Longtime sports-radio host Dan McNeil has been fired by Entercom Chicago after making a rude comment about ESPN reporter Maria Taylor’s outfit during “Monday Night Football.” He posted an image of Taylor in a black leather off-the-shoulder top to his Twitter account, along with the comment, “NFL sideline reporter or a host for the AVN annual awards presentation?” (You can see a screen grab of the post here.) He deleted the tweet shortly after posting it, but the damage had been done.
Taylor replied from her own Twitter account: “Well Danny Dearest if you would like to continue making sexist comments about me … please bring your misogyny with you to the NBA Countdown double header I’ll be hosting tomorrow night. Hey ladies remember you can wear whatever you feel confident in!”
Other ESPN reporters and fans joined the anti-McNeil backlash, and McNeil was fired a day later. He’d been working in Chicago sports radio for decades as a so-called “lightning-rod figure,” well-known for making controversial statements.
Apparently, referring to a porn awards ceremony was the final straw.
In short order, the Washington Post called the comment “degrading,” and headlines featuring the buzzword “porn” started popping up around the internet.
Now, far be it from me, an ardent feminist and supporter of women kicking ass in male-dominated fields like sports reporting, to disagree with McNeil being fired. As far as I’m concerned, he deserved what he got.
The comment was sexist because, rather than focusing on the content of the reporting or Taylor’s skills, McNeil focused on her physical appearance. Furthermore, it’s never okay to slam women, especially women of color, for their appearance, particularly in a professional context. Like, duh. Women should wear what they want, period.
Well Danny Dearest if you would like to continue making sexist comments about me…please bring your misogyny with you to the NBA Countdown double header I’ll be hosting tomorrow night. Hey ladies remember you can wear whatever you feel confident in! @670TheScore @DannyMac670 https://t.co/bN0H582isU
— Maria Taylor (@MariaTaylor) September 15, 2020
But the fact that it took him bringing AVN into his grossness to get him fired? That the porn industry has to be dragged into it for his behavior to get attention? That the AVN Awards are supposedly some bastion for inappropriate attire?
Bro, think again.
The AVN Awards, and other industry events, are red carpet affairs where adult performers, directors, producers, and crew show off their finest, often designer, threads. Sometimes revealing, but rarely more so than you can see on other industries’ red carpets. So his implication that the AVN Awards are trashy and, therefore, so was Taylor? Factually inaccurate.
But the deeper implication was that implying that Taylor had anything in common with someone in the porn industry devalued her worth. McNeil was trying to degrade Taylor’s fashion choice by comparing it to something that porn stars would wear. The fact that he was bringing porn into it at all was meant to be the insult. Ugh.
It’s not that I think McNeil shouldn’t have been fired—he’s clearly an asshole. But I wish that merely equating someone with the adult entertainment industry—which, by the way, is full of people with more class in their pinky finger than McNeil has in his body—wasn’t such an insult in the first place.
Will we ever get to a point where we can talk about porn, and the people who make it, without the conversation being considered inherently “dirty”? Can we stop equating women’s appearance with their value, whether they’re in adult entertainment or sports commentating? Can we just let porn stars be porn stars, sports commentators be sports commentators, and congratulate them for who they are and what they do?
Goddammit, I’m tired.
Microphone stock photo by Dmitry Demidov from Pexels
