Now I know what you’re thinking. “Kmarko, there’s no way you can go up against NBC, noted home of liberal programming featuring Donald Trump, Megan Kelly, and Tony Dungy, smashing you for your “conservative ideology” and “lack of progressive discourse” and expect to survive.” “Keith, you seriously think you can take on NBC, former workplace of Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw and the guy who blocked reporting on Harvey Weinstein, and make it out alive?” I know that. I know the risks. I know I could get buried by them. Even worse I could be locked in a room against my will and sexually harassed by a guy with a rape button under his desk.

Hoooooo boy – NBC thought they could just quietly drop a little hit piece on a beautiful Saturday morning, while all the Barstool crew was still sleeping, then had a day full of nothing but drinking and passing out on the couch while watching football? Ohhh no no no. Little does NBC know I got NOTHING to do today, I’m at the office, I got the fingers cracked and the computer fired up. You don’t sneak a hit piece by me.

But that’s a risk I’ll have to take to do my job.

To be honest, the article was a fucking snoozefest. I mean, holy shit – how is it even possible to make such a great topic so boring? It’s a poorly constructed article about politics with quotes from college professors. Seriously, they’ve got block quotes from the Professor of “Media & Culture” at Virginia Commonwealth. Talk about an eye grabber. (The fact that there was commentary from a dean at Penn State was even better. If anyone is qualified to lecture us on courting and corrupting a young male audience it’s definitely a Dean at Penn State.)

But there are a couple highlights we can talk about. Real quick though, so everyone can go back to college football.

1. It’s rare – almost unheard of – for a journalist to completely and totally invalidate their entire article in the very first paragraph, but an NBC.com writer pulled it off:

No, reporter, it is not the anonymous trolls – smashing their keyboards, logging into 10 different accounts through a VPN to hide their IP, adding symbols and extra letters to try and sneak by banned word filters – beneath the blog that tell the story. It is the person writing the story that tells the story. That is literally how a website, newspaper, magazine works. The commentary by the person employed by Barstool Sports writing for and representing Barstool Sports is the commentary that tells the story and the only commentary that matters, period.

(Also, almost let this slip by – literally crafted an entire company hit piece on 2 anonymous comments. TWO!)

2. Out of all the false narratives about Barstool, the “politically conservative” is right at the top of the list of the most mind-blowing. It is a narrative created by consuming literally zero content produced by Barstool employees and reading nothing but comment sections. You know how people always tell us, it’s Barstool SPORTS, where’s the sports? Well it’s NBC NEWS – you kind of have to actually research and learn what you’re talking about before you report it. Or at least that’s my understanding of the news, what do I know, I dropped out of journalism school to smash losers who write shitty hit pieces.

Anyone who has read the site longer than 30 minutes as “research” for an NBC article is laughing their ass off at this “conservative ideology” narrative, as they open up their Pages app and get their next 5 Libstool jokes lined up. Our own fucking employee has his army of Minifans flooding our mentions for a week straight about being libtards. There is not a person alive that consumes Barstool Sports and classifies us as “conservative ideology.” Honestly I can’t think of better proof that a website is apolitical than 50% of people thinking you’re libs, 50% thinking you’re MAGA Trumpers, and 100% of the employees who work and write there saying “we literally do not know one single thing about politics please just laugh at my dick joke.”

And, NBC, if you’re going to suggest it’s because Dave goes on Fox News all the time, here’s an experiment: invite him on your network. See what he says. That guy could not tell you the first thing about politics, he just wants to put a tie on and see his face on TV.

I mean it’s no surprise that the company whose top reporter just made up whatever he wanted to report would have no problem making up narratives – it’s literally what they were taught from up top.

And, last but not least, my third and final highlight of the piece:

3. Maybe the most offensive thing I’ve read on the internet in 2019:

I mean, my jaw dropped when I read that. I’m not going to speak for Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports. I won’t speak for Deirdre Lester, CRO of Barstool Sports. I won’t speak for Wajeeha Ahmed, CFO of Barstool Sports. It’s not my place to presume to know what they’re feeling as women – 3 women with a “C” in their title (number of men with “C” in their title: 0). I don’t need to rattle off the podcasts, shows, stats, and other stone cold facts that are easily searchable on the internet by any reporter who actually knows how to do their job.

I’ll let Erika do your fact check though-

That’s all I got. Overall a pretty big disappointment. Did I want to spend my Saturday responding to a lecture about being too conservative by the company that had Donald Trump host SNL while running for President, no I did not. Did I enjoy being defensive about our treatment of women to the company that paid $25 million a year to a literal sexual predator to be their top star, or giggled uncontrollably while a man talked about grabbing women by their pussies then sat on the tape, no I did not. But that’s just how life goes sometimes.

I’ll end with my favorite quote: