OPINION | ESPN’s Robert Lee move displays political correctness at its worst

ESPN’s Lee is an Asian-American. He’ll be transferred to call a Youngstown State-Pitt game instead, which won’t be televised.

The University of Virginia is located in Charlottesville, which was the scene of white supremacist violence that left one woman dead on August 12. That violence was inspired by the city’s decision to remove a Robert E. Lee statue.

{mosads}So in applying the same infinite, pandering wisdom that TV Land displayed in 2015 when it took “The Dukes of Hazard” off the air because the characters owned a car called “The General Lee,” ESPN must have decided that its viewers would applaud its move to take Lee off the game.

This is the same network that awarded Caitlyn Jenner an Arthur Ashe Courage Award over a female high school basketball player with terminal cancer and an Iraq war amputee (who lost both an arm and a leg in combat).

This hasn’t been lost on Bob Ley, a no-nonsense veteran anchor of the network for more than 30 years and host of ESPN’s version of 60 Minutes in “Outside of Lines.” 

“We’ve done a great job of diversity,” Ley said in 2016. “But the one place we have miles to go is diversity of thought.”

“Many ESPN employees I talked to — including liberals and conservatives, most of whom preferred to speak on background — worry that the company’s politics have become a little too obvious, empowering those who feel as if they’re in line with the company’s position and driving underground those who don’t,” Brady said.