Earlier this year, Bernard Goldberg quietly departed HBO’s Real Sports without much fanfare after more than two decades on the program. In recent months, Goldberg amplified his quiet exit, trashing the show and now blaming his departure on host Bryant Gumbel.

In his column for BernardGoldberg.com, the former Real Sports contributor recalled the show’s year-end roundtable on HBO last December. Goldberg pointed to a specific comment from Gumbel during the discussion that made him realize he no longer wanted to be a Real Sports contributor.

“I told the show’s host, Bryant Gumbel, that I recently tuned in to watch a National Hockey League playoff game and heard a player, at a pre-game ceremony, say that, ‘racism is everywhere,’” Goldberg writes.

“I told Gumbel that since I didn’t tune in to get a lecture on what a racist country America is, I changed the channel. To which Bryant replied: ‘Racism is everywhere.’”

Not only does Goldberg argue that racism is not everywhere, but he claims “racism was never everywhere” in the United States.

“It was never in the hearts of the abolitionists. Never in the hearts of those brave Americans who challenged Jim Crow and fought, often at great peril, for civil rights. I know it’s not everywhere because it’s not in my house,” writes Goldberg.

The year-end roundtable was Goldberg’s final contribution to Real Sports, officially leaving the show a few weeks after his discussion of racism with Gumbel. “I didn’t want to be part of a team whose most prominent voice thinks that, ‘racism is everywhere,’ and where the other 5 correspondents — whose politics range from liberal to hard-left progressive – just sat there and said nothing,” Goldberg added.

In a tell-all interview with Bill O’Reilly two months ago, the 76-year-old Goldberg argued he was “diversity” for Real Sports, because his conservative viewpoints differed from the other correspondents.

The post Bernie Goldberg Says Bryant Gumbel Remark Led Him to Quit HBO’s Real Sports: Didn’t Want to Be on Show Whose Host Thinks ‘Racism is Everywhere’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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