Andy Rooney Slurs Latinos

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Andy Rooney Slurs Latinos

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[q
url="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/27/andy-rooney-gets-pass-racial-slur-about-hispanic-baseball-players"]So,
did you hear that Andy Rooney made a racial slur last week about
baseball players all being named "Rodriguez?"

You didn't?

Well, how could you, for it appears that virtually nobody reported it.

To bring you up to speed, the CBS "60 Minutes" commentator wrote a
column about America's national pastime last Thursday, and stated the
following (emphasis added):

My disinterest in baseball as a kid has lasted all my life. I'm
still not interested in the game. I don't watch it on television or
follow it in the newspaper. I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig,
but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me. They're
apparently very good but they haven't caught my interest.

Now, just imagine if a conservative media personality like Rush
Limbaugh or Sean Hannity had said or written such an epithet. Do you
think you would have heard about it?

Yet, compared to all the anger surrounding recent statements made by
Don Imus about the Rutgers women's basketball team, the New York Times
just accepted Rooney's apology without much ado. This seems even more
absurd as the highest paid baseball player in the world, coincidentally
named Rodriguez, is a New York Yankee (emphasis added):

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it," Mr. Rooney, 88, said
when reached by telephone on Friday afternoon. He added that although
he regretted the comment, he doubted he would apologize for it in a
subsequent column. "It's a name that seems common in baseball now. I
certainly didn't think of it in any derogatory sense."

He added, "That's what I do for a living, I write columns and have opinions, and some of them are pretty stupid."

Hmmm. It seems similar to what Imus used to do for a living as well.
In fact, making irreverent comments was even in Imus's contract, but
that didn't stop liberal groups from forcing CBS - who also happens to
employ Rooney - to fire him.

Why the difference in treatment and outrage?

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