After news broke that the new owners of the left-wing sports site Deadspin decided to lay off all employees and start fresh, in a social media video, Dave Portnoy, owner of Barstool Sports, popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
Sitting on a floatee in his pool, Portnoy railed about how often Deadspin had suffered mass layoffs and been once again on the edge of insolvency.
“Listen, even I’m getting confused,” Portnoy said.
“How many times can I pop a bottle for the same goddamn company? How many times can I kill Deadspin? How many times can Julie DiCaro lose her goddamn job? It seems like infinity!” he added.
Damn. Hate to see it. #deadspin https://t.co/MTNUKg3ItL pic.twitter.com/3Q1xXho7fY
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 11, 2024
DiCaro, who would not supply a quote to the New York Post over Portnoy’s ribbing, has been a senior writer and editor at Deadspin until this week when the new owners put the site on pause. She joined the site in 2020.
Deadspin has spent a lot of time attacking Portnoy and Barstool and accused the popular sports site and its owner, writers, and personalities of being sexist and racist.
Last August, for instance, Deadspin published a broadside saying that Portnoy was “bad for business” in sports media.
Deadspin has also found itself entangled in messes of its own making. In November, senior writer Carron Phillips embarrassed the site by accusing a nine-year-old NFL fan of being a “racist.”
Phillips blasted Chiefs fan Holden Armenta as a “racist” for wearing “black face” at a game when images of the boy wearing an Indian headdress, a Chiefs jersey, and black facepaint went viral. Phillips blasted the child, his parents, and the NFL as a racist against both blacks and Native Americans, but what he didn’t report was that the boy had half black and half red facepaint — which are the colors of the NFL team — and that the boy himself has Native American heritage.
Why is @Deadspin @carronJphillips trying to ruin this little kid’s life? They’re accusing him of blackface but conveniently left out his full face which was painted for the game https://t.co/kFfgAL4aDH pic.twitter.com/750u5sfETE
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 28, 2023
The article was eventually updated to reflect more of the facts, but the family filed a lawsuit against Deadspin for defamation despite the site’s weak attempt to correct the story.
Alluding to Deadspin’s problems, Portnoy wondered how often the left-wing site can hang on by its fingernails.
“But here we are once again. New bottle of champagne… Deadspin out of business, bought, everyone fired for the 90th straight time!” Portnoy exclaimed.
“This is just kicking a dead ass dog! But you know what? I’m not beyond it.”
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