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: Begging the Question

Why don't we just lynch her?

By "Milbarge" and "Fitz-Hume"

I haven't been following this news too closely, but it's hard to miss the increasingly breathless reports that an announcer for the Golf Channel, Kelly Tilghman, was suspended. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will point out that Tilghman went to Duke, although I didn't know that until after I had heard about this controversy and formed an opinion on it.)

Here's what happened. During a recent broadcast, Tilghman's colleague Nick Faldo suggested that other golfers would have to "gang up" to beat Tiger Woods, and Tilghman jokingly interrupted to suggest they "Lynch him in a back alley."

Clearly, it's a dumb thing to say, and she rightly apologized. As it happens, Tilghman and Woods are long-time friends and he accepted her apology and considered the matter closed. But then Al Sharpton found out about it and put new batteries in his bullhorn. The Golf Channel eventually decided to suspend Tilghman for two weeks, but Sharpton says that's not good enough: she should be fired.

Let's try to find a little perspective here, because I think even Sharpton would agree that not all insensitive comments are equally reprehensible. Sharpton compared Tilghman's comment to saying a woman should be raped or a Jew sent to the gas chamber. To be fair, I can see how, in theory, those could be similar. If a lynching comment is directed at a black person with malicious intent, and made on account of the person's race, well then, yeah, I could see how that might be akin to a Jews/Holocaust remark.

But there's absolutely no evidence at all that Tilghman had any ill will or intended her crack to be taken as a serious suggestion, or that it was made about Woods because of his race. (If anything, it appears to be completely in spite of it, and Woods and Tilghman's close friendship would indicate that they notice something in the other aside from their races.) Again for perspective, compare Tilghman's case to that of radio host Don Imus. In Imus's case, there was enough smoke there to create the impression that Imus's comment that Rutgers women's basketball players were "nappy-headed ho's" was not isolated, and in fact that Imus was racially insensitive. There's nothing like that going on with Tilghman.

On the other hand, I won't suggest that Tilghman's comment was totally innocuous. It's worse, for example, than computer engineers who label networked computers "master" and "slave." Outrage over that is just absurd. (More from Prof. Volokh on that here and here.) I don't think we need to change the name of Lynchburg, Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniels. Tilghman's remark was directed at a black person, after all, and wasn't metaphorical like the computer example. So I don't think some form of rebuke is uncalled for. The question is, What form or rebuke is right?

I guess I've been thinking about the concept of harm and narrow tailoring in light of the big voter identification case pending at the Supreme Court. I don't know if public apologies, shaming, and suspensions of some length are correct, but I feel certain that firing Tilghman would be overkill.

Therefore, the questions I would have for someone agreeing with Sharpton are these: First, why is firing the only appropriate remedy? Is there really no punishment short of firing that would amount to a meaningful censure? And second, if not, why is firing sufficient anyway? Or at least, why is only one firing enough? Imus is back at work, even though some people think he shouldn't have been hired to do radio again. If the Golf Channel does fire Tilghman, and, say, ESPN hires her, doesn't that make ESPN morally complicit too? If she were completely shunned by the world of golf and could only get a job flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, why not protest under the Golden Arches for their hiring of an allegedly racially insensitive person?

Maybe even Sharpton would say that ruining the rest of this woman's life would be a little much. (Although the victims at Freddie's Fashion Mart might disagree.) But the "logic" of his position dictates that. If firing her is the only sufficient recourse here, why would hiring her be morally permissible for any potential employer in the future?

I'm not saying that an employer shouldn't feel morally free to fire a genuinely racist employee because, gosh, he might not be able to find other work with those views. But the remedy should be narrowly tailored to alleviate the harm. Here, the harm is small: nonexistent to Woods, and only measurable to professional victimologists like Sharpton. The punishment shouldn't be draconian just because it will make Sharpton feel better.

Full post as published by Begging the Question on January 11, 2008 (boomark / email).