Barstool founder Dave Portnoy held an emergency press conference Monday morning where he vowed not to succumb to the “cancel culture.”
“They’ve been trying to cancel me for two decades — I’m uncancellable,” Portnoy said.
On Sunday, videos resurfaced featuring Portnoy using racist language including a 2016 tweet about Colin Kaepernick where he compared the quarterback’s appearance to Osama Bin Laden.
“So I’m going to say something that’s racist,” Portnoy noted in a 2016 video before claiming he thought Kaepernick was involved with ISIS. “Throw a head wrap on this guy, he’s a terrorist.”
The video was shared and criticized on Twitter by Jemele Hill who wrote “this is terrible, but then again, consider the source.”
In response to Hill’s “consider the source,” Portnoy shared multiple stories published by Barstool which defended Kaepernick in recent years. Someone from Barstool’s audience also dug deep to find a tweet from 2009 when Hill made light of an offensive transgender joke.
“My fb friends are calling him ‘Manny the Tranny’… so inappropriate and hilarious,” Hill wrote in 2009 after Manny Ramirez was suspended by Major League Baseball for taking a women’s fertility drug.
Portnoy shared the 2009 tweet in an attempt to spin the “cancel police” back on Hill.
But by Monday morning, Portnoy’s response was less about Hill and more about making sure Barstool avoids the “cancel culture,” noting the various dated clips of audio, video and blog posts from the platform that would now be considered offensive.
“Sensitivities change, cultures change. When you’ve been doing it as long as we have, things f**king change,” Portnoy said. “I’m not going to apologize, I’m not going to bend the knee.”
“Keep in mind, there isn’t one person I’ve ever worked with, who has worked for me, we’ve done business with, interacted with, who will ever back up anything these haters say,” he later added. “Not one! And I’ve worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of people.”
“Whenever you try to cancel us, and do these movements that pop up once every couple of years, it only makes us stronger,” Portnoy said near the close of his video. “Normal people only want an escape for a couple f**king seconds from this f**ked-up world, and that’s all we’re trying to do. And it just makes them like us more.”
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
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