Deconstructing Will Leitch and His Dead Spin

By: D.K. Wilson

Unlike MODI, who, until his post on Will Leitch and Deadspin, had never spoken ill of another blog, I don’t really give a damn. I learned early on in this affair which I took up at the behest of Henry Abbott of True Hoop so that he could view recent examples of my sports writing, that I was living on the Internet in the same place in which I exist in America.

When someone like Leitch can own the most popular destination for readers of non-Big Box sports media outlets trouble is sure to follow. I glimpsed this trouble in my previous work with a now-defunct, political-action sports website.

People purchase these machines called computers and grossly misuse them. Rather than use them as tools for personal growth and to expand their understanding of the world around them, albeit at a safe distance and therefore in a manner that allows them to approach new information at their own pace, they have largely turned them into thousand dollar telephones and ephemeral “spaces” in which they only become more entrenched in their standing beliefs and more emboldened to project the sickness that is racism into everyday being.

Ten million pages, or so, of Deadspin are “turned” every month. The vast majority of which are written by a man who tells us that his Internet raison d’etre is due to the fact that “sports have been essentially hijacked by a sports entertainment industry that hyperbolizes to promote itself.”

And yet that statement is exactly what exists in the pages that constitute the weblog that is Deadspin.

Perhaps that is Leitch’s private joke. Perhaps that’s why he stumbles and stutters each time he is confronted with the material within his blog that so panders to the white frat boy sports blogosphere - and the people of other colors who love them, or whore themselves to achieve the infamous “I was linked by Will Leitch” status (oh, the t-shirt sales…).

That this mirroring of the mainstream, under the guise of being its antithesis, is not grossly apparent to even the youngest reader of Deadspin, is, in the vacuum of lighter circumstances, a hoot. However, because it actively courts, thrives and is dependent on people who find commonality in who can “out Henny Youngman” each other (to borrow a phrase about Deadspin commenters from MODI), people who openly loathe people of color, particularly black people, and people who openly hate the fact that athletes make millions of dollars to play what they consider “children’s games,” Deadspin has become serious business.

Deadspin, in effect becomes a mirror of American society.

And the image reflected isn’t pretty.

For black people who do not share the overreaching opinions of Deadspin or its visitors, the image is particularly harsh. We are not “invited” to join the legion of “Leitch’s Leeches” - not that we particularly aspire to - Leitch largely refuses our websites and blogs.

As we have been throughout our history in America, we are marginalized by a white-owned power structure; this time a structure called, the “sports blogosphere.” That we are tolerated here is as much a fallacy as the sports blogosphere is Leitch’s “meritocracy,” as he averred on HBO Costas Now Town Hall Meeting on Sports and Media.” If the sports blogosphere was a matter of merit Deadspin and sites of its ilk would have their place on the fringe of the sports Internet as does the National Enquirer in mainstream journalism. Sites that seek to provide the best analysis of the sports we watch provide the most insight into the sports and the people within sports would be the places viewed most. Sites that reveal heretofore hidden perspectives or little-represented perspectives would be popular, Perhaps the best of the Deadspins would peek through and have a place at the table, but it in no way could dominate that table.

That black bloggers who do not toe the sports blogosphere, mirror of the mainstream party line are relegated to its fringes speaks loudly to the fact that racism rules the day.

This can be clearly seen when the mainstream’s Jason Whitlock, a favorite of white sports bloggers and white commenters, writes of the “Black KKK.” White people come running to Jason’s side to urge him to “go tell it on the mountain.” But let Whitlock turn his eye in another direction and critique the institution of racism. Leitch would have you believe that people’s eyes glaze over thinking, here we go again.

No. Not true.

The truth of the matter is that the silence that accompanies a Whitlock attack of racism is due to the fact that white people’s previous investment in his, ‘he’s just like us’ thought is shattered into a million pieces. So, rather than reveal that they are, in fact, hypocrites, they remain silent and lie in wait for the next Whitlock piece they can throw their racist weight behind.

Black bloggers’ hope is that here in the sports blogosphere we black bloggers would not be just tolerated. See, a person can tolerate another person and still hate him or her. No no no. We hoped that in this non-spatial space we could be accepted. Accepted and respected and listened to and engaged in meaningful and valuable conversation for our perceptions on topics like the nature of racism and collusion, and marginalization in sports.

Instead we are treated as if we do not exist. And when we do exist, we experience the absolute worst of the venomous nature of the white, frat boy blogosphere in comments; even in private emails in the form of death threats.

No, it is no accident that black bloggers who might rankle at what they see of the sports blogosphere are not at all tolerated on the Internet in a country where even the modicum of civility that comes with tolerance is expected, person to person. Yet the Internet is the place where people can pretend to be something they are not - something more than what they are. But if you take look at Leitch and his commenters you will find that too often they reveal themselves to be less than what they are; less than human, less than humane.

Oddly, all black bloggers who might not follow the prescribed path want here in the sports blogosphere - as do all black people in society, at large - is to have the ability to not give a shit about anyone else if we so choose and to still be accepted and respected ———- just like you.

When was the last time you saw a black personality of any sort whose actions, at some point in time weren’t said to be a reflection of all black people? Or the majority of black people? Or some black people?

Wait, wrong question. When was the first time?

However, it is equally no accident that the writers who work for AOL Fanhouse, Deadspin, and their favored blogging minions, all write in a similar dumbed-down fashion. It is no accident that they have all gained popularity by largely eschewing serious sports analysis, tackling serious sports-related issues such as race and racism in and around sports, or taken any stances that would jeopardize their oh-so-close to Big Box status.

And for their purposely acting to further dumb down sport watching audiences, they are lauded rather than laughed at and dismissed by too many mainstream journalists. It is these same mainstream sports writers who privately wipe their brows in relief knowing that as long as rumor, innuendo, and opinion and analysis based on reductionist thinking rule the day on the Internet, they are safe from one less set of marauders on their collective space.

Yet these people like Leitch have the vulgar nerve to maintain that they are not mainstream.

Mainstream, ha!

Take a peek at the word “mainstream” in Roget’s and you’ll find that a synonym for mainstream is “mediocre.”

How wonderfully ironic.

But while Leitch plays his joke on the world, he plays it at the expense of the beauty of what this thing called the sports blogosphere could be. He plays the joke and never takes responsibility for his actions. If he did, we would never have read the word “We” in his latest capitulation on race. He would never leave it to the masses or leave what might occur next to others. He would tell us that he now understands that he was grossly insensitive for attempting to judge the “blackness” on anyone black instead of puling on about how:

This is because we were taken aback by it; it legitimately didn’t occur to us that someone could take the impression from the book that we had some sort of problem with race.

How could you not immediately see how this smacked of white privilege?

How? Because, Will Leitch, you are the mainstream in all its fading glory.

You see, there are good writers out there in the mainstream - damn good ones. But you are correct that the mainstream seeks to engage more and more in hyperbole and because of that it compromises its integrity and the integrity of everything around it. Through this compromise it sacrifices the ability to be taken seriously. And because it is viewed with a jaundiced and skeptical eye it sacrifices the real writers out there in its field; those for whom sports writing is an art and those who are supremely adept at making a point.

Just like Deadspin does on the Internet.

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D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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