Aaron Traister scolds deadspin for false advertising on its Brett Favre sex scoop.
Yesterday Gawker’s sports site, Deadspin, posted a story about Brett Favre sexting pictures of his penis to Jenn Sterger, who was working for the Jets organization as a sideline reporter during Favre’s brief stint with the team.
Higher minded journalosions than I can debate the thornier ethical issues presented regarding the dissemination of said story by AJ Daulerio of Deadspin; my beef with the site is simply that the story kind of sucks, as evidenced by the fact that more people are talking about nonsense like integrity and ethics in internet reporting than they are about awesome stuff like Brett Favre’s bizarre sexual appetites.
Because, frankly, what Favre did isn’t that bizarre in a post-Chatroulette world; creepy, pathetic, and amusing? Sure, but not hilarious, gross, or surprising, which is what Deadspin led me to believe I was in for.
The build up to the anticlimactic Favre post started on Tuesday, when the site teased the story with the headline, “Hilariously Gross Brett Favre News Soon To Surface.” In the pre-post-post they assured me that the subject of Favre’s attentions was someone who I was “familiar with,” and that I would “never look at Crocs the same way.”
I have a very active imagination. I really thought there might be a small woodland creature or a scary puppet involved. Maybe he has a weird fetish involving stuffing his plastic sandals into some part of his body, and maybe he wanted Betty White (she’s so hot right now) or Francis McDormand to watch. So, imagine my disappointment when I tuned in the following day to discover that we were merely talking about sexting and cock-shots sent to a model discovered by Brent Musburger.
For a website that has seen more athlete penis than Atlanta’s famed Gold Club, they should know you have to announce your intentions pretty early in the off-season to impress sports or pop culture sex-scandal-fans these days. In a world of really raunchy voicemails (from a golfer no less!) and neo-nazi sexcapades, this story barely rates a “like” on the Facebook of life.
Deadspin’s biggest sin in all of this is leading me to believe that Brett Favre was going to be the second coming of Marv Albert, when he’s not even Steve Phillips.
Brett Favre sent pictures of his penis to a girl he liked—in other words, he simply engaged in the same poorly conceived activity that teenage boys are taking part in everyday in this brave new cyber age. The thing is, no one has ever accused Brett Favre of being anything other than a teenage boy trapped in the body of a grown man. It’s the reason we love and hate him; he plays with all the enthusiasm and excitement of a teenage boy, he makes the same bone-headed moves on the field as teenage players, and he is as self absorbed and overemotional as any teenage boy. So, it should come as no surprise that he apparently has the same problems controlling his hormones—and the same lack of judgment—as any teenage boy.
Brett Favre is creepy, inappropriate, and a little harassing? Knock me over with a feeble pass errantly thrown from across the body. The only thing that was remotely unexpected about this story was how tame it was. For an uber-wealthy, spotlight seeking, spoiled glory hog man-child, I expected the sexual skeletons in his closet to be way creepier.
In a league filled with Pac Men, Ron Mexicos, and Big Bens, Favre’s exploits seem downright childlike, almost adorable, like your emotional-growth-stunted-dad trying to figure out how to use the “Tweeter machine” (only with his penis).
I don’t know much about journalistic integrity, but I do know about false advertising, and driving page counts up by hyping an overblown non-scandal is not cool. Now I won’t be back to Deadspin until I see a headline with the words “Cliff Lee” and “Startling Clown Fetish” prominently featured, and so help me Marv, if I click on that link and it’s not a story about Cliff Lee and his startling clown sex fetish….