Caring, conscientious parents everywhere raise their children to always tell the truth.
As Jim Carrey’s character in “Liar, Liar” exclaims, “The truth shall set you free!”
Well, not anymore apparently. At least not if you are NHL NBC broadcaster Mike Milbury making an “irreverent” comment on live TV during the fast-paced nature of a playoff hockey game.
Nope, now the truth gets you lambasted on social media from coast to coast. It results in you either being removed or pulling yourself from the ongoing NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs broadcasts. Even led to the NHL bowing down to the angry, overly-offended masses with a statement saying the league “condemns the insensitive and insulting comment” Milbury made.
Maybe now parents need to teach children to always tell the truth…unless some people don’t want to hear it.
How did we get here?
In the big picture that’s a far more complex question than a simple column on a simple sports talk radio station website. That goes down the PC highway to the controversial land of cancel culture.
For Milbury, it began last Thursday night when he and NBC broadcast partner Brian Boucher were discussing the benefits to players of the NHL’s bubble lifestyle during a matchup between the Islanders and the Capitals.
That’s about where the facts end and the interpretations of Milbury’s situation explode.
According to ESPN, Milbury declared, “Not even any woman here to disrupt your concentration."
The Athletic – and seemingly endless others – quoted Milbury as saying “not even any women here to disrupt your concentration.”
That came in a piece in which the author notes that she is “tired of this [expletive]” only she used the s-word to emphasize her point, regardless of whether some readers might find it offensive. Oh, well played potty mouth.
Does it matter if Milbury said “woman” or “women”? It sure as heck does given the guttural reaction of so many, hell-bent on tearing down a man’s career. Or at least it should.
Woman is singular. A word that might imply that Milbury was talking about individual relationships with individual women. Maybe a wife. Maybe a girlfriend. Maybe a young woman that a player might meet at a bar on a night on the town in a pre-coronavirus world.
Women is a plural. Leading some to make a still-massive, incongruent jump to Milbury somehow indicating that women should not be in the world of hockey. That’s a leap that would make Mike Powell proud.
First of all, if there are no women at all inside the NHL bubbles in either Toronto or Edmonton that’s a gargantuan problem for the league, not Milbury. That's an issue actually worthy of universal outrage.
Second, those who believe Milbury said “women,” and took it to mean professionals within the bubble such as reporters or team employees, seemingly heard what they wanted to hear and projected past inexcusable personal experiences onto his statement rather than giving the veteran analyst any benefit of the doubt or considering the real world truth to his comment.
Had Milbury said “partner/partners” would that have changed things?
As in husbands or wives. Boyfriends or girlfriends. Or even potential one-night partners that, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, are a reality for relatively young men and women in this world.
Partners can be distractions. So can kids. Family members. Dogs. Almost anything and everything that hockey players deal with in the everyday world that are not a factor in the 2020 coronavirus NHL Stanley Cup Playoff bubbles.
As any man or woman who’s ever traveled for business can attest, life in a hotel brings certain peace and solitude we often don’t have in our home lives. When it’s an enforced life in a quarantine hotel the distractions are even more limited. It is what it is.
Like Milbury or not -- and many clearly do not! -- his comments on hockey are backed by a lifetime in the game as a player, coach, executive and broadcaster. In a court of law, Milbury would qualify as an expert witness on hockey and hockey players.
He said something rather obvious, which many honest-minded people agree with. Yet somehow he’s being painted as the face of current embodiment of sexism and misogyny.
Could he have phrased it better? Maybe.
But in a week in which Reds and Fox broadcaster Thom Brennaman actually did say something on the air that was offensive, inexcusable and worthy of immediate harsh punishment, the fact that Milbury is fighting for his career and reputation for stating the truth is a truly scary thing in the new-age, too-woke society we all apparently live in.
The truth is never mean.
But, apparently, it can be offensive to some and very much left up to open, irresponsible and dangerous interpretation.
It’s a lesson that Milbury, and many of us, are learning the hard way these days.
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