Sports Guy, in his column Tuesday, threw in an hilariously perverse joke about porno actor Peter North that was unfortunately excised after about an hour on ESPN.com. I don’t remember the exact wording, but when Simmons told the story about the kid dropping a chili dog on his back, he originally followed it with something like “I turned around, expecting to see Peter North.”
I’d imagine Simmons’ original editor read the column and, unfamiliar with Mr. North’s work, let the language in, until a more porn-savvy official somewhere on the ABC/ESPN ladder noticed and ordered it out soon after. Still, strange that when Sports Guy, last year, accidentally attributed Patty Hearst’s kidnapping to “the Zionists,” it took the editors days to fix it, but the homoerotic reference to a male porn star couldn’t stay through the afternoon.
Posted by Stephen Silver at July 14, 2004 11:29 PM