Yes, she called the ex-president a “white supremacist” during his first year in office.
But Jemele Hill, a sports media major leaguer from the Motor City and from Michigan State University, didn’t get fired from ESPN for dissing Donald Trump during an off-the-job moment on Twitter.
She didn’t get fired at all. The parting was mutual. Her memoir, “Uphill,” fills in any gaps.
Her 2017 Trump trauma was only a portion of the scenario that led to her departure after more than a decade with the cable monolith. By then her career had reached a point where she possessed some say-so of her own. For sure her employers did not wish to arouse the MAGA crowd, but they also fretted about fooling with Jemele and her growing band of fans and supporters.
In fact, her final falling out was on-the-air during the peak of the Colin Kaepernick take-a-knee silent protest for civil rights in policing. She ripped Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner and million-dollar Donnie donor, for telling his players when and where they could or could not support Kaep by genuflecting in support, which Ms. Hill viewed as a plantation-type form of repression. ESPN/ABC didn’t have a contract with Trump, but for sure some mega millions were tied up with the National Football League.
So that’s that. Jemele might have fit in just fine on MSNBC, but not with the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, where her Rachel Maddow-style essays were not appreciated.
Readers who are impatient to learn all about Uppity Hill’s downs and ups in the broadcast biz will need to skim to the back pages, because the bulk of her bio is pre-fame. She describes both her combative mother and her absent father as drinkers and druggers, and the references seem all too frequent, given that Jemele freely revisits times when she threw down one or three too many herself. Her mom is still around and gets to read all that, just like she had bedroom snooped and had found her only child’s diary, and berated Jemele for the expressions of hurt and harm on those secret pages. Apparently all this brutal honesty not only is okay but it is encouraged, now that the elder long ago cleaned up her act and has attained a master’s degree in, you guessed it, mental health.
With Trump, it wasn’t so much what she said, it was that she had signed a contract agreement, as a public persona, not to ruminate in such a way, not even on one’s personal time on social media. And so she attempted to apologize not for what she said, but for the format she selected. Those types of mea culpas are almost guaranteed to cause even more controversy.
My take is that Jemele couldn’t take it anymore and lashed out at the elected leader. Who hasn’t been there?
One reason for picking the book from the library shelf, I admit, was for an inside scoop on all the drama connected with Jemele Hill, because Detroit/MSU makes her like a home team. Another is that she shows more strength than many of the men who still dominate the studios at ESPN. She was with Kaep when he was railroaded out of pro football, for example. By comparison, studio stars like Kornheiser and Wilbon, even Stephen A., never really stood up.
Her next book hopefully will give her more freedom to write about the incredible athletes she encounters, now that she has concluded her own story.
If your library lacks a copy of “Uphill,” simply ask and they will find one for you.
