Read Jim Lampley's old AMA on reddit and was amazed at how many people can call Larry a racist with a story like his.
Well, first of all, let me deal with the subject of whether Larry Merchant is in any way even remotely racist. His first newspaper sports editing job when he came back from being in the Army was as the sports editor of the Wilmington Star News in North Carolina. Early on in his tenure, he placed on the first page a picture of a black man who had broken a world record for catching a marlin off the coast of Cape Hatteras. There was a picture of this fisherman with his giant fish, and Larry put it in a prominent place in the sports section. .The following day his editor called him and said, I don't care if a black man goes to the moon with a sports uniform on, you won't put him on the front page. And Larry said, you're absolutely correct, because I'm no longer the sports editor. So that's what I say when anyone suggests he's racist
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