![]() All the others he didn't know, they were the bad people. The one black family he knew were good people. I think I was 12 before I realized that the N word actually wasn't the first name of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Elston Howard and so many more. I was raised in a small Iowa farm town that had only one black family in the county and raised by a man who used the N word like it was a proper noun. HANSEN: Maybe because I used to one of those kids. Hansen said he didn't blame the kids holding the white power signs. GOODWYN: Hansen's little history lesson was an extraordinary public shaming of a local high school, but then the commentary took a turn. When my granddaughter who went to Lewisville High would be at a game in Flower Mound, she and her friends would hear the chant, welfare babies, do you know who your daddy is, because we know ours. HANSEN: Kids on the Flower Mound side were seen holding up signs saying white power, and too many parents and apparently others who care tried to defend what you cannot defend. After a racist incident at a high school in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, Hansen went at it again. GOODWYN: Hansen had broken big stories in his career but had never experienced celebrity on this scale before. We need heterosexual people that speak out and say. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW")ĮLLEN DEGENERES: Well, speaking as a gay person, it - we really do need people like you. He got invited to be on Ellen DeGeneres' show. ![]() Who was this 64-year-old rotund sportscaster in Dallas? From the right came jeering and vows to swear off Hansen's sportscasts forever, but from the left came enthusiastic support. It wasn't just the quality of the writing and delivery. GOODWYN: The commentary went viral on YouTube. You love another man - well, now you've gone too far. Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes - we know they're welcome. You kill people while driving drunk - that guy's welcome. You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots - you're the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft. Several NFL officials telling Sports Illustrated it will hurt him on draft day because a gay player wouldn't be welcome in an NFL locker room because that's a man's world. HANSEN: Missouri's All-American defensive end Michael Sam, the SEC's defensive player of the year and expected to be a third to fifth round pick in the NFL draft, tells the world he's gay. By the time he pulled into his driveway, Hansen already had his commentary written in his head. GOODWYN: What he was hearing really ticked him off. And I'm hearing some of these most outlandish comments. HANSEN: So I'm driving home, and I'm listening to all the different radio stations, as I always do. GOODWYN: But that evening on the long drive home to Waxahachie, Hansen listened to sports talk. And that afternoon, Hansen's boss stuck his head in his office and suggested maybe he'd like to write something.ĭALE HANSEN: And I said, what would I write about? And I said, I'm not even sure what I'd say. It was no big deal, but that began to change in early 2014 after a star defensive end at the University of Missouri, Michael Sam, confirmed to the world he was gay. WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: WFAA sportscaster Dale Hansen had been doing his unplugged commentaries for decades. NPR's Wade Goodwyn is in Dallas and picks it up from here. ![]() He's not the station's news anchor nor the political commentator. He gets that attention for his on-air editorials. Next we're going to learn about a local TV guy in Dallas who has repeatedly been an Internet sensation.
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