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A Response to Ignorance
A response to the Kirk Minihane Show Live Stream on 5/31/20 & other KMS Content by @barstoolz
This post is an ongoing project
(The Kirk Minihane Show (KMS) is owned by Barstool Sports and Minihane is a Barstool Sports employee who reports to Dave Portnoy, the head of content and Erika Nardini, the CEO. The largest investors in Barstool Sports are the Penn National Gaming and The Chernin Group)
As protests over the brutal murder of George Floyd began to expand, and in some instances led to violence, Kirk Minihane took to twitter on 5/31 to announce the beginning of his podcast would be live-streamed, so he could address the situation. There are links to specific parts of the live-stream at the beginning of my comments on those parts. Directly below is a link to the beginning of the live stream.
I wrote a blog to address what I think are deficiencies in the content of the live stream. The first draft was posted on blog.kmsdiscord.com by another person who was supposed to proofread it first. The result was not well-formatted, so I wrote an update. I used a new proofreader and submitted the updated blog to the Editor in chief of Barstool Sports who goes by “Kmarko”. I did this to reach more of the people who had viewed the live stream it critiques. I pointed out to Kmarko that the original version of the blog had been already been posted on the KMSDiscord site. He had no way of knowing the KMSDiscord blog was not an official KMS property. Unfortunately, Kmarko decided to grab the original badly formatted blog from the KMSDiscord site. While waiting for the blog to be posted on Barstool Sports I posted the updated blog to the KMSDiscord site (myself this time). That version received over 20,000 views on the KMSDiscord site. It has recently been removed without comment or explanation
The version on the Barstool Site didn’t last long. It was taken down in less than an hour because an enraged Kirk Minihane sent a text to Dave Portnoy the president of Barstool Sports with a link to the blog. You can hear more of Kirk’s reaction to the publication of the blog during most of his podcast on June 9th or on June 9th Barstool Sports Rundown. It was a large part of the KMS show for the rest of the week and Minihane was still throwing fits over it a couple of weeks later (see June 22, 2020, Barstool Sports Rundown)
My identity, previously not at all well known, was teased by Minihane and then his fans who eventually posted my name, picture, and location as retribution. Dissenting views are something of anathema in the KMS world. Minihane’s and his fans, known as the Minifans, vehemently criticized the blog mostly focusing on the poor formatting that removed some punctuation and grammatical errors but rarely addressed the actual content. When they did address the content it was often misrepresented. Some feedback was valid as to the quality of the blog but it was never intended to be published in a serious publication. It was simply a blog that pointed to what I saw as problematic in the live stream. I have now updated the blog a 2nd time and am looking to have it converted to a Vlog that follows each of Minihane’s questionable statements with the blog’s critiques.
“Nothing Changed” -Minihane
The idea that nothing changed after Ferguson is inaccurate, the police chief, city manager, and 2 police officers resigned and The Court Clerk was fired as a direct result of a justice department investigation. The chief that replaced him is black as is the current chief.
The county voted out the prosecutor who had been serving since 1991 and elected a new prosecutor who is black and ran on a reform platform. He created a “Conviction and Incident Review Unit” to review past convictions and incidents of police misconduct.
Ferguson recently elected its first black mayor who is also the first woman to hold the post. Later in the live stream, Minihane suggests that electing new faces is part of the solution but in regard to Ferguson he seems to regard it as no change.
Ferguson’s unrest may not have put an end to the unjustifiable killing of minorities by police, but it raised national awareness. Nationally sales of body cameras for police skyrocketed after Ferguson.
There are still serious problems in Ferguson. Economic and race issues remain but there has been a significant change in Ferguson which begs the question:
Where has peaceful protest brought on the change it did in Ferguson?
I am not pro riots, but I am pro understanding why they happen because I believe it is hard to solve a problem if you don’t understand the cause
“The cop is arrested he’s going to jail for the rest of his life, he’ll never get out of jail.” –Minihane
At the time of the live-stream, the charges were 3rd-degree murder which carries a maximum of 25 yrs and 2nd Degree manslaughter 10 yrs. The reason for the manslaughter charge is as a fallback because murder is harder to prove.
It is not a sure thing that he will be convicted and less so on the top charge or that he will get the maximum. Prisoners in Minnesota can also receive a good conduct allowance taking one day off the sentence every two days served.
So in the unlikely event, Chauvin was both convicted on the top charge at the time and sentenced to the max he could still be out in 17yrs. He has bail set as 1 million, so he may get out before trial
(The top charge was later raised to 2nd degree which carries a 40 yrs max. It will make obtaining a murder conviction even more difficult.)
The officer in Ferguson and officers in other places have avoided conviction why should they have faith this one won’t? Kirk makes his claims about Chauvin’s fate very forcefully but he also claims nothing changes.
This guy should have been gone years ago. -Minihane
I believe this is a large part of why simply arresting this officer didn’t mollify the protesters.
Kirk suggests the way to get police departments to remove officers like Chauvin is for people to stop protesting and get together with Celebrities and “whomever” and focus on that issue (officers with records like Chauvin’s) he does not explain or offer specifics on, what he expects them to do and/or how it might lead to change.
He ignores options like DOJ intervention that have had some success in the past. The investigation into Ferguson did prompt change as it has in other places. Kirk mentions Baltimore in his “nothing changes” rant. In January 2017 Baltimore entered into a court-enforceable agreement with the DOJ that led to, among other things, “prohibiting unlawful stops and arrests”.
DOJ interventions have curtailed sharply, if nor halted, under Trump. They are unpopular on the political right
Elect new faces. African Americans can increase their voter turnout as a way of influencing who governs them.
While it’s true registering and voting is an important way for minorities to increase their representation, Minihane completely ignores the impact of gerrymandering, onerous voter ID laws, reducing polling places, and eliminating or shortening early voting times, in suppressing equal representation.
To suggest that black people simply need to vote more to get those new faces into office, while not pointing out the tremendous barriers still being placed in their way, puts all the responsibility for black participation in elections on black people and puts no responsibility on right-wing politicians who enable and promote suppression. (a valid run-on sentence)
How exactly does Minihane see what happened in Minnesota affect the disposition of criminal cases in other states?
Yeah Robinson Its called a noose
More recently (6/23/20) Minihane and his crew covered the story of the noose in the garage used by Bubba Wallace NASCAR’s only full-time black driver.
While an investigation revealed the noose had been there since last fall, a check of NASCAR’s 1,684 other garage stalls found no other garage door pulls tied into a noose. A person seeing a noose in Wallace’s garage was right to report it for investigation.
Yes Steve Robinson a rope tied that way is called a noose. The KMS crew mocks people for reporting a legitimate concern, a tactic that can discourage people from reporting other evidence of racism. Minihane goes on to claim the incident is similar to the Smollett case and that it benefited Wallace’s brand and helped him sell merchandise.
Minihane has a YouTube Channel called the “Kirk Minihane Network” This is from a show that appears on the channel but without the brand imprint on the video. The show is promoted by the KMS twitter account and Minihane, his producer and sidekick have all appeared on the show. Click on the link below (this video won’t load as a picture)