Last week, Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs wrote a fantastic response to Sports Illustrated’s Thomas Lake, who penned a scathing, fart-sniffing letter to Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan about what he supposedly owed his former high school basketball coach, Pop Herring, who suffers from a mental illness, among other things. You can read Lake’s humongous pat on the back to himself here, and then I’m sure you can track down the online fundraiser that he started to really stick it to Jordan. If it helps Lake sleep better at night, then good for him, but I’m more curious about what it all represents.
At some point in the last few years, it became a trend to hate Jordan. As I pointed out during the NBA Lockout last summer, players picked him as the bad guy, because – aside from maybe Mark Cuban – Jordan is the most recognizable owner. But they also obviously picked him because he actually played the game, and they felt that he should have had their backs. I wrote that he shouldn’t, because A) he’s already done so much for paving the way to fortune for the league’s stars and B) he’s an owner now, and he has to worry about himself and his team.
Now, if people want to argue that they hate him because he sucks as an owner, I can get on board with that. However, the idea that he owes certain people something because he’s rich is just lazy. And yesterday, our friends at Buzzfeed found something even lazier.
That’s an actual story that ran on FOX News yesterday, and that caption is amazing. For starters, I think the “noted anti-police activist” description of Carmelo Anthony has to do with this old video of him supporting a “snitches get stitches” agenda with noted drug dealers. Still, “noted anti-police activist” is a far cry from “dipsh*t kid”. But that Jordan description, holy sh*t that’s just lazy and sad. That’s the kind of caption that I would write as a joke.
I wish that Gawker still had its FOX News mole running, because I’d love to know what goes into this process:
FOX Web Editor: “Guys, Michael Jordan is raising money for Obama. What can we write about him?”
FOX Writer: “Horrible owner?”
FOX Web Editor: “Nah, that’s too accurate. Let’s go with something really asinine.”
FOX Writer: “Terrible fashion sense?”
FOX Web Editor: “Again, way too accurate.”
FOX Writer: “Failed baseball player?”
FOX Web Editor: *starts masturbating furiously* “Oh yeahhhhhhh, you get a raise.”
I’d like to actually take this time to audition for a job with FOX News writing headlines, since they’re basically stealing a page from the humor bloggers handbook. Here are some captions that I’d like to submit:
“Kobe Bryant, failed monogamist…”
“Ray Lewis, successful defendant…”
“Todd Akin, amateur medical expert…”
“Mitt Romney, bluest collar sympathizer…”
“Chris Brown, male-on-male violence activist…”
This is fun, now you guys try.
