A coming-out column, and beyond
The sports media story of last week may have been Tim Hardaway's coming-out party -- the one where he said he hated gays and could never accept playing with them had he known they were apart of any of the NBA teams he was with during his recently-ended career.
The sports media-related twist to that definitely was how that incident was the flash point for ESPN.com columnist Mary Buckheit to come out herself.
Her Friday, Feb. 16 column entitled "He hate me," the East Coast native Buckheit who now lives in Venice wrote: "I swore a long time ago that I would never write a "coming out" column. And believe it or not, this isn't intended to be one. It's just that this is the first time I've been provoked to the point of a certain ancillary admission. I've never had an inclination to disclose anything to anyone really. Sure, the frequent inaccurate assumptions can be frustrating, but in an age of too much information I prefer to err on the side of less rather than more. This isn't to say that I live out an especially clandestine operation, but I've never actually said those three declarative words to a boss or a coach … or even to my parents."
The point of her column wasn't to be self-serving, but to point out that athletes like Hardaway who becomes distracted by things such as whether a teammate or opponent is gay and could affect his performance really is where the news angle should be. The uproar shouldn't be focused so much on how he expressed such an ignorant attitude about the subject.
After we made note of this courageous act in an item for SportsByBrooks.com, we asked Buckheit if there was any backlash in the days that followed about what she wrote.
"No regrets yet," she said in an email. "About 700 emails found their way to my hotmail account in three days. I am still pretty overwhelmed. Overall, I was surprised to find that at least 3/4 of them were respectful of the argument and many were even outright supportive of the underlying truth. There was a fair share that I could hardly stomach, but that was expected, of course. Those had a way of jumping out at me, but they were balanced by kind words from people I never expected to hear from ... and the fact that my mother still hasn't seen it. :)
Read on ...
"People seemed to most appreciate that the story ultimately stuck to sports and was rooted in relativity to athletics -- not personal opinions or politics. I was happy reading the feedback from majority of readers who "got it". They understood what I was driving at as a sportswriter. While it was hard for me to not blast Hardaway and say that I think him to be an outspoken ignoramus, I knew that wasn't really relevant to ESPN's audience -- the people who know who Hardaway is because of what he did on the basketball court, not because of years of brilliant public discourse."
Buckheit says she grew upin Connecticut and went to Siena College, a small Catholic school outside of Albany, N.Y. before going to Bristol, Conn., for three years to work at ESPN. She has been writing her ESPN.com column from her home for almost a year.
"My friends have been really great -- all along, but the last few days especially," she said. "It's not like I have been going out of my way to fool anybody, but it just so happens that sometimes, unless you tell them otherwise, people take what they assume to be true as fact.
"My editors were probably the most surprised. I wasn't on deadline or asked to write this column. I had been watching the story on ESPNews develop all day and was having discussions with my friends ... then there I was home alone at 2 a.m. thinking 'If i don't write something tonight i never will.'
"So I filed to the folks in Bristol at about 4 a.m. my time. What's worse is that my comma key on my keyboard decided not to show up to work so my bosses received an unexpected file from me in the middle of the night where I came out in about 1000 words without one comma. I'm pretty sure they questioned my sobriety when they saw that one pop into their inbox at 7 a.m. ET."
No, but it was a sobering column indeed to read.
Interestingly, Buckheit's latest batch of columns that resumed Wednesday was the start of a series where she revisted the last four winners of the ESPN.com "Hottest Female Athletes" winners, that started with Jennie Finch (2003) and will continue with Heather Mitts (2004), Amanda Beard (2005) and Tanith Belbin (2006).
Comments
What wondrous rays of truthful happiness dance across my heart! Well done!
Posted by: Stephanie | February 22, 2007 11:02 AM