Thursday, December 09, 2004



Watchdog Group Calls Column Racist

NEW YORK Sam Francis displayed "clear bigotry" in a column about Monday Night Football's controversial Nicollette Sheridan/Terrell Owens spot, said a media watchdog group in a letter sent yesterday to Creators Syndicate.

"Did I disagree with the column? Yes," responded Anthony Zurcher, a Creators editor who saw the Francis piece before it was syndicated. "Did I feel it was so reprehensible that it shouldn't have been sent out? No."

In his Nov. 26 column, Francis decried the MNF spot not only for its implied nudity and implied sex, but for racial reasons. (Sheridan is white and Owens is black.) Francis wrote, among other things: "Breaking down the sexual barriers between the races is a major weapon of cultural destruction because it means the dissolution of the cultural boundaries that define breeding and the family and, ultimately, the transmission and survival of the culture itself."...