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Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice was fired Wednesday after a violent, expletive-laden video of his behavior at practice surfaced Tuesday. Everyone from Governor Chris Christie to LeBron James refused to defend his actions, and Rice himself said outside his house after the termination that "There is no excuse — I was wrong." But that hasn't stopped Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin from making excuses and saying that the coach's treatment of his student-athletes wasn't that bad.
Rice's former players have not been speaking publicly, and so the list of Rice defenders is not long — one of his former players did tell Piers Morgan that it was all "very passionate" but ultimately kind of motivational "joking." Enter Hannity and Malkin on Fox News's Hannity last night, calling us all a bunch of wimps:
Let's break down the Rice defenders, blow-by-blow:
Malkin: "The problem isn't so much that there are consequences for hate speech... the problem is that the left is so very, very, very selective about when it chooses to manufacture outrage and when it doesn't ... I certainly agree that political correctness has run amuck."
The video aired on ESPN, which, last time we checked, is not politically biased — except maybe when it comes Dick Vitale and Duke. And Christie voiced his disapproval. The outrage is national. But Malkin is targeting not so much politics as political correctness — and seems to be implying that throwing around anti-gay slurs and getting punished for it represents something more than a university saving face, that there is some other standard of gay slurs and violence when it comes to mentors of young student-athletes. And so it should be noted that Malkin herself has spoken up in some of her various feuds to voice her opinion that being called bitch, hoe [sic], and cunt crosses her red line of inappropriate language in public or private.