Jeremy Lin Lunched with the Fired ESPN Headline Writer
It's perhaps easier to forget the name of fired ESPN editor Anthony Federico than it is to forgive the "Chink in the Armor" headline he wrote, but apparently Jeremy Lin did the latter face-to-face with Federico over lunch on Tuesday. "It went incredible," Federico said in a report by Newsday's Anthony Rieber. "I'm just so excited we had a chance to meet. We talked for an hour. I'm just so thankful."
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Back in February, Federico sparked a web outrage after using the racist word in the headline on for a story that attributed a New York Knicks' loss to the New Orleans Hornets to its Asian-American point guard Jeremy Lin. Federico called his word choice "an honest mistake," but he was promptly fired amid allegations of racism. "You have to learn to forgive, and I don't even think that was intentional," Lin said last month when offered an apology from ESPN, and he made good on that on Tuesday.
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"The fact that he reached out to me," Federico told Newsday, which notes that the two spent the lunch briefly talking about that groan-worthy headline. "The fact that he took the time to meet with me in his insanely busy schedule . . . He's just a wonderful, humble person. He didn't have to do that, especially after everything had kind of died down for the most part." We can't help but think that this might have helped clear Federico's name if the lunch had happened earlier. After all, Federico does mention "everything has kind of died", and while he means the hoopla, the media circus, and his firing controversy, "everything" today also includes Linsanity.
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