Jemele Hill and Barstool Sports were at war with each other and it all stemmed from the former ESPN analyst commenting on a clip that had Dave Portnoy, Kevin ‘KFC’ Clancy and Dan ‘Big Cat’ Katz discussing Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the national anthem. Portnoy begins the clip by admitting he’s going to say something “racist.”
“So I’m going to say something that’s racist,” Portnoy explains, claiming he initially thought Kaepernick was “an ISIS guy… Throw a head wrap on this guy, he’s a terrorist.”
“He looks like a Bin Laden. That’s not racist.”
“This is terrible, but then again, consider the source,” Hill said, taking a clear shot at the sports media company no stranger to online controversy.
After Hill called out Barstool Sports, one of her troubling old tweets resurfaced, where she joked about former MLB star Manny Ramirez being a “tranny.”
“My FB friends are calling him ‘Manny the Tranny’… so inappropriate and hilarious,” the former ESPN anchor wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
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Hill has since addressed the tweet.
“For context, the tweet was in reference to Manny Ramirez testing positive for the woman’s fertility drug, gonadotropin. It was wholly ignorant, dumb, and offensive. I am ashamed that I was so uneducated about trans issues at the time. I stand with this community firmly today.
I kept the tweet up because I welcomed the opportunity to apologize and to show growth. See, unlike some people, I’m not defensive about my moments of failure. I learn from them and own it.
I don’t care about Dave Portnoy or any of the other Barstool sycophants RT’ing this into my TL, like it’s some gotcha moment. I care about the trans community I belittled and offended. If they don’t see me as an ally because of this, it’s my job to show them that I am,” she wrote.
“#CancelJemele” soon began trending on Twitter for hours.
Portnoy, meanwhile, explained his comments in an “Emergency Press Conference” on Twitter.
“Here’s the thing: I’ve been doing this for two decades. I’ve made fun of every group of people, every race…we’ve made jokes about it,” Portnoy said in a video posted to Twitter. “Times change, sensitivities change…when you’ve been doing it as long as we have, things f–king change.”
