by John Walters
Murders In Atlanta
A 21 year-old man (white) gunned down eight people, six of them Asian, in three separate massage parlors in Atlanta. We must be emerging from the pandemic if racially-motivated mass shootings are returning.
“Yesterday was a really bad day for him?”
Another Vote For Bitcoin
Morgan Stanley, the nation’s largest brokerage, has just released a report titled “The Case for Cryptocurrency as an investable asset class in a diversified portfolio.” If they’re in, Bitcoin may be inevitable. Time to put away your tulip analogies?
Powder Predators
Lions and hyenas never see snow in their natural habitats, but like most four-legged creatures, they seem to take to it quite naturally. There’s nothing like seeing wild animals at play. Or maybe they’re just happy that school was canceled.
Portnoy’s (Latest) Complaint
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy is a complicated character. He’ll never back down from a fight and he sat down with the Former Guy for a gushing interview last summer and his site is somewhere between early National Lampoon and the worst of frat bro culture. On the other hand he employs bright individuals such as @PFTCommenter and Joey Mulinaro, is buds with big finance names like Jim Cramer, and has helped give away millions to small business owners in need the past year.
One day earlier hockey broadcaster Gord Miller tweeted that he had some free time before a flight, so fire away with questions. A follower asked when he’d appear on a Barstool podcast that is geared to hockey, “Spittin’ Chiclets”
When asked to expound, Miller tweeted:
Which prompted Portnoy’s above tweet. Portnoy has plenty of Trump in him, except that unlike Trump he does have empathy and is not always looking out for himself. However, when someone points out—accurately—that he and his site promote misogyny and objectification of women, he always plays the free speech and/or Cancel Culture card.
It’s important to note: Miller isn’t attempting to shut down Barstool. He’s simply saying that he does not want to be associated with it. And Portnoy is not attacking the verity of Miller’s claims. He’s attempting to say this his own free speech is being threatened. Which, of course, it is not.
March Madness Meets Reefer Madness
In Indianapolis, where the NCAA tournament commences tomorrow and will be held for the next two-plus weeks, a German Shepherd with a keen snout sniffs out more than a half ton of weed with a street value of $8 million.
The tourney’s first upset.
You have to love that the pooch is posed in front of his bust. But you do worry about the safety of his family.
Re: Barstool Sports
I’m not a “stoolie”, but do follow the company sporadically and enjoy some of their content and personalities.
From my understanding, the talks about misogyny and mistreatment of women stems from what the company did in its early stage.
With that said, one of the most revered sports media brands of this country (SI) literally monetized soft porn by releasing a swim suit edition. I think all objectification of women is disgusting. I don’t condone anyone doing it. We are in this world, though, that people get bitter about someone doing something yet support another entity that does something similar but uses better terms to describe it.
And Barstool actually has a super talented and stacked lineup of female personalities, not to mention their executive leadership team is solely females.
People draw conclusions from Barstool by reading one article and applying that to the entire company. It really doesn’t make sense to me.
Excellent points, JA
Barstool is just the latest in the Maxim/Man Show/Hooters continuum. It’s the locale du jour for The American Bro to be surrounded (virtually) by like-minded dopes. Maybe at other times this stuff could be shrugged off but in Trump’s America its just not that funny. The fact that they may have talented female writers is not that different that when Playboy used to publish articles by Kurt Vonnegut, Ian Fleming, etc. If you have a daily feature called “Smokeshow of the Day,” then you are in the business of misogyny.
The issue with that comment, Wally, is that you most likely have never watched or read anything Barstool has put out. Should we cancel all of ESPN because they have a Body Issue? Should we cancel ABC because they air the Bachelor and Bachelorette? How many people blast Barstool for misogyny and then turn around and gladly watch a dude date 12 women simultaneously? Seems a bit….hypocritical?
It is these broad brush generalizations that make no sense.
The objectification of the human body is everywhere.
I’m not that swayed by either cancel culture or “what about” arguments. It’s just a website targeted to immature men — there isn’t much need to analyze it further.
Does a dog need a “sharp nose” to sniff a 1000 lbs of weed?
Not that this is the case but if delivery of legal marijuana was going to East Chicago missed an exit and ended up in Gary what happens?
Can deliveries cross state lines or does everything need to grow in state? Looked it up, didn’t spend a lot of time, but it’s unclear.
Does terroir matter for weed?
Modern times and nothing is clear. Jacob’s comment was spot on. SI led the way and my younger self could never understand the outrage. Somewhere between then and now the light went on. I know the exact moment. I was working for a major corporation and in the days before email a monthly security report was mailed to managers. It wasn’t a must read but I’d flip through. One month they published an investigation on all claims of sexual harassment against division managers and above. Division managers were 1 level below vice president. What was discovered 90% of the claims had merit. My awareness and behavior changed when I realized how toxic an environment could be and what it did to others. Now whenever I hear someone try to justify their behavior I harken back to that study.
A friend of mine is a partner at a Fortune 500 company. A MAJOR company. I was once shown an internal memo about sexual harassment and intimidation at the firm. One of the main conclusions that these very powerful men made in order to address the situation is that they “need to hire good people, not bad people.”
I just put a giant facepalm on the paper and moved on.