It Looks Like I Can Add Another Title To My Mantle: I'm Now the Guy Who Intentionally Makes Fun Of Kids With Cerebral Palsy

(I’m only posting this picture just to show how nondescript the photo was.  I’m locking comments because I don’t want assholes saying anything stupid or mean about him.    I wouldn’t have reposted anything about this story or the picture if Newburyport News didn’t do a story and make us look like assholes.  They posted his picture in their story already so it’s not like his family wants his identity hidden)

So 2 nights ago I posted this picture of a kid rawdogging a hotdog at the B’s game. He was front and center right behind Claude. A bunch of people sent me the photo. I thought it was funny. Everybody who saw it thought it was funny. It had nothing to do with the way the kid looked. In fact he looked as normal as normal could be. It was just the fact he was crushing a hot dog with no bun that made it blogworhty. I think I wrote 2 sentences. Something to the effect of “whether rawdogging a hotdog at the front row of the B’s game the most savage move in the history of moves?”

Well 30 minutes or so later I got an email telling me the kid had cerebral palsy. Fuck. I obviously took the blog down immediately. Well that wasn’t even close to good enough for some people. I’ve got a bunch of angry emails telling me I should have researched this kid. I should have somehow known he had disabilities. I should kill myself. People who hate Barstool using it as an example how we bully people and shit. (As a sidenote I don’t think 99% of the people contacting me actually saw the picture or the blog because I deleted it pretty quickly) Anyway I figured it would just blow over, but yesterday I got an email from a reporter asking me for a quote about it. I guess somebody called the Newbury Times to complain. Well I’ve been doing this long enough to know that this hack was going to try and make us look like the devil. I was obviously right.

Headline – Barstool Sports Mocks Boy With Cerelbral Palsy. Calls him a savage.

Yup there goes El Pres again, the baby dick blogger who loves making fun of people with cerebral palsy. I mean that’s not misleading or anything right? Who cares that I use “savage” as a compliment and it was strictly about the move of eating a hotdog without a bun?

Bottomline is this. It was an honest mistake. I had no idea who he was or that he had cerebral palsy. Frankly I think it’s absurd I even have to defend myself with a blog here. We’ve posted 1000’s of crowd shots from Boston sporting events over the last decade. Never taken 1 down. Never had a complaint. That’s what we do. It had nothing to do with him or his looks. We weren’t even making fun of him. It was simply about a bro eating a hotdog without a bun which I thought was harmless and funny. Teasing somebody with cerebral palsy was the last thing on my mind. Anybody who knows us knows we wouldn’t do that. You want to call me the devil so be it. It won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last. Also it’s not going to change how we do things. If I had to do over again I post that picture 100 out of 100 times. And most of the time the guy in the picture will laugh about it and bust balls with their buddies.

Having said all that I don’t begrudge people who know him being upset that I posted it. I’m sure I’d be pissed too if he was my friend or family. But what this hack reporter Dan Guttenplan conveniently left out is that I DID talk to his dad yesterday and apologized for ruining his night. Guess what? He didn’t call me an asshole. He didn’t think I did it to be mean. He didn’t say I was mocking his son on purpose. He was rational. He accepted the apology. He was more upset by what was said in the comment section which should surprise nobody. I feel awful that he had to deal with that shit and that’s why I called him. I even offered to help out with his son’s special Olympics team if he wanted it. That hasn’t stopped psychos coming out of the woodwork saying they hope I die and shit and trying to act like we did this on purpose. Newsflash if you can’t see this was an innocent mistake then you are either a lunatic or already hated me to begin with, and this was an excuse to pile on. I honestly feel horrible that we ruined this family’s night.  But as strange as it sounds I don’t feel bad about what I did because it was an honest mistake that I don’t know how I could have prevented.