Making Fun of Steve Gleason Isn’t Edgy, It’s Sad and Pathetic
Steve Gleason, if you don’t know, is a former Washington State and New Orleans Saint football player who is now battling ALS (Lou Gerhig’s Disease).
Yesterday, we saw the story of a couple of Atlanta DJ’s who thought it would be HI-LAR-I-OUS to make fun of Steve Gleason. If you want to read about the firing, go here. If you’d like to read something from Gleason himself, check out the 4500 word piece he wrote for SI.com using a computer and his eyes because ALS has robbed Steve of his ability to type and speak.
Most of the coverage of this has been spot on, these DJ’s were stupid shock jocks with so much interest in shocking that they didn’t bother to use an ounce of sense. If I owned or programmed a radio station, I would want some DJ’s with a bare minimum of sense who wouldn’t roll in and say, you know what would be funny, cracking on a guy with Lou Gerhig’s Disease.
But what troubles me are the idiots, and it seemed like more than a few, who tried to say that their firing was because we’re all hyper-Politically Correct folks who can’t possibly be offended.
Let’s make one thing clear, if you said that or thought it, you’re an idiot. Just a Pathetic Fool.
Steve Gleason isn’t a guy who got pulled over going 110 while doing blow off of a hookers ass. He’s a guy who has been pure class, playing his ass off at every level, becoming the symbol of the rebirth of New Orleans. And now he has a disease that is going to take his life is a horrible way and he’ll never see his kids grow up. If you can even conceive of a joke around that, what the hell is wrong with you?
I hardly think it’s a PC issue that we not make fun of folks who have serious illnesses, physical or mental, that they did nothing to bring on themselves. If you’re making fun of one of these people, instead of saying it’s the PC police trying to keep you down, take a long hard look in the mirror and ask what the hell is wrong with you?
Sometimes it isn’t PC, sometimes it’s just common decency.