Stephen A. Smith, who's semi-regularly appeared on cable news for years, thinks ESPN personalities should stick to sports.
In a ridiculous interview with the Sporting News, Smith appeared to rebuke his colleague Jemele Hill, who called President Donald Trump a "white supremacist" on Twitter last year.
"Do I believe the President has been a bit juvenile in his behavior? Yes he has," Smith said. "Having said that, it's one thing to attack what he does, it's an entirely different matter to attack him. When you attack him, then we are stepping out of our lane. We are a sports network. We have an obligation to wake up every day with the mindset that we not only speak for ourselves but we speak on behalf of the brand. It is not a brand that we own. It is a brand that employs us. It has entrusted us to represent it just as much as we care about representing ourselves. So with that in mind, we have to be cognizant of all those things."
The White House called for Hill's firing after her critical tweets of the President. In a separate incident, she was suspended two weeks for allegedly violating the company's social media policy when she encouraged Cowboys fans to boycott sponsors in the wake of Jerry Jones' anthem edict.
Since then, ESPN has altered its social media guidelines, attempting to draw a clearer distinction between appropriate and inappropriate political commentary.
"Yes, the President is going to say what he has to say," Smith said. "Yes, he's going to venture in our lane to the point where it's apropos for us to respond. But we also need to be cognizant of the fact it's incumbent upon us to leave it there and not extend beyond that point. We're a sports network. You become successful. You sustain a level of success by giving people what they expect. By, figuratively speaking, 'playing the hits.' Not deviating too far away from what people turn on the channel and tune in for to hear. As long as we remember those kinds of things, then it's going to lend itself to us being successful as opposed to us losing our bearings because we get caught up in our emotions, and we do things that ultimately sacrifice the brand and ourselves just to react to something for 15 seconds or 15 minutes. We have to be smarter than that — even if the President doesn't appear that way sometimes."
The other big takeaway from the interview, besides Smith's hypocritical condemnation of Hill, is how seriously he takes himself. Max Kellerman, who joined Smith for the interview, comes off as a complete hardo as well.
"The quest was going to be complete annihilation," Smith said when asked a simple question about the show's record ratings numbers. "It doesn't matter who I'm going up against. It's the same thing. He's on this side and you're on that side. That's the way I am. So it's not about Skip Bayless, it's not about Fox, it's not about the NFL Network, it's not about anything. Last time I checked, 'First Take' was No. 1 in cable (among men 18-34 and 18-49) for the 10 a.m. to 12 noon slot. So as far as I'm concerned, anybody that's standing in my way is somebody that I consider to be competition. It just so happens he was Max's predecessor."
Keep in mind: Smith and Kellerman aren't going to war. They aren't competing in any sort of athletic competition. They're sitting in an air-conditioned studio and talking about sports for two hours per day. But don't break the news to them.
"I can't wait to get going. We're sparring partners. But it's fun," Kellerman said. "It feels like a sport we're playing. It feels like a chess match, a game against a great competitor. We have a lot of fun."
Wow. But at least give Smith and Kellerman credit: they're not as bad as Skip Bayless. In a Complex profile last year, Bayless revealed he sets his watch to East Coast time –– and 10 minutes ahead at that –– despite living in Los Angeles.
H-A-R-D-O.
