Roland Martin is an ass. He’s brash and flat out annoying. Even worse, he’s woefully unqualified for his job as a political pundit on CNN and because of that, very bad at his job. I mean the man has a Master’s Degree in Christian Communication at a non-accredited school yet he’s on CNN weighing in on political topics. And, as you would expect from someone with the equivalent of a degree in basketweaving, his comments are typically devoid of any real logic or vision for the political topics he’s trying to comment on.
I do NOT like this guy.
I think he’s one of the prime examples of what’s wrong with the media. Martin is about as qualified as I am to talk about the topics he does on CNN. Actually, I think I might be a little more qualified than him because at least I took world & political history classes at an accredited college. Just like I am not qualified to be on a cable news show talking about these topics, neither is Roland Martin.
Now after saying all that….I have to say the suspension of Roland Martin has me a little worried.
CNN suspended Roland Martin after Martin tweeted this out during the Super Bowl:
“If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!”
GLAAD responded with this:
“Martin’s tweets today advocating violence against gay people weren’t an accident — they are a part of a larger pattern for Martin. Anti-gay violence in America is a serious problem”
Listen, I’ll say it again, Roland Martin is an ass. I don’t like him. But I think GLAAD and everyone else is overreaching with this (particularly because they don’t like Martin).
The first problem I have with this is, people are assuming that Martin’s tweet is talking about gay people. Maybe he is. But, as people who follow him (some who also don’t like him) have stated, as well as Martin himself, his tweet was more about taking a shot a David Beckham and soccer fans and was not intended to be targeted at gay men. Just like GLAAD said Martin has a pattern about going too far with things like this, he also has a pattern of going after soccer and David Beckham. So who determines which is right? Why is GLAAD’s assumption more right than someone who assumed Martin was just taking another jab at soccer fans? Remember, there’s evidence to support both (Martin’s prior comments\his wife helping pray away the gay vs Martin’s statements & feud about soccer). So does it come down to who is louder? See why, in the larger picture, this kind of thing is a problem? Is GLAAD being overly sensitive? In my opinion they are. But here’s the thing, I don’t think being ‘overly sensitive’ is necessarily a bad thing. GLAAD has a right to be overly sensitive. Just like Blacks, women, and other minority groups and activist. If you’ve faced the discrimination and hatred that some of these groups have faced, you would be super sensitive to these issues as well. As a black man I can attest to this. When there’s a racial issue, my ears perk up and I start to get into attack mode. However, I also realize that I am very sensitive and close to these issues. So sometimes I have to tell myself to take a step back and really examine the issue to see am I just being really sensitive or if there is really a deeper issue at play here. And sometimes the result of that isn’t that I’m no longer offended but that while the issue may have been insensitive, it wasn’t say racist. I think GLAAD is in its right to be offended and call Martin’s tweet insensitive. But to go the distance and call it homophobic is a bit of a stretch and I think GLAAD needs to dial that back.
Secondly, let’s talk about intent here. As much of an ass as Roland Martin is, do I really believe that if he was watching the game next to a gay man, he would “smack the ish out of him”? Of course not. I’ve said before how I’ve wanted to kick a kid in their chest and gag them to get them to shut the fuck up. Do I actually advocate kicking children and abusing them? Of course not. The other day I tweeted out “If you joined Weight Watchers because Janet Jackson joined Weight Watchers….kill yourself”. Now, am I really advocating that people who joined weight watchers should kill themselves? Am I really promoting suicide? No I’m not. Can my tweet be offensive to people who have lost someone close due to suicide or have considered suicide themselves, possibly. But it is not my intention to make light of anyone with that situation. Does that mean the person shouldn’t be offended? Absolutely not. But someone being offended doesn’t necessarily mean I’m advocating for suicide. Also, I should point out the argument I saw that we don’t get to dictate to someone what offends them works both ways. So the next time PETA wants to protest a movie because some animal dies in the movie, guess what? We can’t tell them they’re being stupid. When the Parents Television Council starts a petition because of MIA’s middle finger showing for .8 seconds or advocates for boycotting CSI’s sponsors cause of violence and content we can’t say they’re overreacting. But that’s not what happens. So what makes these other groups reactions overreactions and frowned upon but GLAAD’s reaction reasonable? Violence against Gays is real problem. But so is having our children exposed to the wrong images or the abuse of animals. So it can’t just be that the problem is real and exists. The answer of course is that we don’t really like those other groups so we dismiss their complaints. No one really wants to admit that though.
Now having said all this, Roland Martin still got what he deserved. Listen, as much as I don’t think his comments were homophobic, I’ve also said plenty of times that if you’re going to use your real name and associate your online persona with your workplace, well, you have to watch what you say. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way but it is, so you have to live by those rules. If I used Twitter under my real name, it would be the most boring Twitter page on earth. It would literally be 24/7 of “I just put my socks on” and “I probably should eat now” tweets. I wouldn’t even live tweet movies or sports anymore because honestly, that shit can go south quick. And talking about politics? Forgetaboutit. I mean its fucked up that its come to that, but hey….it is what it is. To me, Martin was tweeting from his personal account on his own time and was not as a representative of CNN and shouldn’t have been enough to get him suspended. Still, it was only a matter of time before his behavior got him in trouble.
Now before I end I want to address one last thing. I’ve seen people say that the reason I and others are defending Martin is because obviously, we want to protect our rights to be bigots and discriminate.  That’s not it at all. Sometimes I have fucked up thoughts or a sick sense of humor. Hell, I know for a fact all human beings do. Sometimes I have a racist thought or a sexist thought or homophobic thought. WE ALL DO. Twitter (and the Internet as a whole) lets me put those thoughts out there, not because I want other people to feel the same way I do but because sometimes it’s just nice to put them out there and laugh at how absolutely absurd they are. So sometimes I’ll tweet out how I want to run the lady driving slow in fast lane off the road and then beat her with a tire iron. It doesn’t mean I support beating women. Sometimes I’ll see some dumb ass dude say or do something and tweet that the government should ban him from spreading his DNA in the gene pool. But that doesn’t mean I support eugenics and the government’s intrusion into something as private and personal as reproduction. And sometimes, yes, I see a boy walking around in jeans so tight I think he accidentally put on his girlfriend’s jeans and I want to ask him if he douches his balls. But again, that doesn’t mean that I think men (gay or straight) can’t wear whatever they want. Fucked up thoughts are sometimes just that, fucked up thoughts. Think about how this new standard of never being able to share the fucked up thoughts in your head would affect you if you were never allowed to share them. We all say things we know are wrong. Now when people start really advocating for those fucked up thoughts to become standard and applied across the board or when people don’t know their fucked up thoughts aren’t acceptable in real life….then we have a problem.
And let me state one more time (because I know people won’t get it the first time) GLAAD has a RIGHT to be overly sensitive. Just because someone is overly sensitive doesn’t mean they don’t have a point or a valid reason for being sensitive. What’s unfortunate is that these discussions always seem to end with sides being taken instead of having a discussion in the middle. No one is a 100% right in this and both sides have valid points. Right now though, people are just talking past each other instead of trying to have a real discussion.
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