SubscribeAnother reason I don’t listen to sports talk radio
Came across this “he said/he said” item on the Bob’s Blitz blog.
Russo, left, and Francesa
I never could stand WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog program. For one thing, the intro was terribly obnoxious, with Chris “Mad Dog” Russo (or as Steve Somers, another WFAN host called him, “the angry puppy”) screaming his greetings. They would constantly repeat their comments. Francesa, in particular, would berate the listener; Russo’s job seemed to be agreeing with everything Mike said.
Anyway…
A renewed feud between Francesa, who now works solo, and Phil Mushnick, the NY Post sports media critic, regarding something the former apparently said on-air and subsequently denied about Phillies’ second baseman Chase Utley? I can’t keep up, but it gave Mushnick the opportunity to bring up an eight-year-old column as proof of Francesa’s past history of misstatement followed by denial, in which he criticized the then-partners for comments made following 9/11. In his column of Nov. 2 titled “You’re on, Francesa,” Mushnick writes
Days after the 9/11 attacks, Francesa, global affairs expert (it’s a gift), launched two bigoted, backwoods and facts-depraving commentaries blaming both Israel and American Jews for America’s peril at the hands of terrorists.
Francesa also said the Jews he knows are disloyal Americans in that they would go to war to defend Israel but not the United States.
In the wake of an attack on the U.S. by Islamic lunatics, Francesa even called upon American Jews to prove their virtue as Americans, to choose between Israel, which he called “a failed experiment,” and the U.S.
As a third-generation American Jew, whose great-uncle was a WWI doughboy, and whose father was a WWII Naval Lt., then commander of the Staten Island chapter of the Jewish War Veterans, I was, shall we say, displeased by Francesa’s determination that the time had come for me to swear allegiance to the United States.
On Sept. 23, 2001, the above appeared in this column. In WFAN’s response, on behalf of Francesa, station boss Mark Chernoff denied that Francesa said any of that — despite thousands, including WFAN staff, having heard what I’d heard. My challenge to produce those tapes was ignored.
“Bob” helpfully reprints a letter from the ADL’s national director Abe Foxman to Chernoff in the wake of the incident. But rather than reinvent the wheel, I refer you directly to Bob’s Blizt’s blog, which includes a YouTube clip of Francesa in which he blubbers, in effect, that some of his best friends are Jews, that he never said what Mushnick said he said, and that he couldn’t be “that way” because he grew up in a “great melting pot” as a child.
As I always used to say on the ball field when intervening in a brewing fight “Boys, boys, boys.”
How can you criticize Francesa when you should know what he was saying is actually true for the most part? Everyone knows that our support of Israel has made us vulnerable to hate from the Muslim world, and we do nothing about it as to not offend the American Jewish people here. It is the truth what Francesa said, and you shouldn’t be worried about it. This country will never allow for attrocities equal to what Hitler did.
Joe:
It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten most of the affair, but picking one section:
Change “Jew” with another ethnic group and see how that would fly. And the Islamic countries are anti-American without the “benefit” of its alliance with Israel.
Joe Perez : why don’t you blame hurricane Katrina and the sinking of the Titanic on Jews. People like you blame everything on Jews because you are ignorant.
It’s amazing that people like Joe Perez apparently try to prove their “Americaness” by slamming other minority groups.
Joe doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but believe it or not, it’s tame compared to a lot of the anti-Semitism online.
Anyway, I remember this whole affair with Francesa and Mushnick. I even did a few searches online about it because I was so outraged at the comments MF supposedly made.
Francesa staunchly denied the comments and apparently there are no tapes out there to prove he made them. If they were in fact true, they are absolutely idiotic and inexcusable.
I kind of run hot and cold with Francesa/WFAN. As a sports nut in the NY area, I was raised on WFAN. I remember in my junior high school days, I would fall asleep listening to Steve Somers and wake up with Imus. Then after school, I would often catch Mike and the Dog.
Still, in recent years, I have not listened to the station nearly as much. Perhaps with everything so readily available online, the format is becoming a bit dated. I also don’t think sports fans need a single voice for six hours a day dictating what is important in the world of sports. For example, Francesa seems to only focus on the Yankees during the baseball season. All year round in fact, many sports and local teams are ignored compeletely as subjects, pretty much making the Fan moniker invalid. As Ron pointed out too, Francesa isn’t exactly the most gracious of hosts with his callers either. At the end of the day, while I love sports, we are still talking about recreational activitites here, not life and death, and not rocket science. In my opinion, one fan’s view is really just as valid as any other, as long as they have a basic understanding of the sport they are discussing.