(USA TODAY Sports Images)
ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte offered his take on the Stephen A. Smith controversy in a column posted to ESPN.com on Wednesday afternoon. The longtime New York Times columnist was measured with his criticism of Smith saying his problems have always been more mechanical than moral but not pardoning him for his First Take sins.
Smith s apology didn t go far enough Lipsyte says namely because Smith insisted people misunderstood what he was trying to say. The problem was Smith never bothered to explain what he was really trying to say. It was this paradox that led to Lipsyte s best salvo.
This might be just as well Smith s attempts at coherency are often as exciting as Tim Tebow s scrambling.
Robert Lipsyte. (USA TODAY)
Instead of taking a bold stance against Smith Lipsyte offered subtle criticism using a septic tank metaphor to describe First Take and tacitly assigning some blame to ESPN for paying Smith to provide pontification on the fly aimed to attract an audience and provoke it into coming back.
Lipsyte also agreed with ESPN s apparent decision not to punish Michelle Beadle for violating the company s social media policy. Beadle ripped Smith and First Take after Friday s rant which goes against a policy prohibiting ESPN employees from speaking ill of each other something that s sidelined Tony Kornheiser and Bill Simmons in the past. Lipsyte acknowledged Beadle s violation but said her tweets were appropriate.
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
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