Autoblog

Jon Denning, right. Photo courtesy of jondenning.com

The other day I came across "Before the Thunder Rolls: Devotions for NASCAR Fans", a Christian prayer book written by a former NASCAR chaplain. It brought to light for me the degree to which stock car racing and Southern Baptist Christianity intersect. Drivers of Catholic background like Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villeneuve and Dario Franchitti may be making inroads into the sport, but that's of little consolation to Jon Denning.

The budding Jewish racing driver from New Jersey says he's encountered a surprising degree of antisemitism during his climb up the NASCAR ladder. The 20-year-old driver, currently on a visit to Israel, races in the lower-level Whelen All-American Series. He has won seven races in his career and was ranked among the top 500 aspiring stock car drivers before his sponsorship ran dry. Over the course of his experience so far, Denning has described an alarming degree of racism and bigotry in NASCAR, and was even told by colleagues that if he accepted Jesus he'd have better luck on the racetrack. Ouch. Although NASCAR has a diversity program in place, Denning has been refused three times, having been told the program is only for women, Hispanics and African-Americans.

[Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency via Winding Road]

General Motors has decided to suspend advertising on the Don Imus radio show in the wake of controversy sparked by the radio personality's racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

General Motors is cited as a "significant advertiser" on the show, though likely is keen on keeping its distance from Imus while he continues to make matters worse for himself. Imus appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show on Monday to apologize, and yesterday appeared on the NBC Today show with Matt Lauer, neither of which has helped to quell calls for his resignation or firing.

He'll begin a two-week suspension levied by his employer, CBS, this Monday, though whether or not big name advertisers like GM will return after a fortnight is unclear. GM joins American Express, Sprint, Staples, Proctor & Gamble Co., TD Ameritrade and Bigelow Tea in suspending or dropping altogether an association with Imus and his radio show.

UPDATE: After viewing a report on the Imus controversy on ABC's World News Tonight, we noticed that Ford Motor Company is also a sponsor of Imus' radio show, though to our knownledge has not decided to suspend its advertising.

[Source: Bloomberg]

NBC's Dateline has been looking to compile an episode on anti-Muslim attitudes here in the United States, and to kick things off, the news program decided to take "Muslim-looking men" and a camera crew into the Martinsville NASCAR event. We're not quite sure what the goal of this was, but you'll have to excuse us if we don't believe that they were simply expecting a friendly and accommodating environment. Fortunately for NASCAR, motorsports, and tolerant people everwhere, no incidents were reported.

NASCAR has since fired back at the network, stating that the actions of the Dateline crew were "outrageous" and that the network should be "ashamed." NBC is in the final year of an agreement to air a portion of NASCAR's events, and presumably this incident could be brought up during contract negotiations.

While Dateline has done many fine reports in the past, the program is arguably best known to auto enthusiasts as the organization that used pyrotechnics in 1993 to stage fires in an effort to demonstrate safety problems with side-saddle fuel tanks used on GM full-size trucks.

[Source: The Associated Press via AOL News]