So ESPN is down with misogyny and free-wheeling, obnoxiously edgy subject matter, but Jemele Hill’s accurate and personal tweets about the President, and her factual and enlightening tweets about how fans get owners to listen to their demands, just can’t be tolerated by station executives?
I’m officially, totally confused right now.
With celebrity journalist Twitter use and media being held to new standards of political correctness and sports broadcast companies firing anyone whose ideology doesn’t fall in line with the company agenda, it’s surprising to see that ESPN has a new late-night sports show featuring the guys from Barstool Sports.
The Barstool Van Talk show, which made its debut Tuesday on ESPN2, features Dan Katz and PFT Commenter. The subject matter will be racy at times and offensive, but apparently, in this case, it’s all good. Offensive material offered as sports content is just what ESPN needs at a time when they are punishing one of their major talents of color for having an opinion that might just improve the current state of our nation.
Big Cat on Twitter
This is why we’re one at 1 am @barstoolvantalk #BVT https://t.co/JLMmsfJYdV
There are a few people who don’t welcome Bar Stool to the ESPN family.
According to The Washington Post, Sam Ponder, the host of ESPNs Sunday NFL Countdown who has history with the website and knows full well how the sites misogyny-as-hobby take on life can feel to a woman, kicked off the dust-up Monday with a tweet in which she offered a sarcastic greeting to Katz, who will appear on the show and is known as @BarstoolBigCat on Twitter.”
In a Twitter message to Van Talk and Pardon My Take podcast co-host Dan Big Cat Katz, Ponder addressed a 2014 post that labeled her a bible-thumping freak and told her to go f–k herself for a tweet she posted following the Ray Rice scandal.
Sam Ponder on Twitter
Welcome to the ESPN family @BarstoolBigCat (& welcome to all ur minions who will respond to this so kindly)
Interesting grab for ESPN indeed.
On one hand we have a respected journalist in Jemele Hill, who has decades of investigative reporting experience working in major news departments and covering every sporting event under the sun. She’s on suspension and facing possibly more discipline. On the other hand we have shock jock sports performers getting a piece of that billion dollar ESPN pie to promote ignorance.
BarStool is a very old formula and far less advanced intellectually than a SC6. It’s like white trash tomfoolery on BarStool, which in ESPN’s mind is a much more manageable product in this climate than (as Bar Stool would probably put it) “effin” Rosa Parks talking sports five nights a week.
