Ugh, look away! They're heinous!

Back when I was the editor of my student newspaper in college, I drew the ire and attention of the local chapter of the National Organization of Women after I wrote a harmless entertainment editorial about how the James Bond franchise should be celebrated for creating empowering characters in the Bond girls. Of course, the male president of this NOW chapter (*rolls eyes*) argued that Bond girls were objectified sluts, but it taught me an important lesson that if you take a stance regarding women and their looks, you’re going to piss people off.

And the point of this edition of “Cool Story, Bro” is that nobody ever taught CNBC reporter Darren Rovell that lesson, because on Saturday night, the self-proclaimed “Twitter police” had the balls to Tweet the following from the Playboy Super Bowl party:

Obviously, if you’re familiar with Rovell’s work, he likes to play with numbers, throw around statistics about money and impose his will on anyone who listens. He needs us all to know that he’s in charge and we’re just the pooper scoopers of his Twitter elephant. There isn’t really a big problem with that Tweet, as there just weren’t enough ladies for his liking, so he vented a little. Then he vented a lot.

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Yesterday, when I suggested that Orlando Magic guard Gilbert Arenas should or at least could become the face of the NBA players’ resistance to the accusations that they’re to blame for the terrible contracts the owners gave them, I really wanted to throw together a sampler of his ridiculously stupid, T-shirt Hell-esque Twitter avatars that usually feature corny phrases like “Let’s play GI Joe – I’ll lay down and you blow the hell out of me.” But when I checked Arenas’ Twitter, something was awry.

For some reason, Arenas had deleted all of his Tweets, and it may or may not have had something to do with a little feud he had with stand-up comic Joe Mande yesterday. On his blog, Mande actually featured a collection of Arenas’ Twitter avatars, along with a pretty harsh takedown of the 29-year old guard and his suddenly disappearing Twitter.

My guess is, Gilbert got a call from his agent sometime this weekend, who said, “Hey Gil, would you mind deleting that tweet you wrote about how you kick women out of your bed when you’re done having sex with them? And the other one about how you want those women to drive themselves home after you’re done having sex with them, even if they might be drunk, because you’re too busy sleeping alone in your king size bed? Oh, and also the one about the box of stolen female toiletries you keep in your bathroom? Actually… just delete all the tweets you’ve ever written ever. Is that cool? Thanks, buddy.”

Mande also points out the obvious, that Arenas was suspended for a season for having guns in his Washington Wizards locker room. For good measure, I’ll add that Arenas may be the only player I can think of to have been served child support papers during a game. But that doesn’t seem to stop Arenas from treating Twitter like his own Adult Friend Finder.

Someone brought Mande’s essay on Arenas’ immaturity to Agent Zero’s attention and it resulted in a fun little feud between the guy who charges $5 to perform as a standup comedian and the guy who gets paid $20 million per season to pretend to be a comedian. Ultimately, Arenas quit Twitter. Again. I miss him already.

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We’ve all been there. What started as a healthy discussion has deteriorated into whoever disagrees with you quoting three paragraphs of your text and dissecting it line by line, sending you into a furious hand-jive that ends with namecalling and hurt feelings. A few days later people are posting “lol this thread” and everybody involved ends up looking stupid, so you shake hands and move on with your lives. That’s a big part of Internet culture (anonymity + discussion platform = saying things you regret), but hopefully not a lot of the people Fire Joe Morganning your thoughts are spokesmen for an NFL Team.

Enter: Pat Hanlon, New York Giants spokesman and budding trollface.

The summary of last night’s events, via Pro Football Talk:

Some of that perception remains, but Giants spokesman Pat Hanlon has been doing his best to blur those lines one tweet at a time. He regularly mocks the Jets, and took to Twitter Wednesday night to counter the perception from Giants fans the team is falling apart.

What follows is a tweet-by-tweet rundown of what a professional spokesman thinks constitutes “countering a perception”.

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As hard as you try, it’s hard to hate nearly-aborted Denver Broncos quarterback and college football hugging legend Tim Tebow. His religious beliefs make him one of the ten most influential athletes in the world and he always seems affable, even when talking about growing up with missionaries and sponsoring orphanages. So outside of longstanding, biased college football rivalries and Derek Jeter style TIM TEBOW SUCKS talk, who could develop thorough enough of a mean-on for Tebow to crack that Average White Boy persona and hurt his feelings? Who could do it well enough that one of the most hated people in sports (and one of the most beloved, because that’s how it works) would think you’ve gone too far and stick up for him?

Enter: Merril Hoge, former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, current ESPN football analyst and 183rd Pokémon. Merril has taken to Twitter and ESPN radio to but Tebow “on full blast”, and while it doesn’t read as the most literate thing in the world, Hoge is a football authority and what he says has some weight behind it. The “Tebow Thing” evolved into a monster of bickering fan support and 100+ retweets, and sometime around Hoge saying Tebow doesn’t “poses [sic] a skill set”, Miami Heat star LeBron James started chiming in. And you don’t need me to tell you that LeBron James “chiming in” usually kills the conversation.

To make the transition from Twitter to Twitter easier for you to read, please enjoy the Tim Tebow Sucks argument through the fingertips of the men who lived it.

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Google Analytics drives me insane. Instead of just writing jokes and posting pictures of girls, I find myself hunched over a desk, trying to figure out where the words should go for maximum SEO compliance. I study my own tendencies. For example, I use the phrase “In a story that ___” a lot. I also only seem to write about soccer and people running their mouth on Twitter.

So! In a story that brings together my two favorite sports-o-sphere topics, irrepresible bald-boy Wayne Rooney is challenging anonymous Internet soccer fans to fights in real life on Twitter. The issues began when “sam-oldham-LFC” (who may or may not be Chaucer) wrote:

Rooney ya fat whore ill smash ya head in with a pitchin wedge an bury ya with a ballast fork ya fat ugly lil nonse

After cross-referencing the index page and a few international urban dictionaries I’ve deduced that this means “I will beat you up, jerk.” So Rooney reponds with:

haha u know were I train every day kid come and do it good luck

But then the guy says

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Lesbians?

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James have drawn fire recently for their use of gay slurs and the word “retarded” (sometimes simultaneously), but nothing as been quite as serious as today’s Tweets from New Orleans Saints temporary running back Reggie Bush. In an attempt at “humor,” Mr. Bush used the L-word, prompting an immediate and thorough negative feedback from both people who can and cannot properly use the word “your.”

Here is an image of the Tweets, but I have to warn you, the situation is quite severe.

Tweets in response to Reggie Bush being friendly include “yeah cause people wanna see football, dick!!,” “because your a spoiled lazy fool. Screw all the fans so you can vacation while we’re getting killed at the pump. Doushe bag!,” and the incredibly biting “@reggie_bush you seem to be working hard to get better #not”

As a journalist, it is my duty to challenge Mr. Bush, and ask him to consider how painful his choice of language can be to both his peers and fans and apologize. After all, this sort of blanket lambasting of the NFL’s efforts can be tolerated. #not