Whitlock out at Fox Sports

Do you guys think Whitlock would ever be a good hire for The Athletic? He’s outspoken but he’s right in their wheelhouse. Big-picture thinker with thought-provoking analysis and a huge following on twitter and isn’t above getting twitter riled up.

 

Fuck off.

 

The NEW Sports Reporters with Whitlock as Conlan ...

... you fill in the rest: XX as XX, XX as XX and XX as XX.

 

I find there is no point in paying attention to either of these gentleman anymore because I don't believe either of them can muster any sincerity in what they say.

They each identified a portion of the market they felt was underserved -- generally, I would describe it as people who do not like being shamed for what most people would categorize as bigotry and/or misogyny — and began to tailor their public takes to serve that audience.

Now, is it is very possible once each man got used to wearing these masks of opportunism, it became harder and harder for them to distinguish between the character they were playing and the person they really are. But each man has become something of a parody of their own self-proclaimed iconoclastic character. It is no surprise where either of them stand on any issue anymore, no suspense. And thus, they have become the very thing they accuse those on the left of being, a puppet who rails against the other side to exploit the lemmings they believe cannot think for themselves.

This became obvious when Travis emerged as a COVID truther. I mean, Clay Travis had never heard of coronaviruses as late as February, but now he'd like you to believe he's a more trustworthy source when it comes to infectious disease than ... Dr. Faucci? It's a con, and even though it's not a particularly clever one, it is a lucrative one — if you lack shame and will take any position that positions you as an anti-establishment "truth teller" to an audience that just wants to be comforted by what are, at best, distortions, and are at worst, outright lies. It doesn't matter if Whitlock or Travis are right. Their appeal is they give comfort to a segment of the audience that wants to be told their biases are acceptable.

Travis knows this, and cackles at the game he's playing. This is a person, remember, who got internet famous by vowing to eat only pudding because he was protesting the lack of Titans games on DirectTV in the Virgin Islands. Nothing about him has ever been serious. He has no discernible talent, other than a lack of shame. But that's ok too! Because that's the hustle. There will always, always be a Clay Travis and an audience yearning for one.

Whitlock is so lost in his own sauce, who knows what's real at this point. At some point, people who don't do any of their own reporting — who just have an opinion about other people's reporting or art — have a hard time sounding fresh. Mostly he just sounds tired in his recycled takes. Nothing Jason has to say about black culture being the ruin of black people, or Colin Kaepernick being a tool of the woke, hasn't been said more eloquently already elsewhere by someone just as wrong, but a stronger writer.

The two of them will almost certainly turn on each other eventually. Each of them would sell out the other one in a second if they thought it would earn them more money (Travis) or more attention (Whitlock). Travis will be onto the next con by the time Kamala Harris is president; he'd betray every alt-right shitposter in a second if he thought it would earn him an extra nickel. I have no ill will toward Jason; mostly I feel sad for him. I think he decided, long ago, that he was unloveable. He copes with that self diagnosis by attempting to enrage others to earn their attention, however brief. The Trump parallels are obvious. Hearing his name taken in vain is so much better than not hearing it at all, which is why saddling up with Travis and becoming a full-time Twitter troll makes sense to him.

Jason keeps trying to remind us all that Twitter isn't real life. But now he's backed himself into an alley with no exits. If being a Twitter troll is all you have left and you've already declared Twitter to be a meaningless distortion of where society really is, every last plea for attention writes another line in your professional obituary. As a younger Whitlock might have better understood, I'll paraphrase Marlo Stanfield: He was a dead man the minute he left television. He's just walking around now not knowing it.

 

Hey, Whitlock is terrible, but let's not go comparing him to Bill Conlin.

 

Damnit DD, stop being so good at this writing shit, you're making it harder for the rest of us.

 

All that AND a Marlo Stanfield reference!

Well done.

 

grrrrr

 

Yesterday, virus truthers. Today, NASCAR truthers. Productive week.

 

I await the low-res phone interview.

 

Was waiting for this given clay's "was there even really a poop swastika at mizzou" and "did anyone actually vandalize lebron's house" truthering