The Final Kenny Rogers Post (I Hope)

I'm officially letting go of Kenny Rogers and his wacky behavior. Instead, I'm going to letting somebody else write about it. Here is Bill Simmons and his take on Kenny:


The Sean Penn Award for "Best Meltdown"
You know me by now -- I'm the same guy who gave the Artest Melee "Save Until I Delete" TiVo status. So I didn't want to weigh in after the meltdown happened, mainly because I think athletes and celebrities should be able to assault cameraman and paparazzi whenever they want. But there were a number of things I loved about the Kenny Rogers incident, including …

1. The way Rogers's demeanor never changed -- he was like one of those 80's movie serial killers in the way he icily went about his business (you could almost imagine him grimly dispatching camp counselors with an ax on Crystal Lake).
2. The aggrieved cameraman appearing on roughly 732 radio and TV shows the following day with that glazed, "I'm getting paid for this, right?" look on his face. You could tell he was thinking, "Damn, if he had just opened a 50-stitch cut on my head, I could have gotten on 'Regis and Kelly!'"
3. ESPN showing the clip at least 500,000 times over the next 48 hours. In fact, I think they replaced the overnight "SportsCenter" with a continuous clip of Rogers assaulting the cameraman. I also enjoyed how so many columnists, TV hosts and radio hosts needed to take positions like there was something to argue here. Lemme tell you something, you cannot attack a cameraman on the field. Really, doctor?
4. Kenny's fantastic apology this week, which somehow made matters worse as the media lambasted him all over again. What were they expecting from Kenny, a tearjerking speech along the lines of Billy Dee Williams in "Brian's Song"? The guy's a baseball player! These are the dumbest athletes of any professional sport! You think baseball players sit around on the team plane discussing Raymond Carver stories and the AIDS problem in Africa? This is the only sport where a star player could release a book titled "Idiot" … and nobody would bat an eyelash. And you're surprised that Kenny's speech sucked? Gimme a break.

The blog is officially closed on Mister Rogers.