Jeremy Lin , class act

For those of you who live in the world of people who don't go looking for offense in every corner of it, Federico was an editor at ESPN who ran afoul of the PC police by using the phrase "a chink in his armor" in a headline referring to Lin's game.

This whole thing reminds me of an episode of my favorite surreal sitcom, "Scrubs."

Young doctor J.D. (Zach Braff) was deviled throughout the series by the Janitor with No Name, who delighted in outsmarting the smart alecky young doc. At one point the janitor was doing a crossword puzzle as J.D. passed by, and said, "A blank in my armor."

J.D. jumped in, "Chink!" - just as an Asian doctor passed by, glaring at him.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody roasted the show for that one.

However Federico was fired. Another ESPN employee got away with a suspension after it was found he'd used the phrase too. It was difficult to charge the other guy with racism, seeing as how his wife was Asian.

Lin said from the beginning he didn't believe Federico meant anything offensive by the phrase.

He would know too. Lin has had reportedly had some nasty stuff thrown at him by fans of opposing teams, and faced a lot of real discrimination from managers and coaches who just knew that Asians and Harvard grads can't play basketball.

Lin said he wanted to reach out to Federico, and further that the subject of the apparent gaff didn't even take up ten minutes of their conversation over lunch.

That's class.

I'm not a basketball fan, but I'm fast becoming a Jeremy Lin fan.