thelesterlee
I try to avoid talking about guys like Jason Whitlock and Clay Travis because it is very clear they are gaming social media by intentionally angering people in order to maximize views so they can go to companies and show them all the views they get and trick people into giving them money under the guise that they’ve built massive audiences when in actuality, they don’t have ‘fans’. They have right-wing losers who like being placated and spoonfed baby shit, and a bunch of views from people hate-reading their nonsense.
This week, Jason Whitlock went after ESPN’s Mina Kimes because of course he did.
Mina has a 100% approval rating as everyone agrees she’s genuinely great at covering the NFL. She’s clever and knows what she’s talking about which is rare for ESPN to have someone who is both well-informed AND entertaining.
But it would be the second attack Mina Kimes took this week. The first attack coming from Chris Curtis—a producer for Boston sports radio station, WEEI—who dusted off an old Asian slur from like, the Great Depression era.
In a random pointless segment about the ‘Top 5 nips’—which are those little airplane-sized alcohol bottles—Curtis blurted out ‘Mina Kimes’ and awkwardly smirked at his co-workers like he knew he shouldn’t have said a joke that only made himself laugh.
Nips is a slur about Japanese people that was big during World War 2. It’s 2023 and I only learned that because Boston sports radio cannot not be racist.
Chris Curtis attempted to save face by saying that he meant to say Mila Kunis, not Mina Kimes, implying he was listing off the top nipples he wanted. Get it????!
So basically, Curtis tried to defend himself by saying “No guys, I wasn’t being racist. I was being a pervert!!”. Interesting move.
Mina Kimes handled the whole situation perfectly by simply changing her Twitter profile picture to Mila Kunis and moving on with her life.
Jason Whitlock, however, has never moved on with anything in his life.
He saw an opportunity to defend a white guy being racist and jumped off the top rope to attack Mina, who again, just changed her picture and kept it moving.
Everything came together for Jason Whitlock to chime in and throw stones hoping it’ll drive engagement back to his Twitter page with his most recent written work pinned to the top for all to angrily read.
He hates ESPN.
He loves defending white people.
He hates black people.
This tweet was the trifecta for him.
He attacks Mina for being some snowflake ‘nailing herself to a cross’ when again, she just changed her picture. She didn’t go on TV and give a 5-minute, tearful monologue condemning the radio station. She didn’t post a Tweet thread about America’s history with acceptable Asian racism. She changed her photo with Mila Kunis. That was all.
Whitlock dimmed the impact of the slur. And of course without fail, he threw a random ass jab at black culture and rap for no reason at all.
Jason Whitlock is incredibly transparent in his motives.
He tried to be a regular journalist and no one gave a fuck about him. I think Whitlock looked around the room and believed he was as interesting or talented as guys like Stephen A. Smith or Colin Cowherd but everyone else looked at him as boring-ass mid who was extremely replaceable and just like, a totally strange guy to be around.
He presents himself as if he is the only man on Earth who can see the truth and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is but if you watch him move to Fox Sports and then Clay Travis’s lame website, Outkick, and now Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, it’s obvious he’s the black friend who says all the stereotypical insults about black people so when his white coworkers say the same thing they can defend their blatant racism by saying ‘well, I can’t be racist. Jason, a black man, said it first’.
Sometimes I feel bad for people like Whitlock. People who fell down the right-wing rabbit hole. Perhaps writing for Deadseriousness all these years makes me understand how good it would probably feel if all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of people rushed to support and praise me simply because I said something like ‘there are only 2 genders’ or whatever lazy Nazi shit came to my head.
When your media career is dry and there’s a magic fountain that guarantees millions of dollars in exchange for your morals and ethics, it’s difficult to not succumb to the thirst.
If I pretended like racism didn’t exist, especially in sports, I’d have several vacation homes.
There is an audience desperately searching for places where they can openly be bigots and they’re willing to spend their hard-earned money on anything that validates and normalizes their worst impulses.
I’m always one overdraft fee away from swan-diving into the mess and turning Deadseriousness into the ‘Truth Capitol of the Internet” where I mock trans athletes and call black players lazy before logging off to Scrooge McDuck into my money pool.
Unfortunately, I care about myself and other people and not being a fucking contrarian dork. There’s also no exit strategy once you go down that path. Jason Whitlock can’t suddenly say “Hey guys, I was wrong all these years. I changed my mind”,
Sometimes I feel bad about how harshly the internet treats people. They make it almost impossible to have a change of heart. Once you get labeled and your brand is established, no one will let you make amends.
And I’m not necessarily saying that Whitlock has ever attempted to make amends but I think it explains why he and grifters like him almost have no choice but to continue doubling and tripling down.
Jason Whitlock did the job he was supposed to do. He became the focus of a mistake that had nothing to do with him. He turned it into clicks for his own dreadful humorless musings and he took all the heat off Chris Curtis who used a racial slur to mock Mina Kimes for absolutely no reason.
All with KFC grease on his fingers. Wow.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed what you read, head over to our substack sign up for Let’s Get This Dread, the daily Deadseriousness newsletter sent directly to your inbox every AM.
Follow us over on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee.
