Boomerang

ESPN screenshot captured by Larry Brown Sports

There's still too much racism in America, and that's not big news. The insults sting less over time, though, because of the knowledge that the epithets boomerang far worse upon the speaker than upon the target. People are free to speak, insult, and mock, but they are not free from the consequences of speech. Whoever wrote the ESPN headline is likely to get fired or at least reprimanded.

Most Americans have curtailed the use of words (e.g., coon, chink, fairy, retarded) whose secondary meanings are considered offensive to certain groups. (Even "niggardly" is now off limits because it just sounds too much like another word.)

It must also be said that there's too much political correctness and hyper-sensitivity. Allowances need to be made for the age of the speaker. Older people who grew up using now-objectionable words and phrases should be cut some slack. It's not easy to change habits built up over a lifetime. To the offended: please relax, the language will soon pass from the scene.

Back to ESPN, however. It's a media company whose products are images, words, music, and moving pictures. It won't do to say, disingenuously, that "chink in the armor" is a venerable and appropriate phrase. In the context of the first Knicks loss with Jeremy Lin as a starter, the headline writer conveyed the double meaning he intended. He must have really fallen in love with his own wittiness, because the boomerang will be painful.

[Update - 2/19 ESPN statement: “We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again,” the network said in a statement. “We regret and apologize for this mistake."]

[Update - 2/20: After ESPN fired him, the headline writer apologized and said that he meant no insult, having used the phrase "at least 100 times."]