ESPN Moves to Silence Golf Analyst Who Criticized Obama

ESPN Moves to Silence Golf Analyst Who Criticized Obama
*UPDATED: ESPN Ignores Political Tweets of Other Personalities
*UPDATE: More Cherry-Picking

Posted by Dana Loesch


A note for future prospective ESPN employees: You can only cheerlead Obama at ESPN. I’m not joking.

Case in point: The network’s golf analyst, 12-time PGA Tour winner Paul Azinger hit out at the President’s amount of golf games on Twitter:

Azinger’s remarks prompted ESPN to crack down:

ESPN is coming down on Paul Azinger for mocking President Barack Obama on Twitter. The golf analyst tweeted Thursday the Commander-in-chief plays more golf than he does — and that Azinger has created more jobs this month than Obama has.

On Friday ESPN ‘reminded” Azinger his venture into political punditry violates the company’s updated social network policy for on-air talent and reporters.

“Paul’s tweet was not consistent with our social media policy, and he has been reminded that political commentary is best left to those in that field,” spokesman Andy Hall told Game On! in a statement.

ESPN’s Hall would not comment on whether Azinger, who won the 1993 PGA Championship, will be fired, suspended or punished in some way. “We handle that internally,” he said.

Fired? Seriously? I wonder if Mayne was ever threatened with his job over his antics.


I support businesses’ rights and if ESPN wants to enact a ban on political commentary from their on-air talent (it seems a bit of a stretch for me to include personal social media accounts into that) they have the right to do such and contributors have the right not to sign with them. However, if ESPN is allowing one on-air talent to air his political views while denying another the same privilege under the same rules, then it seems tantamount to discrimination and a host of other problems, which isn’t OK.

Team Azinger, for the record.

*UPDATE: Further making my case for their cherry-picked policy enforcement, check out the Tweets of on-air talent Mayne:

What say you, ESPN?

*UPDATE #2: @FirstTeamTommy asks ESPN a very good question:

His link goes to this:

Barack Obama’s campaign received more than any other from Disney in 2008, nearly a quarter of a million dollars …

And he points out these Tweets from yet another ESPN staffer that apparently went unchecked:

And more!

So Disney bankrolls Obama’s campaign, also owns ESPN, allows glowing commentary of Obama from its contributors and on-air talent and censures Obama dissent from their talent. No, no bias here at all.