Is anyone else old enough (and American enough, and enough of a sports fan) to remember how Jimmy the Greek lost his job as a TV sports commentator?

Jimmy, a renowned football handicapper (i.e., a notoriously successful gambler), was hired to talk on TV about NFL football games. (It may have been Monday Night Football, or maybe the "regular" Sunday games ~ whichever, I think his appearances were limited to participating in halftime/postgame "discussions" with fellow sportscasters.)

A certain player, who "happened to be" African-American ~ and also happened to be very small for a football player, and very fleet-footed ~ had just turned in an outstanding performance. Jimmy used the phrase "that little monkey" while gushing with praise for this young man. He didn't mean to be insulting or degrading; quite the contrary. The player's outstanding day must have helped Jimmy make a lot of money; Jimmy got so excited that he forgot to watch his tongue. My impression is that he was just such an unreconstructed old-school white guy that he could actually utter a phrase guaranteed to be heard as offensive without the slightest hesitation or consciousness that anyone would misinterpret his intent, which was really to be complimentary and almost affectionate ~ at worst, nothing more than overly-familiar.

I'm not trying to justify what what he said, but rather to point out how there was misunderstanding from every angle. The media storm that immediately erupted cost Jimmy his network job, and people who learned of the incident only in hindsight undoubtedly were given the impression that Jimmy the Greek was some kind of meanspirited racist. Nothing could be farther from the truth ~ he revealed himself to be an unintentional and perhaps paternalistic racist, but not mean or nasty, and not a "hater" by any means. Just clueless ~ of course, that alone may well have been reason enough to remove him from his high-profile job