Gregg Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook is an American writer who is a senior editor of The New Republic. He also writes a weekly column during the National Football League season called Tuesday Morning Quarterback, currently on ESPN.com.

Easterbrook also often writes for Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

Early life

Easterbrook was born in 1953 and grew up in Buffalo, New York. Easterbrook has a bachelor's degree in political science from Colorado College and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University. He is married and has three children; two boys, born in 1989 and 1995, and a girl born in 1990. He is the brother of Judge Frank H. Easterbrook and Neil Easterbrook, English professor at Texas Christian University.

Career

Easterbrook has been a long time critic of the Space Shuttle program, publishing an extensive criticism in 1980 in the Washington Monthly. Following the Challenger and Columbia disasters Easterbrook received attention for his belief that the shuttle program should be canceled. Easterbrook supports active measures against global warming, which he considers a serious threat.

In addition to his journalism, Easterbrook has published several books. His latest, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, was published in December 2003. The book focuses on statistical data indicating that Americans are better off in terms of material goods and amount of free time available but surveys show that they are not happier than before. Easterbrook argues that this has occurred due to choice anxiety and abundance denial.

Easterbrook has also written books on Christian theology, American football, and the environment, along with two novels. Some of his works include The Here and Now, Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Beside Still Waters, A Moment on the Earth, and This Magic Moment.

Having previously been a sceptic about global warming, Easterbrook announced during 2006 that he now belives there is near-unanimous acceptance of the evidence of an artificial greenhouse effect in the scientific community. He therefore now holds that greenhouse gas emissions must be curbed ([1]).

Kill Bill controversy

Easterbrook also had a blog [2] at The New Republic Online, a branch of The New Republic, until mid-2004. In October of 2003, in a column critical of the violence in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill, he wrote the following:

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message — now Disney's message — that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

After the ensuing uproar and accusations that Easterbrook and The New Republic were anti-semitic, Easterbrook wrote that he "mangled" his own ideas by his choice of words and wrote the following to explain his thought process and to apologize:[3]

I wondered about the consciences of those running Disney and Miramax. Were they Christian? How could a Christian rationalize seeking profits from a movie that glorifies killing as a sport, even as a form of pleasure?... I did exactly that one week earlier, when I wrote a column about the movie The Passion asking how we could take Mel Gibson seriously as a professed Christian, when he has participated in numerous movies that glorify violence.

But those running Disney and Miramax are not Christian, they're Jewish. Learning this did in no way still my sense of outrage regarding Kill Bill. How, I wondered, could anyone Jewish — members of a group who suffered the worst act of violence in all history, and who suffer today, in Israel, intolerable violence — seek profit from a movie that glamorizes violence as cool fun?...

Twenty minutes after I pressed "send," the entire world had read it. When I reread my own words and beheld how I'd written things that could be misunderstood, I felt awful. To anyone who was offended I offer my apology, because offense was not my intent. But it was 20 minutes later, and already the whole world had seen it... My attempt to connect my perfectly justified horror at an ugly and corrupting movie to the religious faith and ethnic identity of certain executives was hopelessly clumsy...accusing a Christian of adoring money above all else does not engage any history of ugly stereotypes. Accuse a Jewish person of this and you invoke a thousand years of stereotypes about that which Jews have specific historical reasons to fear. What I wrote here was simply wrong, and for being wrong, I apologize.

I worship in one of the handful of joint Christian-Jewish congregations in the United States... Two years ago I wrote in The New Republic of the Bradley Hills-Bethesda Jewish joint congregation, "One of the shortcomings of Christianity is that most adherents downplay the faith's interweaving with Judaism." I and my family sought out a place where Christians and Jews express their faith cooperatively.

The New Republic accepted blame for the piece in an apology [4] and denied that his comments were intentionally anti-semitic. Easterbrook continued to blog for them, and still writes articles on environmentalism (especially the damage caused by sport utility vehicles), religion and other subjects.

At the time, Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column was appearing on ESPN's website. The column was noted for its humor and ruthless self-parodying, a "Running Items Department", football haiku and senryu, "Cheerbabe Cheesecake" and "Equal-Time Beefcake", and humorous team names such as "Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons" (Washington Redskins) and "Arizona CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN FOOTBALL-LIKE SUBSTANCE Cardinals". ESPN, which is owned by Disney, fired Easterbrook after his comments about Kill Bill were published. He later resumed the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for NFL.com.

On April 24, 2006, it was announced that Easterbrook would be brought back to ESPN's website after a two-year absence. His return column, a preview of the 2006 NFL Draft, appeared the following day. In the time since his column left ESPN, Michael Eisner retired from Disney and Harvey Weinstein left Miramax (and Disney altogether) to form a new film company.

Notable articles

"Finally Feeling the Heat" New York Times, May 24, 2006
"Case Closed: The Global Warming Debate Is Over" Brookings Institution paper, May 2006
"Who Needs Harvard?" The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004
"The End of War?" New Republic, May 30, 2005
"Debunking Doomsday" Wired, July 2003
"The Real Truth About Money" Time magazine, January 17, 2005
"There Goes the Neighborhood" New York Times Book Review, January 30, 2005
"Long Shot" The Atlantic Monthly, May 2003

External links