Jason Whitlock Makes Don Draper Look Enlightened

It’s been a whole day since I first read Jason Whitlock’s Foxsports.com column defending ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips, who was fired from the network after having an affair with a 22-year-old production assistant, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.

Whitlock’s main point is that “[a] little off-the-books nookie should not infringe on man's ability to discuss bats and balls in October.” I’m going to set aside the obvious fact that a job at ESPN is a privilege, not a right, and if an employee does something to embarrass the network, of course he can be fired. (Yep, the woman got fired, too.)

If I didn’t know better—if, say, I didn’t know that Whitlock has riffed on this before and that we did not have the Internet thousands of years ago—I’d say this column is a fossilized relic from the Neanderthal era. Reluctant as I am to steer traffic toward it, you really must read it for yourself. America’s hardworking men are locked in “battle against Pussy Galore.” Phillips is merely a victim to the forces in society like “women enter[ing] the workforce” and “Viagra, exercise, makeup, perfume, hair extensions, shaved legs, clothes that revealed cleavage.”

In Whitlock’s world, monogamy is outdated and men—heterosexual men, especially—should not be constrained by it. It’s not their fault, after all, if they can’t honor their marriage vows, what with all the hussies in the next cubicle. And why should little wifey mind, as long as she’s getting enough money to buy groceries and clean aprons? And well-off men positively deserve extramarital sex: “[A] moderately famous man earning between $250K and $500K a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly, one week-long, $8,000 vacation he can take with his mistress and five strip club nights with his boys a year.” Double those income parameters, and Whitlock grants the man two more strip club nights a year and a love nest for his little tartlet.

Seriously, Jason. What about a woman earning $250,000 or $500,000 a year? If you think sex outside marriage is a right for everyone, why do you keep talking about men as victims of women? Why don’t you throw in just one little reference to the extramarital desires of women?

What is particularly galling about Whitlock’s Don Draper shtick is that he should know better than to say such stupid things. Whitlock wrote a column (since pulled from Foxsports.com) saying that Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t own an NFL team because Limbaugh had said that slavery “had its merits” and that James Earl Ray deserved a Medal of Honor. Of course, Limbaugh had never said any such thing and Whitlock had to apologize.

But Whitlock can’t hide from these comments. They’re attached to his byline. And he should know that sexism is just as bad as racism.

Tags: espn, Jason Whitlock, racism, Rush Limbaugh, sexism, steve phillips

VIEW THIS CONVERSATION

Rachael Larimore Slate copy chief and mother of three. Addicted to coffee, Facebook, and the Sprout channel.

Comments

ESPN baseball analyst Steve

By: Mikee_L | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 03:48

ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips, embroiled in an affair with Brooke Hundley, has reportedly been suspended for a week by the network based on the public turn the affair has taken. including potential threats to Phillips' wife. To go along with the fact that the man is a total sleaze, and an insult to the male gender, his wife slapped him in September with divorce papers, after his mistress stalked his family, although for the noble purpose of telling them how much of a sleaze he is. Apparently, the soon to be ex-Mrs. Phillips listened, and now Steve Phillips is going to need a new job, and a personal loan for a divorce attorney, and probably somewhere to stay.

Comment for Krayon

By: RatherBeShopping | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 12:11

I recognize your patronizing tone, your dismissal of my opinion, and your complete gall in attempting to police who can post and what they can post, and these tell that you are not a minority, and are not accustomed to being an objective person who can investigate differing opinions or positions. Check your own privilege before you try to play gatekeeper.

I did not miss the point Rachel was trying to make. What I said was that her method may not have been the most effective one. Especially since some have to deal with intersectionalities of multiple isms. All isms are heinous and need to be eliminated (something I stated in my original post). They do not have to be forced into 'equal-ness' in order for people to want to eliminate them. Moreover, you do not have to be free of all biases to spot when another person is committing an ism. I'm quite sure there were moral men of good character who opposed slavery but never had the thought to fight for women's sufferage. Whitlock is a hypocrite, and not the best writer or fact-checker. He also is offensive and falls short of being a comedic genius. That does not preclude him from [correctly] identifying prejudiced, biased, or racists acts of another person, anymore than being provocatively dressed and having had more than a handful of sex partners precludes a woman from being the victim of sexual assault.

Apparently, I'm a C-Word

By: Laura KW | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 10:42

Scary how some men still have such horrificattitudes about women. I've been writing a blog I thought was perfectly loving toward men until one of them posted a comment calling me a dumb, fat...ahem, C-word.

These Don Draper/Tucker Max wannabes are really not worth listening to, and I hope the media will wake up and stop giving them newspaper columns and book deals. But hey, if you're going to listen to someone who works for FOX, well, you're kinda asking to have your feathers ruffled.

Check out my blog, "Oh, How I Love a Womanizer," to see the offending comment. Also, quite appropos to the Phillips scandal.

http://tartandsoul.com/2009/10/04/oh-how-i-love-a-womanizer/

it's just not that funny

By: direwolfc | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 07:34

The Whitlock column was clearly written in jest, which almost makes me wonder whether Larimore's outrage is just playing along. The problem with Whitlock's column is that its alright funny, but not that funny.

A more serious discussion would be whether this kind humor is appropriate. To what degree are we simply reinforcing stereotypes we satirize? Dave Chappelle would have a lot to say on that matter.

If you don't like monogamy don't get married

By: jerseygirl | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 07:34

I agree with Gracefoster. There's no need to have a big debate about whether monogamy is good, or functional, because we all get to make choices. For those who want to practice monogamy we have an institution called marriage. But if monogamy is not your thing, you have every right to remain unattached and pursue multiple relationships. What bugs me about married philanderers is that they want it both ways: the stability of home and family and the occasional thrill of the new conquest.

Jason Whitlock

By: GraceFoster | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 01:02

Are we listening to sportswriters now? The are a small step above radio talk show hosts in terms of intelligence. What Jason and some of the commentators on this board don't seem to realize is that attraction and money are not the same thing. Attractive men don't need a lot of money or much else to get women to have sex with them for free. Men who make a comfortable living may be able to attract women who are willing to cheat with them if they think it will get them some money or displace the wife. But if money is the only thing that attracts people to you, your wife and your mistress will eventually take the money over you. What I don't understand is why men who don't want to be monogamous get married. Society is not pressuring men to pick one mate or get married. In this day in age if you can't find someone to be a friend with benefits or some people to hook up with you without promising some financial incentive, you have some problems.

Yeah, Ok, Whatever . . .

By: action figurine | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 21:01

@ Xaedalus

First of all, this wasn’t some random woman on the side. She was an assistant and Phillips, her superior, and even if you wanted to ignore the implicit ramifications and power dynamics involved when a subordinate sleeps with her boss by suggesting that the sex was between consenting adults, there’s this minute detail of the intern threatening the lives of Phillips’ wife, Marni, and their son. Oh wait, I know, Marni was deserving of possibly having her life jeopardized as a consequence of imposing a monogamous relationship upon Steve. The nerve of her!

The only reason I can fathom that you would be taking Whitlock seriously and making this issue about the faults of monogamy instead of about impropriety in the workplace and felony stalking is because the wife and/or teenage son weren’t physically injured or killed. That’s probably why Whitlock didn’t satirize the “Fatal Attraction” angle in his piece. He had enough good sense to know that the prospect of wives and kids getting killed over some trim on the side wasn’t funny.

Poor, poor men, FORCED!!! into MONOGAMY!!!

By: closetpuritan | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 19:29

"And my last point is this: a man can cheat and still be faithful. He can go have something on the side and still be a devoted father, husband, lover, etc."

Xaedalus: You've got an interesting definition of "faithful". I'm more than a little skeptical that a man can be pursuing something "on the side" and still be focused on his wife, but I've never had the misfortune to find out.

The reasons why monogamy became standard are not particularly relevent here, if there are other reasons why it continues. Do you think that feelings of jealousy and romantic love are all made up, just something that the vast majority of us have convinced ourselves that we feel because that's what's politically correct?

Also, DoubleX should really make an effort to get the spam out of their comments.

Comment for RatherBeShopping

By: Krayon | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 19:04

I feel the defensivness in your post, which states clearly that you are a racial minority. You seem to have missed the reason for the reference, and why she summarized her disdain for Whitlock, based on hypocrisy. He not only has double-standards for both women and homosexuals, but he is screaming "racism" as it relates to Rush Limbaugh's comments, and is blind to his own "ism", sexism. She is stating that they are both expressions of self-hate, and Whitlock needs to check himself. I think you need to check yourself for perceptions that are not necessarily true of another's intent, but more so mirroring yourself.

I agree with Whitlock

By: Xaedalus | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 18:54

Monogamy as we know it is ridiculous. It is a system of social contracts and mores designed to spread out reproduction resources to as wide a populace as possible in order to prevent social unrest because 1) low status/low-earning men don't have access to mates and 2) low status/low earning women don't have access to mates. We encourage monogamy within the same class and racial structures: poor marries poor, middle class marries middle class, and rich marries rich. While we all love the "Pretty Woman" story, the reality is that we frown on those who attempt to marry inter-race or (even worse) inter-class. A poor man is fine marrying a poor woman, but if he marries a middle-class or (god help him) a rich woman, he's just climbing the ladder and going after her money. The poor woman marrying higher is a "gold digger". A rich man marrying a poor woman does it for "love" but a rich woman marrying a poor man is a "sugar momma".
The concept of "romantic" love is also BS, as it's based on Courtly Love, which was a system designed to help people find lovers on the sly because their Arranged Marriages were bland and unfulfilling.
What you are supporting, Rachael, is NOT an institution based on love and respect, you are supporting an institution designed to spread procreative and economic resources to maximum effect, while retaining and enforcing class and race structure. The only people who really benefit from this structure (and the ones who get most fired up whenever this truth is revealed) are ugly men and beautiful women.
Ugly men love monogamy because it forces women to select one mate and one mate only, thereby upping the ugly man's chances to meet and acquire a mate. Beautiful women prefer monogamy because they have a better chance to acquire a male who has power, resources, and prestige, and keep a lock on those resources (preventing him from spreading it to other women).
However, Handsome Men and Ugly Women do not benefit from monogamy. A handsome, resource wealthy man has no reason not to acquire multiple women (which robs the available resource pool and denies lower status/ugly men) because he has the resources to do so. And ugly women know they're ugly (or if not ugly, then low status/low resource) and so are more willing to accept being shared because they get more resources and attention being shared than they would going solo.
Monogamy however, forces people to pick one mate. There are ways around it, such as serial monogamy (the most prevalent), which both genders use.

The thing is, Rachael, you're supporting a social construct which doesn't exist for the purposes you believe it should. Whitlock is telling the blunt, cold truth. Men will continue to act this way. Especially high-earning, high status athletes/CEO's/politicians/commentators with resources and testosterone to burn. You will NEVER change this. Monogamy is hypocritical in this case. Just as women will continue to chase them. For every Brooke Hundley, there are a dozen more just waiting to fill her shoes (which you very well know). Whitlock is calling out the hypocrisy and saying "we might as well acknowledge this as a society and allow it". But instead, we stick to our mores and our outrage because to acknowledge it would be to undermine all the beautiful women who want their high-earning/high-class men to themselves, and all the ugly men who otherwise would be fighting for far fewer available women than they do now.

And my last point is this: a man can cheat and still be faithful. He can go have something on the side and still be a devoted father, husband, lover, etc. You get angry because when a man does so, he breaks that emotional trust, and he also undermines/dimishes your status amongst your female peers (which in many cases is far worse than the actual emotional trust, I've observed. A woman is judged by other women on how well she keeps her man in line, and when he strays, women view it as a sign of weakness on her part moreso than his).