A Dallas sportscaster looks into his teleprompter. It was as if old and new media had settled on a single messenger, a guy who likes to say “Boom!” a lot. An Upworthy headline read: “ Old White Guy Drops a Monster Speech on Anti-Gay Football Teams.” The Huffington Post called Hansen’s commentaries “ jaw-dropping.” BuzzFeed called him “ badass.” Just as local news audiences were shrinking, Hansen was discovered by the young’uns who search the web for awesomeness. “He’s an old, fat white guy, as he calls himself, and there ain’t much of a market for old, fat white guys.”īut Hansen’s story isn’t one of pathos. “He’s a TV dinosaur,” said Randy Galloway, a longtime sports columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and previously the Dallas Morning News. “You taught him well.”įrom one angle, Hansen is one of the last men standing of the Ron Burgundy age of local news. “You taught him well, Jim,” he told his audience. Jim Garrett had once said of the NFL, “This isn’t the Boy Scouts.” Hansen flipped the father’s words to hang the son. Hansen had dug up a quote from Jim Garrett, the 84-year-old father of Cowboys coach Jason Garrett, that he thought exposed intergenerational moral decay. When we met, Hansen was still grinning about his latest “Unplugged.” On March 18, he blasted the Cowboys for signing defensive end Greg Hardy, an alleged domestic abuser. Another time, Hansen told viewers that he was sexually assaulted on a baseball diamond at age 10, but had been too terrified and humiliated to admit it. He pilloried racists in the Dallas suburbs. Last February, his ringing defense of Michael Sam landed him on Ellen. newscast to deliver “Unplugged” commentaries that were equal parts lefty jeremiad, wicked punch line, and wrenching confession. Several years ago, he began using the 10 p.m. “The biggest name, the biggest cat down here.”īut now Hansen was becoming a moral beacon to the world. “From the time he got to Channel 8, he has been the unquestioned alpha dog over everybody and everything,” said Mike Rhyner, a sports radio host for KTCK. “Jesus,” he said.įor more than three decades, Dale Hansen has been a blustering, vainglorious, near-mythic figure in Dallas sportscasting. You give me hope.’” Hansen considered the magnitude of that sentiment. “She wrote, ‘We always hear about how bad people are from your country. In this case, the Pakistani woman meant the 66-year-old who does sports at 6 and 10 p.m. This woman is just writing about, as she put it, ‘the West.’” “I’m assuming it was from Pakistan,” Hansen said last week. He discovered her email in his work inbox one night. I wasn't afraid.After being hailed by Ellen DeGeneres, George Takei, and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it was probably inevitable that sportscaster Dale Hansen would find a fan in Pakistan. I'm old school," he said, adding, "I'm a-man-and-a-woman type of guy." For his part, Michael appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week, and his cover quote reads, "If I was walking down the street and someone asked me If I was gay, I would've told them I was gay. "I don't want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment. He told NBC News that he was shocked and proud, saying, "No matter what, he's my son and I still love him." In an interview with The New York Times, though, Michael's dad had a different response. ![]() Hansen's emotional segment comes amid reports that the player's father, Michael Sam Sr., seems to have mixed reactions. But I do understand that he's part of mine." And even when they finally could, it took several more years before a black man played quarterback because we weren't comfortable with that, either." Hansen got personal, adding, "I'm not always comfortable when a man tells me he's gay. Echoing Jon Stewart's sentiments, he referred to past NFL controversies, including race, saying, "It wasn't that long ago when we were being told that black players couldn't play in our games because it would be uncomfortable. ![]() ![]() The latest person to weigh in on college football star Michael Sam's coming out is Texas anchor Dale Hansen, who said the player's announcement calls for us to celebrate our differences.
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