"Knock knock... OPINION!"

For some reason, Deadspin has targeted Stephen A. Smith for a new series of unverified stories from readers about the ESPN First Take shouter guy’s behavior in restaurants. The latest came this morning in a blurb about SAS being a bad tipper, and the theme originated the other day with a story about SAS shouting at a waiter about a bottle of ketchup. In all, it’s not the most exciting stuff, because it’s low-hanging fruit, but it’s still damn funny to watch Skip Bayless’ best friend get worked up.

If you take a look at Smith’s Twitter feed, you’ll notice that he was indeed a little worked up by the original Deadspin story, as he fired off a few Tweets about it. And then he was fired up about the horrific officiating in last night’s Monday Night Football game, as most of us were. But what’s missing in between those two cases of 140-character rage is a rant that he typed out yesterday after a serious news site posted a malicious and completely false story about him.

What followed was rather remarkable.

I can just imagine the ESPN intern sprinting down the hallway, screaming for everyone to get out of his way, as Smith is shouting into his office phone for ESPN to assemble every lawyer that the company has to sue this website for libel, slander and everything else under the sun. The intern, breathless, shouts to him, “ONION! IT’S FROM THE ONION!” Smith, confused and wiping Cheetos on his tie, responds, “Huh?” The intern, catching his breath, “It’s the Onion. It’s a parody site. They write fake news.” Smith’s expression remains blank. “It’s just a joke, Mr. Smith.”

And then he went back to arguing with @SquirtMe6969.

(Tweets via the HuffPo.)