"If You Work With A Damn Idiot, They'll Buy You Out" - Charles Barkley Eviscerates Skip Bayless Amid Shannon Sharpe's Exit From 'Undisputed'
TELL HIM, CHUCK!!! One of the zillion reasons Charles Barkley is a national treasure and makes a show about analyzing basketball, not the game itself, must-see TV whenever you possibly get the chance to check in with it. Or, you know, seek out some of these little snippets of gold from Sir Charles and enjoy it all that way.
As I previously covered this week, Shannon Sharpe has reached his breaking point with Skip Bayless and is on the way out of Fox Sports' hit debate show Undisputed. Rumor has it, Sharpe will be bought out once the NBA Finals conclude. Chaps followed up with another blog — and a lovely zinger of a headline — that all but confirmed Sharpe's exit and disdain for Skippy:
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To have Charles Barkley chime in and dunk on Skip's weird ass is such a gratifying development in this whole bigger-picture narrative. I don't feel like we see enough of the big personalities at these more buttoned-up networks calling each other out, starting beef and creating enough rivalries. We could stand to have more of it. Even Colin Cowherd is still circumspect when he makes any vague reference to his ex-employer ESPN. No man, go ahead! Call 'em out!! If you're gonna steal Brock and roll all night and Purdy every day from PMT, at least spark some salty standoff!!
I'm kidding. Mostly. It's generally not a good idea to cling to resentment in real actual life. But in the pseudo-reality TV that is sports talk, why not stir the pot a little? Chuck always seems to be ahead of the curve on things like this. Speaking his mind and just being himself has gone such a long way. Now, certain personalities feel freer to do that nowadays with the prominence of podcasting — thanks in no small part to our beloved Big Cat and PFT, not kissing ass just passing faXXX — but fucking props to Chuck for refusing to not keep it real no matter where he is.
That was a bit of a confusing double negative. You know what I mean, though. Life is full of double negatives, contradictions and so forth. I'm getting all...what's the word?...lately. Not waxing poetic. Not philosophical. Macrocontemplative? New word. Means basically contemplative about grander concepts/about the universe or thereabouts. Let's roll with it.
Hey, if The Mars Volta can drop their first-ever song with almost two minutes of relative silence/electronic scratching noises/whistles and open with these wild-ass lyrics full of brand-new additions to the English lexicon...
"Neonecropopulace has no reflection
Neocaeczaristic phallic ruins
Just east of the river denial the techs are breathing
Welcome to this neotokyo"
…I'm going to take macrocontemplative. I think what Cedric Bixler-Zavala was getting at there with those bars was how modern humans have turned into automatons who've become zombies to technology and neglected their more primal instincts, etc. Seems like it's maybe supposed to be set in a fantastical, dystopian future. Who knows for sure. Cedric was self-admittedly on many drugs at that time and was vague with many of his lyrics very much on purpose.
So anyway, I'm claiming macrocontemplative at least for this one blog. To get macrocontemplative for a moment, I wonder how Skip Bayless views his life legacy now that he's 71 years old. I imagine at some point, someday soon, he's going to realize how much of a miserable bastard he really is deep down. We might already be starting to see larger cracks in his facade:
Skip has been blindly paddling forward on the River Denial (h/t Cedric B-Z) for many a year. All we need is a Howard Beale-style meltdown once he's decided he's finished. Or, Skip may very well take after Cowherd's plans and die on the air. Beale did that as well (IN A MOVIE, Network, in case you didn't know).
Usually I don't take many personal shots at sports media folks, but indubitable, unambiguous assholes like Skip Bayless deserve such shots. The hilarious byproduct of that is that it tends to drive engagement. But as Chaps said earlier this week, no one like Skip. No one.
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Plus, I know Charles Barkley is famous for saying how he's not a role model. Fuck if he still isn't. He's cool. So I'm only taking after him in this instance. I'll use that as my excuse to call Skip out for the asshat that he is. I'm hating him for making me put this much effort into a blog about him, but on the other hand, what a fun opportunity to profess my love for Chuck, The Mars Volta and create an original word.
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok