Kenny Mayne ought to be ashamed of himself

Goodness knows too many people make mountains out of molehills in our society today.

But sometimes, you hear something and it just makes you so blasted mad you can’t just let it go.

Sunday night as I was trying to drift off to sleep, I had the TV set on the “sleep” mode and ESPN’s SportsCenter was playing. They did their usual 15 minutes on the latest biggest baseball game ever between the Yankees and Red Sox and a couple of other things, then Kenny Mayne got to the story about Sunday’s Nextel Cup race at Dover being rained out.

I can’t quote exactly what Mayne said because I only heard it once and don’t plan on listening to it again to get my dander back up. But the gist of it was something like “If a lot of people named Cleetus…call in to work sick on Monday, it may be because the NASCAR race was rained out on Sunday.”

Mayne used “Cleetus” and another Southern-sounding name, then added “Susan” because “NASCAR has women who are fans, too.”

OK, first, it wasn’t funny. Mayne is better than that.

But the main point is that it’s yet another example that, first, people who work in the national media think that everybody who watches a NASCAR race is a tobacco-spitting, overall-wearing, barefoot-going rube. And, second, that people who aren’t tobacco-spitting, overall-wearing, barefoot-going rubes are inherently better people than those who are.

I get SO tired of trying to make this point, but I can’t help myself.

Suppose Kenny Mayne had been introducing a story about NBA fans having to wait until Thursday night until the final series between Cleveland and San Antonio begins. What if he had said, “All of the Leroys and Darnells (or any other stereotypical names for black people) you know will spend the next few days waiting for Thursday night ...”

Or suppose Mayne had said, “It’s going to be hard to get a hair appointment or schedule a session with your interior designer next week because there’s a big figure skating competition coming up.”

Reckon Mayne could have gotten either those stereotypical remarks past the people at ESPN who ought to be making sure things like that don’t happen? I doubt it.

Keep in mind, now, that in less than two months ESPN becomes the network that carries Nextel Cup races on a weekly basis. There’s no law that says everybody who works at ESPN has to like racing to stay on the payroll, but the idea that the fans of any given sport can be described by using terms like “Cleetus” is absurd.

I guess Mayne thought “Bubba” would be a cliché.

Is this a big deal? No. The world’s not going to wobble off its axis because of a bad throwaway line on an ESPN broadcast.

But I grew up in the South and I still live here. My dad’s father had a farm and so did several of my uncles and great uncles. My mother’s father worked in a textile mill, and then my mother worked in another mill pretty much until she wasn’t able to work any more. Some of them liked NASCAR and some of them didn’t know what a race car was.

Everyone of them, though, did have one thing in common. Every one of them was every bit as good as Kenny Mayne will ever be, no matter how many suits he has and how many times he smirks at you on TV.