#DFG: Canceling the Noise

Is there any level of suspension that you would advise Tom to accept?


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johnmd20

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nighthob said:
Who cares? To be brutally frank, he doesn't except insofar as it's allowed him to parlay a drunken text from Jimmy Irsay into a significant raise while still claiming to be the good guy.
 
I'm not in the overly PC crowd but I think the line is clear. If the columnist was black, would you have been ok with people dropping n bombs? If he was a woman, would you have been ok with people dropping c bombs? I mean, I'm all for ripping the guy but there is a civil way to do it and there is an unacceptable way. Being anti-Semitic is unacceptable.
 

Matty005

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johnmd20 said:
 
I'm not in the overly PC crowd but I think the line is clear. If the columnist was black, would you have been ok with people dropping n bombs? If he was a woman, would you have been ok with people dropping c bombs? I mean, I'm all for ripping the guy but there is a civil way to do it and there is an unacceptable way. Being anti-Semitic is unacceptable.
 
I don't think the n word and the c word are synonymous. 
 

nighthob

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Who the hell is saying it's OK? Someone said we should feel sorry for Kravitz because people have been mean to him on Twitter. I don't. Not even a little. People can criticise me without resorting to 90% of the personal shit they say (which includes slurs). But I'm a big boy, and you won't ever see me whining "people are such meanies" after.
 

GeorgeCostanza

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Matty005 said:
I don't think the n word and the c word are synonymous.
No but they are somewhat analogous in the examples he laid out. I think the point is there is more than ammunition enough to bury the asshole without bringing in his religion/ethnicity/race. In fact, it's actually given him something to come back with to martyr himself in some folks eyes.

Edit: or what both E5 and nighthob said
 

nighthob

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People need to actually understand Twitter, I think. You troll for attention and you end up getting some awful responses, and really, it's a small minority, which is why even Kravitz is limiting his claim while probably being overly generous in his definition of anti-semitism. When you attention whore, and Kravitz has been attention whoring, you get unwelcome attention. But that's Twitter, you take the shitty with the PR. (Try reporting on Palestine sometime if you want to see some real nauseatingly racist responses.)
 

Norm loves Vera

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I just want someone's head here.  There is no way TB and BB and BK make a stand unless they didn't do everything inside the regs. 
 
F Kravitz, he had the pitch fork up before sunrise after the Pats beat, no crushed, the Colts.  He lead the charge while everyone else was still asleep.  And any sympathy he is trying to get for anti semantic attacks.. where are these tweets?   His claim he heard from 75% of Patriot nation is laughable.  He is so guilty of making himself part of the story. 
 
Zero credibility.  The mouse that roared.
 

ifmanis5

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norm from cheers said:
I just want someone's head here.  There is no way TB and BB and BK make a stand unless they didn't do everything inside the regs. 
 
F Kravitz, he had the pitch fork up before sunrise after the Pats beat, no crushed, the Colts.  He lead the charge while everyone else was still asleep.  And any sympathy he is trying to get for anti semantic attacks.. where are these tweets?   His claim he heard from 75% of Patriot nation is laughable.  He is so guilty of making himself part of the story. 
 
Zero credibility.  The mouse that roared.
Exactly. He doesn't deserve any kind of ethnic slur crap but really, this guy is a clownshow and his horrible behavior throughout deserves to be called out in a very public way.
 
And I love his smug 'correctly, I might add' line. It's quite possible that if that ball that is way under was tampered with by the Colts he could not have been more wrong. He painted people and an entire organization with a slander brush and now he's sad about the hurtful stuff on Twitter? Seriously, eff this guy.
 

Matty005

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norm from cheers said:
I just want someone's head here.  There is no way TB and BB and BK make a stand unless they didn't do everything inside the regs. 
 
F Kravitz, he had the pitch fork up before sunrise after the Pats beat, no crushed, the Colts.  He lead the charge while everyone else was still asleep.  And any sympathy he is trying to get for anti semantic attacks.. where are these tweets?   His claim he heard from 75% of Patriot nation is laughable.  He is so guilty of making himself part of the story. 
 
Zero credibility.  The mouse that roared.
 
I've seen the crude and vulgar things people post EVERY time Erin Andrews tweets.  If she can handle it, Bobbo can handle it.  Again, not saying that it's right, but it comes with the Twitter territory.
 

geoduck no quahog

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Fuck him. 
 
Most likely story (I'm not a journalist) is that Colt's Ownership fed him the line and what to do with it - and he did their dirty work in the hopes of reciprocation down the road making his life easier. Notoriety was also on the table.
 
A real journalist would have immediately contacted the Patriots and any other interested parties to at least put another side into the initial release. He claims he had 2 sources, undoubtedly Colt's-friendly sources, and it looks like he made no effort to get more confirmation or evidence to counter the claim.
 
Did he try to be ethical? 
 

nighthob

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Matty005 said:
I've seen the crude and vulgar things people post EVERY time Erin Andrews tweets.  If she can handle it, Bobbo can handle it.  Again, not saying that it's right, but it comes with the Twitter territory.
Exactly. The shit that others take on Twitter is a thousand times worse than what Bob Kravitz took. So I don't feel sorry for him at all. Again, the response that he got is the response you're looking for on Twitter, hundreds of thousands of users paid attention to him and now his employer is rewarding him with extra money to promote stories on the site. He's been interviewed by media outlets around the country and is now on every national platform's radar when a spot opens up. He's had a fantastic month.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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E5 Yaz said:
 
He also knows that, even if he did go too far, no one in his regular audience would give a crap ... and once whatever findings come out of this are announced, the story moved to another phase. Columnists call for personnel and coaching changes all the time. There's no professional reason apparent or necessary for him to do a mea culpa, primarily intended for an audience in another geographical region.
 
I think calling it a "mea culpa" is too strong.  In fact, this article makes me even more mad at this guy, although frankly he's not worth much of the energy.  He's not walking back from anything.  If anything, he's doubling down.  He is saying he stands by all of his opinions and the only thing he should have done is be more clear that, when he was talking about all the inflammatory things that should happen to the Patriots, he should have said, "if this story is true."  He then says (paraphrasing), "of course my statements came with that implied caveat, but I'm a victim of twitter."  Horseshit.  He's simply lying now.  I think he didn't say "if" because he was already convinced of the answer.  And now he's simply trying to make excuses with veiled suggestions that it's really the readers' fault for not understanding the "if they did it" was implied.  Of course I, the great Bob Kravitz, wouldn't rush to judgment, but I guess I can see why some thought I did.  That's his argument, and it's bullshit.  The reason we all thought he rushed to judgment is because he did, and now he wants ass covering if he screwed up.
 
Put simply, he's now pretending he simply wasn't clear enough in expressing his opinion, when really he made assumptions got in front of the story and now is worried that he will look silly if his assumptions were wrong, so he's changing the content of what he said after the fact.  
 
But then he goes all in on being an uber asshole.  To prove to us about the dangers of rushes to judgment and to say, "of course I don't do that," what example does he pull out of the universe to supposedly prove that to us?  Aaron Hernandez.  He's a prick, and the entire article is after the fact ass covering, and much more subtle Patriots hate red meat for his audience, in the guise of a mea culpa.
 
And to drive the point home even more clearly, at the end of the article, he vouches for the Colts as an organization and states his belief they didn't mess with the intercepted football. The irony is that in saying, "but if they did I'll call for them to be vilified" he's showing exactly how one writes an opinion about what should happen for cheating when one doesn't know the truth yet.  With caution.
 
Edit:  Making clear that stuff in quotes is my paraphrase and fixing some typos and stuff.
 
Edit 2:  This isn't so much a response to E5 Yaz as using his post as a jumping off point to make my point.  Mea culpa!
 

Jed Zeppelin

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This guy was called out by D&C, of all people, for being intellectually lazy and factually inaccurate when he counted the walkthrough taping as "strike 2." IIRC from the D&C thread, his response was something akin to "Whatever."

A mealy mouthed retraction from this guy is worthless. Unfortunately the only retraction that even semi-matters is the one we're least likely to get--Mark Brunell (just kidding, I mean the league of course).
 

Doctor G

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This supposed mea culpa is the same horseshit on a diferent kind of bread. spare us the I learned a lesson self congratulation.
After 35 years as a reporter. If it really did take you thirty five years to learn this lesson, I am reasonably sure you wouldn't be around to learn it now.

how about an apology to Odin LLoyd's family for dragging hernandez into this self serving hypocrisy.
 

Reverend

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Papelbon's Poutine said:
 
Even worse it was a beach flag football game in a league sanctioned event at the Pro Bowl. 
 
Worse still--it was only, like, semi-sanctioned or something so his salary wasn't guaranteed for health. His agent had, fortunately, gotten him insurance against his career or something so he wasn't completely shit out of luck.
 
 
GeorgeCostanza said:
No but they are somewhat analogous in the examples he laid out. I think the point is there is more than ammunition enough to bury the asshole without bringing in his religion/ethnicity/race. In fact, it's actually given him something to come back with to martyr himself in some folks eyes.

Edit: or what both E5 and nighthob said
 
Bracketing the sincere political and ethical commitments many here at SoSH have, even if we didn't hold them with respect to such language, there would be a strong utilitarian case for banning such expression as it's the first thing that causes conversation to go to hell.
 
That and huge avatars and signatures. Poke around other message boards and you'll start noticing it.
 
If nothing else, hitting Kravitz with the slurs is shitty because it allows him to blow off legitimate complaints and critiques about what he did as emotionally driven shitheadery.
 
 
ifmanis5 said:
Exactly. He doesn't deserve any kind of ethnic slur crap but really, this guy is a clownshow and his horrible behavior throughout deserves to be called out in a very public way.
 
And I love his smug 'correctly, I might add' line. It's quite possible that if that ball that is way under was tampered with by the Colts he could not have been more wrong. He painted people and an entire organization with a slander brush and now he's sad about the hurtful stuff on Twitter? Seriously, eff this guy.
 
If Kravitz beat his wife, and then decided he liked the feeling of superiority and dominance it gave him and subsequently continued to beat her regularly, I think that, even as bad as a single wife beating is, the continued beatings coupled with the perverse motivation of his sick and demented psyche is something that should lead to him being forever shunned from the company of decent people.
 
Probably should lose a draft pick too.
 

GeorgeCostanza

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There is no Rev said:
Worse still--it was only, like, semi-sanctioned or something so his salary wasn't guaranteed for health. His agent had, fortunately, gotten him insurance against his career or something so he wasn't completely shit out of luck.
 
 

 
Bracketing the sincere political and ethical commitments many here at SoSH have, even if we didn't hold them with respect to such language, there would be a strong utilitarian case for banning such expression as it's the first thing that causes conversation to go to hell.
 
That and huge avatars and signatures. Poke around other message boards and you'll start noticing it.
 
If nothing else, hitting Kravitz with the slurs is shitty because it allows him to blow off legitimate complaints and critiques about what he did as emotionally driven shitheadery.
 
 

 
If Kravitz beat his wife, and then decided he liked the feeling of superiority and dominance it gave him and subsequently continued to beat her regularly, I think that, even as bad as a single wife beating is, the continued beatings coupled with the perverse motivation of his sick and demented psyche is something that should lead to him being forever shunned from the company of decent people.
 
Probably should lose a draft pick too.
At least he would still be eligible for Peter King's writers hall of fame.

And I think you just word fucked me?
 

Old Fart Tree

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Such a common smokescreen these days to draw attention away from your own assholish behavior by saying "look over here at the incredibly offensive things people said to me." Those things are offensive, and they have no place in civilized discussion... But it's really an attempt to change the topic away from his own shitty journalism.
 

Myt1

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In ensuing tweets and a column or two, I wrote that if owner Robert Kraft had an ounce of integrity, Belichick would be bounced immediately, draft picks should be forfeited and the Pats should be fined. What I failed to do was make it abundantly clear, “IF the Patriots are found guilty of having tampered with the footballs…'' I failed to understand, at least at the time, that each tweet, taken by itself, is an independent organism, not a part of a continuing narrative.
No offense, son, but that's some weak ass thinking.  You equivocating like a motherfucker.
 

Pilgrim

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As we all know, a lot of people react to Erin Andrews' tweets with unbridled disgusting misogyny  *fast forwards through 500 pages of Powerpoint slides*  well, uh, you missed it but somehow I proved that the acceptance of anonymity of internet behavior proves that being a complete piece of shit to people is ok.  Namaste.
 

nighthob

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scotian1 said:
Has he released any of the anti-Semitic remarks or are people taking his word for it?
People are not only taking his word for it, they're lecturing us that we should feel sorry for him based on his claim. I don't. Not even a little.
 

YTF

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Lately I've been coming back to the quote, "If Bob Kraft is a true man of integrity, he will take it out of the league's hands and fire Belichick." I'm curious about the integrity of Kravitz's employers and if they will see reason to fire him IF what he's written is discredited by The Wells Report. Not holding my breath.
 

soxfan121

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nighthob said:
People are not only taking his word for it, they're lecturing us that we should feel sorry for him based on his claim. I don't. Not even a little.
 
You've been on twitter, yes? You don't need to like, respect, or anything Bob Kravitz to know that several shitheads - who exist - wrote him some hate mail. 
 
I'm as convinced that people were mean to Kravitz on twitter as I am that the sun is coming up shortly.
 

JimBoSox9

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soxfan121 said:
 
You've been on twitter, yes? You don't need to like, respect, or anything Bob Kravitz to know that several shitheads - who exist - wrote him some hate mail. 
 
I'm as convinced that people were mean to Kravitz on twitter as I am that the sun is coming up shortly.
 
But isn't the point that it's so baked into having your 15 minutes on Twitter, unless there's some reason to think that what Kravitz got was notably greater in degree than what literally every single other public figure on Twitter gets, it's simply not worth addressing or caring about?  Yes, it happened.  Yes, it's awful.  Yes, no one should do it.  These are the facts, and they are undisputed, but who gives a hoot?
 
He, more than many, signed up for it and knew it was going to be part and parcel going in.  He didn't use the fact in his apology to share emotions or teach a lesson, he did it so he could backhand the people he was 'apologizing' to like the smarmy piece of shit it is.  Forgive me if I can't summon quite the usual empathy to feel for someone getting bombarded by verbal abuse.  I'm saving it for J-Law.
 
Edit: I do realize your post was in response to the 'we're taking his word for it', which was an overreach by nighthob, who has otherwise been preachin' my kind of harsh.
 

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Myt1 said:
No offense, son, but that's some weak ass thinking.  You equivocating like a motherfucker.
 
It really is remarkable that a man like Kravitz, whose career involves words, is so poor at understanding how they're used.
 
Let's get this out of the way: the anti-Semitic comments are horribly disgusting and he doesn't "deserve" such hateful things said to him. OK? OK.
 
Now, Kravitz is pretty much lying about this "I didn't realize about twitter" etc comment. His initial tweet referenced punishment (loss of draft picks). He ramped up the rhetoric immediately afterwards, calling for everyone's heads and generally acting like it was a fait accompli that the Patriots had done this deliberately. Walking it back now changes nothing and he well knows it.
 
Kravitz and whoever leaked him the info that night (most likely Grigson, but I wouldn't be shocked if that druggie Irsay did it himself) cooked themselves up quite the symbiotic relationship, didn't they? Kravitz gets a good piece of juicy information that he can "break," and now everyone in the country who follows sports knows who he is. He gets radio and TV appearances and more columns and generally profits handsomely from this, actual facts of the case be damned. And his source (Grigson or Irsay) gets all the attention taken away from the terribly shameful performance the Colts put up in the AFCCG that night. They looked woefully unprepared and timid. The coach called plays like he was terrified (punting in the 3rd down 24-7? Really?) The GM has never bothered to fix their run defense, despite the fact that the Pats have obliterated them on the ground the last 3 times they've played. But no one paying attention to the shitty job they did in building their football team, because they have Ballghazi to cover their incompetent asses.
 
It's really quite diabolically brilliant.
 

RIFan

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Kravitz is like a guy who lit a candle, poured gas on it and is now complaining about getting burned. He could have reported the "investigation" and played it straight from that point on. Instead he stepped up to the keyboard and every mike put in his face and intentionally antagonized the Patriots and their fans. He never at any time failed to communicate exactly what he intended. He wanted to be the guy that got Belichick's head on a stake and all the "fame" that would come with it. His "mea culpa" is nothing more than window dressing.

Twitter is full of non enlightened creatons. If your going to wade into that cesspool and troll them, you need to accept that you will have shit flung back at you.
 

Hagios

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Matty005 said:
 
I've seen the crude and vulgar things people post EVERY time Erin Andrews tweets.  If she can handle it, Bobbo can handle it.  Again, not saying that it's right, but it comes with the Twitter territory.
 
Agreed. There needs to be a Godwin's Law for Twitter. As the number of participants in a social network increases, the probability of someone tweeting something stupid approaches 1. It's a non-story unless the dumb tweet comes from someone who is already famous/well-known in the relevant circles outside of Twitter.
 

rodderick

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Hagios said:
 
Agreed. There needs to be a Godwin's Law for Twitter. As the number of participants in a social network increases, the probability of someone tweeting something stupid approaches 1. It's a non-story unless the dumb tweet comes from someone who is already famous/well-known in the relevant circles outside of Twitter.
It kind of irks me to see people waving off slurs and death threats with "meh, that's Twitter for ya".

Sure, a lot of people on social networks are complete garbage as human beings, but that doesn't mean the target of the hatred and harrassment shouldn't get any sympathy.

All the guy did was say dumb shit on Twitter about the Patriots. It's just football. Mock him and show him why he's wrong, sure, but I don't see how that warrants directly contacting the guy to tell him he's a dirty jew and you hope he dies.
 

Leather

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rodderick said:
It kind of irks me to see people waving off slurs and death threats with "meh, that's Twitter for ya".

Sure, a lot of people on social networks are complete garbage as human beings, but that doesn't mean the target of the hatred and harrassment shouldn't get any sympathy.

All the guy did was say dumb shit on Twitter about the Patriots. It's just football. Mock him and show him why he's wrong, sure, but I don't see how that warrants directly contacting the guy to tell him he's a dirty jew and you hope he dies.
 
Are you reading a different thread than I am?
 
Every post here has denounced the anti-semetic and threatening comments.  
 

dcmissle

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Every time somebody says something racist, it serves as a painful reminder that we are not where we should be.

But this guy's supposed revelation about the dangers of Twitter is about as disingenuous as it could be. Reporters especially are sensitive to its abuses. Hell, they are always hectoring and lecturing players to stay off it. Yet this guy was openly trolling Pats fans on Twitter for days.

Kravitz is a bad guy who got caught in an unholy alliance. I don't feel sorry for him because he baited his own trap.
 

Van Everyman

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Not to go all E5 Yaz on this thread but why are we so sure Kravitz's initial report was wrong or even irresponsible? I personally think it's possible or even likely that Grigson purposely leaked an item off the Colts' watch list to Kravitz for the maximum possible public outrage and to put the NFL in the worst possible position.

But I'm not 100% certain of it. Some of the posts here are just absolutely killing him for being a willful pawn of the Colts here with no integrity. And here again, that may be true his first several tweets simply said that the league was investigating the Patriots and that draft picks were on the table for the penalty.

As a reminder, this is what he wrote:

Breaking: A league source tells me the NFL is investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs Sunday night. More to come.
12:55am - 19 Jan 15

I'm told at one point the officials took a ball out of play and weighed it. Should hear more tomorrow on this subject.

Didn't have a chance to talk to colts officials about this. They were long gone when I heard this.

Nobody is suggesting this is why the colts lost obviously. They were manhandled.

Told if a league investigation confirms deflated footballs it will result in lost draft picks. Stay tuned.
He actually explicitly says he didn't talk to the Colts. Which means he's either a) lying or b) hearing it from the league, not the Colts.

Also, in his mea culpa column today he says this:

Let's put it this way: If the Colts are found guilty of having tampered with the footballs in an effort to undermine the Pats, I'll be vicious in my criticism of the Colts and call for the heads of the offending parties – whether that's Jim Irsay, Ryan Grigson or Chuck Pagano…whoever. That would be even more egregious than anything the Patriots might have done.
Which I agree with. And:

I'll also be shocked beyond words.
Which I also agree with, hope as I might that it is true.

He also addresses his anti-Pats commentary on the subject and says he has a right to his opinion. Which I also agree with, disagree as I do with its substance.

And he does an excellent job of stating what the information we actually have is – Mort's report and Rappaport's disputed report ... and literally nothing else.

In short, I get that we are all angry that Kravitz set off this shitstorm of negativity toward the Patriots in what should have been a moment of triumph. But if this were a fire, he was more of a spark than gasoline.
 

Stitch01

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If we intelligent or self aware he'd be embarrassed that Grigson, Irsay, and Kensil thought so little of him as a professional that they used him to leak this.  He obvious doesn't deserve anti-Semitism or threats, but he's not a sympathetic figure.
 
Yet still not as bad as Ron Borges questioning someone's integrity without evidence or a shred of irony.
 

dcmissle

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Responsible reporters do not take to Twitter and bait a fan base. He did, numerous times. That is indisputable.
 

Van Everyman

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Stitch01 said:
If we intelligent or self aware he'd be embarrassed that Grigson, Irsay, and Kensil thought so little of him as a professional that they used him to leak this.  He obvious doesn't deserve anti-Semitism or threats, but he's not a sympathetic figure.
 
Yet still not as bad as Ron Borges questioning someone's integrity without evidence or a shred of irony.
Again, Kravitz explicitly tweets that he didn't have the chance to talk to Colts officials about this. Either he's lying, the league told him or, I guess, a Colts official texted him about it and he's parsing words. Other than the fact that he's a Colts reporter, why is everyone so certain he HAS to be doing the Colts' bidding here? Do we have evidence of him lying in the past?
 

Leather

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rodderick said:
While at the same time saying "but it' Twitter, what did he expect?" and "I have no sympathy for him".
 
Life isn't a zero-sum game; it's possible to recognize one injustice in the scope of a larger picture.
 
By your logic, he could say/do whatever he wants, but as long as some ignorant asshole makes an inappropriate crack, he is beyond reproach? 
 
Or is your argument simply that people here aren't denouncing the scourge of anti-semitism on twitter hard enough?
 
Anti Semites are assholes.  Bob Kravitz is also an asshole.  These two facts can exist simultaneously. 
 

Stitch01

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Van Everyman said:
Again, Kravitz explicitly tweets that he didn't have the chance to talk to Colts officials about this. Either he's lying, the league told him or, I guess, a Colts official texted him about it and he's parsing words. Other than the fact that he's a Colts reporter, why is everyone so certain he HAS to be doing the Colts' bidding here? Do we have evidence of him lying in the past?
At 1255 AM that day, sure, I believe he got that from Kensil and the league office.  When he was writing stuff the next day with confirmation from other sources, Im guessing some of those were Colts.  If you want to argue he was used by the league office instead of the Colts, fine, not sure how it makes the editorializing he's now trying to walk back any better.
 
He's a joke and a discredit to his profession.
 

dcmissle

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Responsible reporters also don't say this,

'"If Mort's report is on target, and I'm sure it is, Belichick should be suspended from the Super Bowl. My opinion," Kravitz tweeted late Tuesday. "This is an integrity of the game issue and it's Belichick's second offense.

"If (Patriots owner) Bob Kraft is a true man of integrity, he will take it out of the league's hands and fire Belichick. Not holding my breath."'

That is indisputable, along with the fact of his trolling. "If ..." does not get you off the hook.
 

Stitch01

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A sincere apology probably wouldn't have compared the investigation on deflating footballs to the Aaron Hernandez trial either.
 

Devizier

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Hagios said:
 
Agreed. There needs to be a Godwin's Law for Twitter. As the number of participants in a social network increases, the probability of someone tweeting something stupid approaches 1. It's a non-story unless the dumb tweet comes from someone who is already famous/well-known in the relevant circles outside of Twitter.
 
Nutpicking derives from this.
 
Basically, dig into any comments section anywhere and you'll find your fair share of nuts.
 

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Van Everyman said:
Again, Kravitz explicitly tweets that he didn't have the chance to talk to Colts officials about this. Either he's lying, the league told him or, I guess, a Colts official texted him about it and he's parsing words. Other than the fact that he's a Colts reporter, why is everyone so certain he HAS to be doing the Colts' bidding here? Do we have evidence of him lying in the past?
I'm not sure Irsay is technically a Colts official-I think he got the scoop from Irsay and is being misleading.
 

CantKeepmedown

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Jul 15, 2005
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dcmissle said:
Responsible reporters also don't say this,

'"If Mort's report is on target, and I'm sure it is, Belichick should be suspended from the Super Bowl. My opinion," Kravitz tweeted late Tuesday. "This is an integrity of the game issue and it's Belichick's second offense.

"If (Patriots owner) Bob Kraft is a true man of integrity, he will take it out of the league's hands and fire Belichick. Not holding my breath."'

That is indisputable, along with the fact of his trolling. "If ..." does not get you off the hook.
 
And also, his tweet, "Pats fans: give up the fantasy. Your brilliant head coach is also a cheat. 11 of 12 balls deflated. Must be the ball boys fault right?" was a complete and total dig at New Engalnd fans. There's no "IF" you can stick in there to make it better. I don't condone death threats and anti-semitic comments, but he absolutely deserves to be called out.
 

dcmissle

Deflatigator
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Aug 4, 2005
28,269
And also, his tweet, "Pats fans: give up the fantasy. Your brilliant head coach is also a cheat. 11 of 12 balls deflated. Must be the ball boys fault right?" was a complete and total dig at New Engalnd fans. There's no "IF" you can stick in there to make it better. I don't condone death threats and anti-semitic comments, but he absolutely deserves to be called out.
Yes, that's the trolling. Forget reporter, a columnist would not do that. (Wilbon would freely admit he is not a columnist anymore).

Kravitz was more than a spark; he was leading a lynch party to get BB suspended for the SB.

He is walking this back, I suspect, because he has learned that the worm has turned, that this matter is in the hands of a good lawyer with a healthy respect for facts who understands well he cannot roll a billionaire owner even if he wanted to, which he probably doesn't.
 

Leather

given himself a skunk spot
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
28,451
I think he's walking it back so when he gets pressed on it he can say "Well, I admitted I was wrong" and save some face.
 
That's the only reason, IMO.  
 

Ed Hillel

Wants to be startin somethin
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Dec 12, 2007
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I wondered about this from the beginning, but Kravitz is a guy who never made it in his bigtime hometown NYC and takes his bitterness out on everyone else. Of course, he also hates Boston sports. Here's an excerpt from a story about him where it's portrayed that he's fired from SI because his boss was an intractable Bostonian:
 


It should have been so perfect. Here was Bob Kravitz, young, hungry, and talented, returning to New York, the place he was born, to work for the most important sports publication in the world. On top of that, he was writing about hockey, the sport he knew, he played, he adored.
 
But hockey was Kravitz’s curse. His boss at SI was Mark Mulvoy, a Bostonian who had been the magazine’s NHL beat writer. “Kravitz was one of what seemed like a half-dozen people during the Mulvoy era who tried in vain to cover hockey in a manner that pleased the boss,” says one of Kravitz’s former SI co-workers. “An impossible task, sort of like being Martha Stewart’s housekeeper.”
 
For his part, Mulvoy remembers Kravitz as a newspaper writer who struggled to translate to magazines. “He was trying to figure out who he was as a writer,” Mulvoy says. “A lot of guys came to Sports Illustrated and wanted to write like (Frank) Deford and (Dan) Jenkins. Kravitz was not without talent. But he was fighting himself, trying too hard to be something he wasn’t.”
 
The editing, Kravitz says, was so heavy-handed that he didn’t read his stories for months so he could forget what he had originally written, lessening the hurt. He went weeks without sleep. “When you are 26 and single, your whole self-image is tied into what you are doing at work,” says Kravitz. “So when that crumbled, I was a bit of a mess.”
 
Finally, after two hard years, Kravitz left SI. “I always think of it as a firing,” he says. “But it was really kind of a mutual thing because I wasn’t happy there.”
 
He wasn’t happy in the weeks following his departure, either. He fell into a self-destructive pattern, staying out too late, drinking and hanging out and partying all night. “It was an empty, shitty time,” he says. “I remember standing in an unemployment line when my checks ran out. I was in Brooklyn or the Bronx or somewhere and I was like, ‘Holy shit, what happened?’”
 
I know E5 posted this earlier, but my God, read this. The guy is an egomaniacal jackass.
 
http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/news-opinion/bob-kravitz-sports-columnist/
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
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Van Everyman said:
Not to go all E5 Yaz on this thread but why are we so sure Kravitz's initial report was wrong or even irresponsible? I personally think it's possible or even likely that Grigson purposely leaked an item off the Colts' watch list to Kravitz for the maximum possible public outrage and to put the NFL in the worst possible position.

But I'm not 100% certain of it. Some of the posts here are just absolutely killing him for being a willful pawn of the Colts here with no integrity. And here again, that may be true his first several tweets simply said that the league was investigating the Patriots and that draft picks were on the table for the penalty.

As a reminder, this is what he wrote:



He actually explicitly says he didn't talk to the Colts. Which means he's either a) lying or b) hearing it from the league, not the Colts.

Also, in his mea culpa column today he says this:



Which I agree with. And:



Which I also agree with, hope as I might that it is true.

He also addresses his anti-Pats commentary on the subject and says he has a right to his opinion. Which I also agree with, disagree as I do with its substance.

And he does an excellent job of stating what the information we actually have is – Mort's report and Rappaport's disputed report ... and literally nothing else.

In short, I get that we are all angry that Kravitz set off this shitstorm of negativity toward the Patriots in what should have been a moment of triumph. But if this were a fire, he was more of a spark than gasoline.
Most of the posters here have said that if all he had done was report the facts they'd have no problem with him. 
 
Instead he made completely speculative conclusions based upon his limited facts, attacked Kraft and Belichick (and Patriots fans) and stated that Belichick should be suspended/fired and that the team should lost draft picks.  While every sports entertainer who said crap like that was being stupid it is UNDENIABLY WORSE for Kravitz to do it because by breaking the story he gives the appearance of having inside information, so his speculative jealous stupid crap actually comes with some implication that it is based upon actual evidence. The problem I have with him is that he "reported"and "broke" a story but was a total failure as a reporter on this story.