee’s safety. I don’t think that ESPN and Lee are worried about antifa or BLM knocking down their doors; I think they’re worried about trolls. The idea of creating an outrage machine surrounding Robert Lee and the UVA game by pretending to be offended by ESPN’s insensitivity would absolutely delight trolls, both those who are only in it for the lulz and those who want to forward an alt-right political agenda by pointing out the “snowflake” culture of the left. Imagine how easy it would be: set up a few twitter accounts to get the whole thing started, then watch the Internet devolve in the kind of slippery slope argument Milbank’s espoused, except with inflammatory language and crude images. The trolls don’t even need a reason to do it, apart from the feeling of smug superiority you get when you’ve managed to make the rest of the world go insane.

You know who never ever wins in a troll outrage machine? The person at the center, and as a person of color, Robert Lee has good reason to fear for his safety and well-being.

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Stephanie Weaver

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Writing Teacher. Geek Girl. Knitting Rhetorician.

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