Pat McAfee, while appearing on his ESPN show he’s receiving $85 million to host, claimed he’s canceled.
And he said this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In the newest example of McAfee bringing criticism to his show – and this one one way or the other didn’t involve any conspiracy theories from Aaron Rodgers – the host of the self-titled “The Pat McAfee Show” went on a bizarre rant Monday that was met with head-scratching by some within the media.
Here’s the total transcript of McAfee’s remarks:
“Obviously, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He had a dream. And I believe LANK was certainly one of the closest we’ve needed to potentially that dream coming to fruition. So, let’s realize that as we go searching that we’re possibly more close than we’ve ever been.
“And there’s an election about to happen next [sic] 12 months where we’d like to keep in mind that we’re more close than we’ve got ever been, and folks could potentially attempt to drive us other than the skin looking in.
“Now, as any individual who was canceled by each parties last week, each of them canceled me. Two political parties canceled me last week and we’re still alive. Let’s remember we don’t need all the skin noise. All we’d like is just a little little bit of love. Which is what we’ve got for all the individuals who have good intentions each day each time they get up, similar to us. Now, with that being said, football is awesome.”
It’s a formidable feat to one way or the other weave a narrative connecting yourself to Martin Luther King Jr., but McAfee managed to one way or the other do exactly that.
As least publicly, McAfee has received no discipline from ESPN for allowing Rodgers to imply that ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel can be on the associates list of convicted late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, giving Rodgers the platform to go on one other certainly one of his unfiltered Covid rants and calling top ESPN executive Norby Williamson a “rat.”
McAfee did receive public backlash for those events, but claiming he’s canceled while he’s still doing his day by day show is moderately brazen.
Then, there’s deciding to deliver this message on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
McAfee’s LANK reference referred to his appearance before the CFP national championship game where he got your entire set to interrupt down laughing as Rece Davis revealed what LANK – “Let all naysayers know” – meant, and avoided sabotaging his profession.
Awful Announcing posted a clip of McAfee’s comments and it had 2,500 retweets as of Tuesday morning, including loads of quote tweets.
Clarence Hill Jr. of the Fort Value Star-Telegram tweeted: “Someone at ESPN must arise to this bs.”
ESPN’s Sarah Spain posted: “We’ve officially removed all meaning from the word ‘cancelled.’”
Roy Bellamy of “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz” wrote: “This rant proves how much further we’ve got to go.”
