Fox News Exec Who Wrote Racist, Homophobic Column Is Out

A Fox News Channel executive who wrote an inflammatory column decrying the diversity of the U.S. Olympic team has resigned.

John Moody, Fox News executive vice president and executive editor, has retired, a Fox News spokesperson told CNN Money Thursday. Sources said Moody had planned to retire before his Olympics column spurred outcry.

In the February column, which Fox News eventually removed from its website, Moody wrote, "Unless it's changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been 'Faster, Higher, Stronger.' It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to 'Darker, Gayer, Different.' If your goal is to win medals, that won't work."

"Complaining that every team isn't a rainbow of political correctness defeats the purpose of sports, which is competition," he continued. "At the Olympic level, not everyone is a winner. Not everyone gets a little plastic trophy to take home." Although athletes are chosen for the Olympic team based on their performance, not to fill diversity quotas, he wondered if members of this year's winter team, the most diverse ever, might have been selected "because they're the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from column A, B and C."

The team had the highest number ever of Asian-American and black athletes on a U.S. Winter Olympics team and the first openly gay winter competitors.

Several LGBT groups, including GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, denounced the column. "To suggest that race, sexuality, or gender orientation are the reasons these incredible athletes made the cut is insulting, repugnant and dismissive of a lifetime of hard work," HRC senior national press secretary Stephen Peters told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.

When the column was taken down, two days after its publication, Fox News issued a statement saying it "does not reflect the views or values" of the news channel. A source at Fox News told the Reporter that because of Moody's high rank, "the column was not put through the proper vetting process."

Moody joined Fox News as executive vice president when the channel was established in 1996, CNN Money notes. In 2009 he left to become CEO of NewsCore, a wire service owned by Fox's parent company, News Corp. He returned to Fox News as executive vice president and executive editor three years later, when NewsCore was absorbed into Fox News. He was not available for comment.