ESPN Publicly Rebukes Their Golf Analyst Paul Azinger Over Tweet Critical Of Obama…
Lapdogs.
(USA Today) — ESPN is coming down on Paul Azinger for mocking President Barack Obama on Twitter. The golf analyst tweeted Friday that the Commander-in-chief plays more golf than he does — and that Azinger has created more jobs this month than Obama has.
ESPN has ‘reminded” Azinger his venture into political punditry violates the company’s updated social network policy for on-air talent and reporters issued yesterday.
“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.
President Obama has a good relationship with ESPN. He’s appeared several times on the network to fill out his March Madness brackets for both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.
Posted by ZIP on Friday, August 26, 2011, at 2:18 pm | 
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ESPN: birthplace of Olberdouche.
Political commentary is a “field”? Bwahahahaha!
ESPN has ‘reminded” Azinger his venture into political punditry violates the company’s updated social network policy”
Oh, if only the highschool drop outs in Hollywood who think we are interested in their political views had the same policy.
If he agreed not to post things like this as part of his contract, than so be it….but would they have enforced it if he had bashed the Tea Party or Palin? I suspect not.
ESPN doesn’t want to lose having Obozobama fill out his NCAA basketball tournament brackets on the air, so Azinger is in trouble. What is it about Obama that causes people to become fawning lap dogs of our Fraud-In-Chief?
“President Obama has a good relationship with ESPN. He’s appeared several times on the network to fill out his March Madness brackets for both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.”
Right. Because that’s in the President’s job description and all.
“…..will be fired, suspended or punished in some way.”
———-
What does his contract say?
Screw ESPN! A bunch of lib losers !!
What UpNorthLurkin says.
It seems as if Sportscenter tries to shoehorn Obama into almost every episode, somehow. I wonder if they mentioned George Bush even ten times the whole time he was President?
You damn well know that if ESPN finds out that Azinger golfed with Rush he’s as good as gone.
Speaking of that. Why wasn’t the whole NFL countdown crew fired over the Rush/Mcnabb thing? They were obviously espousing their political views when Rush gave his opinion of McNabb and the media. Curious.
So telling the truth is now a political misdemeanor? Interesting.
didn’t ESPN do a whole show with Obama on his NCAA bracket picks?
ESPN is a bunch Yankees and Red Sox loving lefties. is anybody really surprised that even the mildest criticism of Obama results in quick retribution against the critic?
Is it still “political commentary” if it’s factually true?
‘Zinger and Payne Stewart were the only reason I watched golf on TV and attended tournaments. They were personable, funny and very intelligent. I wish Paul would tell ESPN to pound sand. They need him more than he needs them.
Once upon a time, ESPN mattered. Now it’s just a liberal conglomerate of nannering nabobs of negativity and ex-jocks with a tenuous grasp of diction and the English language.
Does it really qualify as “political punditry” if it is true?
I will be very disappointed if Zinger issues an apology. While I realize the economy sucks and even (former)pro athletes have to be concerned with keeping their jobs, a) he is right and b) he should be allowed to speak his mind w/o it being construed as an official statement from ESPN.
Espn =ABC=Disney Who got obama money
Well then what about Mike Lupica? He’s on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters every Sunday and he has a well documented history in his “sports” column of always bashing Tea Party supporters. He’s been railing on Tea Party Americans for over a year.
Azinger made his comment on twitter and Lupica makes his diatribes in his newspaper column.
thats strong lol
Kenny Mayne of ESPN tweeted during the Kentucky Derby that he wanted to “ram” a car (with intent( with a Palin sticker on it (but it had kids inside). Hahaha…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2733410/posts
Far worse than Azinger’s joke.
Yet ESPN said nothing.
Personally, I thought it was funny. And a much needed kick in the Obama ass.
censorship… and outright infringement of constitutional rights….
Did Azinger…. give up his freedom of speech to work at ESPN?
ESPN now dictates what their employees can do even on their time off…
….WOW….
What you do on company time…. and what you do on your time…
are two very distinct things…
In his final years, Hunter S. Thompson wrote a semi-regular column in the late 90′s/early 2000′s for espn.com that usually forayed into some sort of Bush bashing. If not for his untimely suicide, he’d likely still be going fever pitch on espn.com.
Azinger didn’t even post this on espn.com or say it during an ESPN broadcast. Since when is commenting on anything political not acceptable when done out of the confines of ESPN? As Sunny points out above, Lupica forays into politics on a regular basis in his columns, but ESPN isn’t censuring him or forbidding him from appearing on Sports Reporters.
With the lack of any action taken against Thompson or Lupica, and its furor at Azinger, ESPN is basically saying that making any kind of negative comment, joke form or not, against this particular president, even if done in a forum not associated with ESPN, is forbidden. In other words, you cannot speak ill about Obama at any time in your employment with ESPN. Right-wing targets are perfectly OK.
I bet if he had written “Obama is the messiah” that ESPN would be fine with that.
Will Azinger get “Halperined”?
Boycott ESPN…didn’t they once employ Olberdouche?
They said our social network policy. Didn’t they mean our socialist network policy?
Once again, demonstrates how deep the Left has burrowed into our everyday lives – and why I am all for eradicating them, beginning with the Federal Government in 2012.
As I recall, Mr. Azinger ruffled liberal feathers when he was a no-show at a function hosted by then Prez. Clinton. He said that he had no respect for a draft dodging COC.
*CIC
Tiger Woods commentary in 5 4 3 2 1
@Rob,
While stupid, it’s neither censorship nor a violation if his constitutional rights as the Federal government did not make it illegal for him to post that. A private institution is well withing its rights to determine what it’s employees can say while in their employ
@Lotte Lenya,
Zinger simply echoed what tens of millions of us feel about this utterly worthless and shameless pretender. His comments are not stupid as your stupid comments suggest.
That was a zinger from Azinger…and a GOOD ONE !