Volume 4, Issue 96: Meant to Be

"If my words say what you meant to say, doesn't that say we were meant to feel this way?"

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it.

This was one of those weeks where your uncle wouldn’t stop yelling at me.

On Wednesday night, on his popular Fox News program “Gutfeld!” host Greg Gutfeld did a segment on a “piece” “written” by “journalist” Carron J. Phillips, who had penned a blog post arguing that the NFL needed to act after a 12-year-old fan was photographed at a Chiefs game wearing a Native American headdress and seemingly painted in blackface. One does not have to believe the Chiefs’ nickname is cool or that we should all dress up like Native Americans to sporting events to see that the story was more complicated than Phillips had cared to notice (the right side of the kid’s face was painted Red, Chiefs colors, and in fact was Native American himself), and because Phillips is the sort of guy who just fires shit off without thinking about it (the coin of the realm in many ways), he just went ahead and published his take without doing any further research. (One can easily see how the point Phillips was trying to make could have still come across while still providing this larger context, but that would required him putting forth a modicum of effort.) This opened Phillips up to the right-wing media ecosystem, which is always looking for every opportunity to confirm its readers’ and viewers’ worldview that the Woke Media is trying to turn your children into a transgender furry, or something, and the usual suspects pounced, from The Federalist (a publication that once called both me and my father “weak, embarrassing failures,” which made me wonder if the writer was my mom using a pen name) to The New York Post to Newsnation. Even Elon Musk got in on it, because ketamine is a helluva drug.

This led to Gutfeld’s Fox News soliloquy, which escalated the whole thing, as that channel is built to do.

(On a side note, I have known Greg Gutfeld for a long long time—I was the first-ever guest on his old show “Red Eye” back in 2007, and he was one of our favorite interviews at The Black Table way back in the day—and have always liked him, though we haven’t talked in a few years. I do not watch his show and, upon watching this clip, am highly unlikely to start any time soon. Greg is a smart guy, but, man, this is a terrible way to make a living, no matter how good a living it might be making him. When you’re cracking jokes on television about Brian Stelter’s testicles, it is perhaps time to take a step back and reflect on how one got to this point. This cannot be good for one’s soul.)

Anyway, this sort of stuff happens every night on Fox News, and all the other media outlets that exist solely to make its viewers angry and scared, and I tend not to notice or pay much attention to it. But this time was a little different. Because this time, the publication that posted the piece in question was not The New York Times or MSNBC or any of the usual evil slanted woke media enemies. The publication that posted the piece, the one that Carron J. Phillips writes for, is Deadspin.

**************

I once joked that no matter what I did with the rest of my life, Deadspin will be in the first paragraph (perhaps under the headline “OLD BLOG GUY STAINS CARPET”) of my obituary. Deadspin, as I’ve written here, was the pivot point in my career, my big break, when I shifted from being an underemployed 30-year-old with no real sustainable prospects to someone who has now been able to write for a living, about topics I care about for publications I respect, for more than 18 years. For the first few years after I left Deadspin in 2008, I tried to run from Deadspin, desiring to do something entirely different and distance myself from the increasingly ugly blog world, but as the publication grew in stature, heft and respect under the editorships of A.J. Daulerio, Tommy Craggs, Tim Marchman and Megan Greenwell, I made my peace with it. For a while there, I was even perfectly positioned. When Deadspin did a story that everyone loved, people would say, “Wow, Will, you must be so proud of what you created.” When Deadspin did a story that everyone hated, people would say, “Wow, Will, that would have never happened when you ran the place.” It was win-win. I loved and admired the work they were producing over there; they infused the site with a scope, ambition and scale that I never could have imagined myself. I was the founder, but I had nothing to do with the actual production of the site: I was just a fan. (This Adweek oral history, written by the great Charlie Warzel, is a good primer on the first decade of Deadspin.)

But then October 2019 happened. In retrospect, once Nick Denton had to sell Gawker Media (under whose umbrella Deadspin had always existed) in the wake of the Hulk Hogan trial, Deadspin was never going to be able to continue as it had before. The site had always been fiercely independent of, even in open rebellion with, its owners and bosses—I even ignored Denton back in the day—so when the sort of usual corporate dopes and jokes who ruined every other website you used to love took over that place, a big ugly public breakup was inevitable. When the staff all resigned in the wake of G/O Media’s incompetence, I told The New York Times, “to watch the way they punched and screamed and clawed on the way out the door is truly inspiring, and as true to the spirit of Deadspin as anything I could have ever imagined. They refused to give in to the bad guys. During a time when so many people have made a profession of that very thing, I find it downright heroic.” I meant it then, and I mean it now, now that most of the writers have created Defector, where they have the only boss worth having: Themselves. I was saddened to see Deadspin fall apart like that, but you could not deny that it went out in the best possible way: By being true to itself.

Except, uh, one little thing: The dessicated husk that popped up when you continued to type “https://deadspin.com/” into your browser … kept publishing. They hired hacks, or the desperate, or the craven, or all three, and then when those people weren’t cheap or debased enough for them, they brought in the robots. Traffic collapsed, of course, and anyone who had been paying even the slightest bit of attention understood that whatever this monstrosity was had no connection to what Deadspin had once been. Personally, I found knowing that the site—the site I’d loved to much, my baby, what I knew I’d be remembered for—was still out there, being so terrible and so antithetical to what the site had always meant and stood for, well, I found it incredibly (and surprisingly) painful to even think about. So I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, that the site had died in November 2019 and never published again. I even made a joke about it in my book bio, which, deep down, I didn’t really consider a joke at all. The site died. It was dead.

I found anyone who had ever been involved with the site followed the same strategy: Pretend it’s dead. Pretend it isn’t happening. But it wasn’t dead. And it was happening.

It kept publishing, every day, and it was all pretty stupid stuff. Not offensive stuff—if anything, the site became more political than it was during the “stick to sports” era, albeit in a thuddingly dumb way—but just junk: The sort of junk that Deadspin had made its reputation mocking and transcending. And as the Internet continued to change and mutate into its current hellscape, and more people came of age without ever knowing what the original Deadspin was, this new Deadspin, this grotesquerie, to them, was Deadspin. It has been four years since the staff left and Deadspin as we all knew it died. That’s a long time. And that’s a long time for them to flood the zone with shit. It’s long enough for a lot of people to think that is Deadspin.

And it came to a head this week, I think. After Gutfeld’s rant—which did not mention my name or my past association with Deadspin—my inbox (mostly my Facebook inbox) was flooded with uncles. Lots of stuff like this:

The progression seems to have gone like this:

• Watch Fox News.

• Get mad.

• Look up “Deadspin.”

• Click on Deadspin’s Wikipedia page.

• See that it was “founded by Will Leitch in 2005.”

• Find Will Leitch on every social media platform and demand that he fire Carron J. Phillips.

• Repeat previous step.

• Repeat previous step.

• Repeat previous step.

Now, I have been on the Internet long enough to know how it works. No one, even the smart people, do more than the first step of research: They see something, they have an emotional reaction, they move onto whatever the next thing is to get upset about. But it is still quite something to have hundreds upon hundreds—hundreds upon hundreds—furious with you not only for something that you did not write, but in fact something you’re deeply embarrassed exists at all and find considerably painful to even think about. I have been in the middle of these online shitstorms before, and I generally find them easy to move on from. After all, my job is write things—to make arguments, to inform, to entertain. I stand behind the words I write. But once I write them, they don’t belong to me anymore: They belong to the readers, and how they respond to them isn’t up to me. My job is over. I’ve moved onto the next thing, and I’m barely on social media enough to notice whatever storm may or may not be brewing anyway. Some people are going to hate you no matter what you write, and it’s fine: This is the job. You just keep making more stuff.

But, I found this week, there is a real difference when people are mad at you for being angry about something that I also hate (albeit for entirely different reasons). I realized that, as long as those idiots (and robots) are still making stuff over there, there are going to be other, new idiots who think I’m responsible for it.

But hey: The robots aren’t too good about this stuff either:

No founder has eternal or infinite control over their creations. (It is not like people have been praising Craig Kilborn for The Daily Show for the last 20 years.) I left Deadspin, ceding any power or influence over the site, more than 15 years ago. But I will always be associated with the site, and the name, whether I like it or not. I’ve tried not to think about it. I’ve tried to act like the site is dead. But it isn’t. It’s a daily humiliation, and it breaks my heart to see what it has become. I didn’t think this was something I needed to say publicly. But, apparently, it is.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. What the Sports Illustrated AI Debacle Says About Sports Media, CNN. I enjoyed putting my old Sports Media Writer Person hat back on, albeit temporarily.

2. Michigan Did Whatever It Could to Win, and Your Team Would Too, New York. Love some hotel-room-while-my-son-comes-by-every-five-minutes-to-check-if-I’m-done-yet-so-we-can-leave writing.

3. MLB Old Guy Free Agents, MLB.com. By “old guy,” I of course mean “a decade younger than me.”

4. Yamamoto Power Rankings, MLB.com. I’d still like to see the Cardinals make a run.

5. Fun Potential Free Agent Homecomings, MLB.com. Wacha as a Cardinal again? Let’s go for it!

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Napoleon,” “Maestro” and “Saltburn.”

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we reviewed the Georgia Tech game and previewed the SEC Championship Game.

Seeing Red, Bernie and I dug into all the Cardinals moves so far. I missed the lug.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“What Endures After a Climate Activist’s Suicide: Grief, Anger and Hope,” John Leland, The New York Times. It has been five years since climate activist David Buckel set himself on fire in Brooklyn to protest pollution and the human effect of climate change. This is a moving piece on what his death left in its wake, and the fatalism of those closest to the movement.

Also: Yep.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Never Said,” Liz Phair. I saw the Exile in Guyville 30th Anniversary Tour in Atlanta on Tuesday night. It was great. This is basically my Eras Tour.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

William and I are in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game, a very big game. It’s our second weekend watching Georgia in Atlanta in a row. Let’s get another one: Go Dawgs. (And also go Illini, please beat Rutgers, we’ll be watching that game from my phone at the Benz as well. Big sports day!)

Best,
Will