Greg Easterbrook finally gets his ESPN gig back

Colby Cosh notices:

Forgiven? Two-and-a-half years after being dropped down the memory hole by ESPN, Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback football column has suddenly reappeared with new content on Page 2. Thus continue the curious peregrinations of the world's only 8,000-word weekly sports column written by a fellow of the Brookings Institution.

I would guess that Easterbrook is back at ESPN because Michael Eisner no longer runs the Disney-ABC-ESPN-ETC megamedia company. You'll recall that in October 2003 in one sentence in his former blog on Marty Peretz's New Republic website, Easterbrook seemed to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, as it were, and immediately lost his other job writing about the NFL on Eisner's ESPN. In a twist that Joe Stalin would have saluted, ESPN.com not only fired Easterbrook but deleted all his archives.

As I wrote:

The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook famously denounced this Disney-Miramax production [Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Vol. I"] for excessive violence, noting, "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."

Easterbrook was widely excoriated both for terminal unhipness and for supposedly resurrecting the myth that Jews control the media. Disney supremo Michael Eisner, however, did control Easterbrook's other employer, ESPN, which immediately fired him. Most commentators opined that Easterbrook had it coming.

All I can say is that if Walt Disney were alive today, he'd be spinning in his cryogenic preservation chamber.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer