Eating Cornbread

Boston Celtics' radio announcer Cedric "Cornbread" Maxwell is a thoughtful and funny guy, usually. But trouble loomed when, laughing about a presumed erroneous foul called by an NBA referee, according to a blog Maxwell cracked that the referee "should go back to the kitchen" and "fix me bacon and eggs" (credit to Universal Hub and Sports Law Blog). The referee in question, of course, was the NBA's only female referee, Violet Palmer.

Max is the one in the kitchen now, namely in boiling hot water. He has issued on on-air apology, but this being Boston, that won't be enough. My friend Michael McCann at the Sports Law Blog has called for much more.

TSLP calls for much less.

1. I watched parts of the Academy Awards the other night; compared to some years, pretty tame stuff. Yet I did see comedian Ellen DeGeneres describe actress Penelope Cruz as "Mexican," state that Dame Judi Dench was off getting a "boob job," that without "blacks, jews and gays" there would be "no men named Oscar." I also witnessed some comedians make reference to "having sex all alone." Some award winner for visual effects made some flat joke to the effect that critics said that "four blind kids" couldn't do what they did. My point? More than a few off-color, inappropriate and insensitive remarks (and a lot fewer than in usual years), none of which I suspect got as much as a ripple in the next day's news. Why not?

2. Cedric Maxwell? The man was making a joke, offering what he thought to be a clever, witty comment on the alleged incompetence of the female referee. A lame joke, one that referred and drew attention to her sex, on par with some of the equally lame jokes at the Oscars that also drew attention to certain aspects of people, but still a jest. Can we separate out Maxwell's joke from, for instance, Ellen's joke about men named Oscar? If anything, Max's comment appeared spur-of-the-moment; Ellen's was presumably scripted and therefore more blameworthy. Yet let's imagine a black or Jewish referee named Oscar: what if Maxwell, in commenting on the referee's call, had uttered Ellen's joke, that if it weren't for blacks (or Jews), there would be no people named Oscar? I suspect he'd have been fired by halftime. What's the distinction? If there is a distinction, does it make the situations different? Is it such a compelling difference that Maxwell should receive a substantial job penalty while Ellen gets invited back to host again next year? (By the way, I enjoyed Ellen's hosting; I liked her understated, offhand humor, as opposed to the drum-climaxed one-liners of the typical comedian.) (And also by the way, I personally avoid jokes that involve sensitive matters, but I don't think everyone has to be held to my personal preferences.)

3. Should sports announcers make jokes? ABC hired a comedian, Dennis Miller, for its Monday Night Football franchise, and he bombed because he had trouble fitting his cerebral, wry brand of humor into the vortex of an NFL football game. ESPN once hired Rush Limbaugh to offer "political" football commentary; that experiment ended as soon as Limbaugh said something political. Tony Kornheiser announces games, playing the role of the bombastic opinionista full of himself (and I like Kornheiser a lot, but only on Pardon The Interruption, and only in conjunction with the more circumspect Michael Wilbon). The point is that sports announcers today are part expert explainers of events and part entertainers. As entertainers, they should be accorded the same latitude we implicitly allow Ellen at the Oscars.

4. I watch a good deal of NBA games. I think many of the referees have their "blind spots": certain calls that they do not make well. Violet Palmer sticks out, as the league's only female referee, and so I will admit that I probably notice her calls more than I do other referees. (I am sure this is the case with other observers too; I am sure her job is a very difficult one, given the focus she draws.) Palmer, in my view, has a great deal of trouble making the offensive charge/defensive foul call, probably the most difficult call in basketball. She's not alone in that weakness, but still, that's her weakness. That's exactly the call that spurred Maxwell to make his joke. He's a commentator. The pressure's on him to say something clever about Palmer's mistake other than the commonplace "bad call."

5. People, even sports announcers, need room to step around and occasionally across the lines of sensitivity that people have staked out for others to abide. Comedians (or all of us when we attempt comedy) need even more room. Comedy's social role, at its best, is to use humor and irony to pick at our hubris and make us question our presumptions and commitments. Often, one might respond to a good joke with a laugh and the comment, "good point." See, comedy makes a point.

6. Maxwell's point? Lots of possibilities. Maybe his point is that that women should not be refereeing NBA games. Or maybe that Violet Palmer in particular should not be refereeing NBA games. Or maybe that women should not work outside the home. But I suspect it was none of the above. In my view, Maxwell was just invoking an historical stereotype (women in the kitchen) as a rhetorical device to say that Palmer made a bad call. He wasn't endorsing the stereotype or recommending it; he was using it rhetorically to make a statement about current events. Here's another example of invoking an historical stereotype as a rhetorical device to make a statement about contemporary events: "without Jews, there would be no men named Oscar." Ellen didn't mean that literally (that we need Jews, blacks and gays to promulgate the name "Oscar"); instead, she meant to refer to the importance (in her expert opinion) of Jewish people in the production of Academy-Award caliber films. The name thing was a play on words and a play on a stereotype. Maxwell also didn't mean literally that Violet Palmer should quit her job and go make Maxwell breakfast; instead, he meant to refer to her incompetence for the workplace position she currently holds. He referred to her sex in doing so, using her sex and the historical stereotype of that sex as the fulcrum of the joke, much like Ellen used the ethnicity of the winners as the fulcrum of her joke. That's a strong comment by Maxwell, to be sure, but one it's his place to make, as an expert analyst.

7. Now certain historical stereotypes do not serve well as rhetorical devices, simply because the conjured image ("greedy Jews") is so off-putting and jarring that any hope of rhetorical mileage will be lost. But it's a close question when such historical artifacts pass from the usable to the unusable category. And it's the comedian's exact role to make us question the lines we've drawn. Personally I would never use Maxwell's device in making a point (at least not without a lot of explanation), but then I'm not a comedian who's job it is to prick people's conscience. But in law school, often the subject matter does call on the discussion leader (that would be me) to broach and discuss difficult and sensitive perspectives. I have the luxury of the class hour to make my qualifications clear. Maxwell had a punch line. I once heard a comedian give a long and hilarious riff on "greedy Jews," using the stereotype as rhetoric, as joke, as wordplay, as metaphor, and everything in between. (Since you'll want to know, yes, he identified himself as Jewish.) I've heard of black comedians spending a lot of time on racial stereotypes. So even distasteful, troublesome stereotypes can be put to use rhetorically. I suspect that's what Maxwell had in mind.