Golf Channel anchorwoman Kelly Tilghman was suspended a mere two weeks for making an offensive comment about golf great Tiger Woods. She said on air that challengers should “lynch him in a back alley.”

When I first read this I was outraged and thought the woman should be summarily canned. That’s not a slip of the tongue, that’s a lynching reference and Tilghman should be fired, not suspended. Don Imus got canned for calling female basketball players “nappy headed hoes.” He didn’t make a reference to a barbaric practice in which people were killed for the color of their skin. A racist outburst also cost former Seinfeld actor Michael Richards his career.

When you watch the clip though, she’s addressing something someone else said, and it does seem like a dumb ass slip that she should have to live with, but that maybe shouldn’t cost her a career. I don’t know. She’s in the news field, though, she should know to watch what she says:

This makes me upset, but it does seem like a genuine mistake from some idiot. What should happen to her career now? Well she supposedly apologized to Tiger Woods and his PR person said that they didn’t take offense.

Faldo and Tilghman were discussing young players who could challenge the world’s No. 1 player toward the end of Friday’s broadcast at Kapalua when Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while.”

“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman replied.

“While we believe that Kelly’s choice of words was inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate,” Golf Channel said in its statement. “Consequently, we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately.”

Woods and Tilghman have known each other 12 years. She was picked to host a club demonstration with Woods in south Florida when he talked about new products from Nike Golf.

Tilghman was helped when Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent at IMG, said it was a non-issue and considered the matter “case closed.”

“Tiger and Kelly are friends, and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly,” Steinberg said Tuesday night in a statement released by Golf Channel. “Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments.”

Tilghman had said in a previous statement she apologized directly to Woods, and the immediate support from Woods’ camp was critical.

[From The Huffington Post]

Last night I finally watched the cartoon The Boondocks online. I know it’s a retired comic strip, but this is the adult cartoon on The Cartoon Network put out by the same creator. In case you’re not familiar with it, two young kids live with their ornery grandfather, and it deals with issues of race, family life, and politics.

It was hysterically funny, but they also use the “N” word constantly and you have to get used to it. When the word is used like that it takes the sting out of it, and it’s called “appropriation,” like when gay people use the “other” F word. There’s a lot of well-deserved debate about how words can be used by one group of people and not another, and I think the issue is intent. Like if you intend to use it to put someone down because of who they are, it shouldn’t be used that way.

This chick Kelly Tilghman didn’t intend to say that Woods should be lynched, she just kind of blurted it out and that’s not what she meant. Maybe a two week suspension is all that’s in order, but it also kind of gives you a chill to read those words and consider what they can really mean.