Once again, the ever-restless Jemele Hill is expanding her social justice media reach. After talking her way out the door at ESPN last year, she is now planning to launch a new podcast on Spotify this March, reports Deadline's Dawn C. Chmielewski. Hill's psyched because she gets to curse on Spotify and says she can be even more thoughtful than she's been in the past. Which wouldn't be hard for this social justice lightning rod to do.
Since her inglorious exit from ESPN — due largely on the firestorm she created by tweeting that President Donald Trump and his supporters are "white supremacists" — Hill has been riding a big progressive race baiting/I-hate-Trump wave. She's written sparingly for The Undefeated and The Atlantic and talks about creating social justice videos. She narrated LeBron James' three-part Showtime documentary "Shut Up and Dribble."
Hill's Spotify podcast will be titled Unbothered and will air twice a week. She expects to cover pop culture, sports and entertainment news in her podcast and promises to be even more provocative than she has been on social media:
“Probably more so, because I get to curse. It’ll be an opportunity for me to be more unfiltered and more thoughtful about some things, and cover a wide variety of topics.”
“Spotify and I are very like-minded,” Hill went on. “We both believe in being bold and authentic. I am thrilled to get the opportunity to stretch myself in a much different way, with a support system that I believe will bring out the best in me. I look forward to sharing my perspective and experience with Spotify’s many listeners across the world.”
Interpreted: she shares her perspective with all the literary grace of a bull in a china shop. Insulting President Trump drew a White House call for her firing. Her call for a sponsor boycott of the Dallas Cowboys, and by extension her own ESPN employer, got her suspended and figuratively pointed toward the door.
“I have a lot of things to say, and there’s not a lot of platforms that give you the freedom to not just be thoughtful but to come with a realness that not everyone is prepared to accept," adds Hill, who went to The Atlantic to, as editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said, serve as a "Roman candle" who would "make all sorts of useful trouble."
Spotify’s Courtney Holt is equally gung-ho about adding Hill to the that lineup:
“At the end of the day, we want to enable creators to have a platform to speak their minds. It’s about enabling creators like Jemele to do what they do best. It’s not an effort to go after controversial topics. It’s making sure it’s an authentic voice that wants to be heard.”
Yes, that's Hill all right: an authentic voice who rarely goes after controversial topics. Where has Holt been?
“Jemele is an important voice in sports, race, culture and politics, and their intersection in media,” Holt said. “She will bring her unique point of view to our platform with ‘Unbothered,’ which is sure to be a favorite of listeners with diverse interests and viewpoints.”
Did someone say "diverse interests and viewpoint?" Spotify's so-called "diversity" includes a progressive-heavy dose of political podcasts like Rachel Maddow, NPR and Best of the Left —The Best of Progressive and Liberal Talk. Spotify has previously partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups for assistance in identifying hate groups, and Breitbart reported in 2015 that Spotify's political censorship should worry us all. Jemele Hill is just another feather in Spotify's left wing.
