Last night, the American sports-viewing public got to watch Damar Hamlin go into cardiac arrest and nearly die on the field after making a routine tackle during Monday Night Football.
As the world shared their shocked thoughts and prayers in traumatized disbelief on Twitter, Oklahoma City alum Skip Bayless asked the question no one was thinking – what are they going to do about this important football game!?
Skip's ill-timed tweets were immediately ratioed by people all across the social media sphere. People were responding with expletives, rants and eye rolls, and callingfor him to be fired.
I can see why.
1. It was a stupid and very insensitive tweet.
2. Everyone wants to see him fail.
As the guy who published perhaps the greatest Skip Bayless takedown in world history – an epic investigative report that still haunts "Water Pistol" Pete Junior to this day – I love nothing more than to rip Skip Bayless. In fact, I’d say that hating Skip Bayless is one of the only things left that truly unites this country.
But…
I do kind of see what Skip is saying, in an emotionless, very matter-of-fact type of way.
Over the years, we’ve watched guys get knocked unconscious or break their necks during football games, sometimes even leaving them paralyzed, and then 15 minutes later the players are back out on the field trying to kill each other.
The appropriate cancellation of such a high-profile game was unprecedented and, I guess, is a reflection of our more sensitive and optically aware times. If this happened before the social media age, there’s no doubt the game would have gone on so the NFL and its corporate broadcast partners could have gotten their money's worth.
That being said, who gives a fuck! Learn to read an echo chamber, Skip!
The man is getting CPR live on national television and you’re more focused on the reaction to the injury, it being DIFFERENT, and whether they're going to cancel a game of this magnitude???
I know you’re a contrarian troll and it goes against your exploitive nature, but sometimes it’s okay to offer sincere condolences and then shut up.
Then again, I don't have a show to promote:
Probably because he wants to keep his over-paid job, Skip apologized in a "That's not what I meant!" type of way. Here's an article about it via CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/media/skip-bayless-damar-hamlin-tweet
Anyway, although Skip's tweet was dumb, at least he wasn't on social media spreading obviously fake news and trying to tie Hamlin's heart attack, which appears to be a freak occurrence, to Covid vaccinations. We have Crazy Carol for that. She's already online sharing fake news about it.
Our thoughts go out to Damar Hamlin. We're pulling for him and hope he makes a speedy recovery.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We'll keep you advised.
