Blogging at Ebony.com, contributing writer and author Dream Hampton weighs in on the Roland Martin Twitter scandal and suggests ways that it could be turned into a win.
Superbowl Sunday should've just been another big ish talking day for Roland Martin. The CNN commentator and Tom Joyner Morning Show regular spends about 20 percent of his Twitter time talking smack about sports. Yet it was a commercial featuring soccer superstar David Beckham in his underwear that put Martin on the field next to M.I.A., vying for most offensive sideline foul.
Tweeting like most of us tend to do-off the cuff and in the moment- Martin wrote "If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!#superbowl". A few days following the game, CNN has announced that Martin would be suspended for an indefinite amount of time, citing his words as "regrettable and offensive."
The statement is just so much masculinity posturing-a visceral reaction to an homoerotic ad of male flesh created to excite about one hundred million male viewers. The image of Beckham in his tighty-whities ranked #1 in an analysis of social media comments; a study showed that of the 109k viewers who tweeted or updated their Facebook status about Beckham, 83% were women. Alas, it was Martin's tweet that caught the ire of GLAAD, who linked Martin's comment to a pattern of equally offensive calls to violence by Martin, most notably his defense of Tracy Morgan after the comedian talked about stabbing his son should he come out of the closet as gay.
Read Dream Hampton's entire blog entry at Ebony.com.