In case you haven’t heard, Pro Football Talk head honcho Mike Florio called out Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers earlier this week for not signing an autograph for a cancer survivor.
There was a video of Rodgers passing by the woman, Jan Cavanaugh, on his way through the airport without stopping.
Florio lit into Rodgers for not knowing “where his money comes from,” i.e. the fans. He was especially pissed because Cavanaugh had cancer.
Yes, I read the post and then decided to ignore it. My reasoning was two-fold.
First, I didn’t care. No celebrity has any duty to sign anything for anyone, just like I don’t have to be cordial towards Minnesota Vikings fans and you can pretend you’re working while you’re reading this blog. It’s a free fucking country.
Second, I thought Florio’s holier-than-thou approach was heavy-handed and out of line. It was based on a three-second video clip and nothing else. Those of us in the blogging world who’ve actually been what the mainstream media (and the Green Bay Packers PR department) would refer to as real journalists know that doesn’t make a story.
Frankly, I didn’t want to give such a piece of crap piece of work any notoriety or traffic.
After Florio’s initial post, the shitstorm started. Florio was called all kinds of things, accusations were made, and he responded by trashing Rodgers some more.
Awful Announcing has a fabulous summary of the whole thing, including some spot-on commentary, if you care to go more in-depth.
Anyway, this nugget came out next — Rodgers had signed some memorabilia for Cavanaugh the previous week. Cavanaugh even took the time to defend Rodgers and said she was tired of the attention.
Florio still wasn’t convinced, essentially belittling Rodgers again for walking by Cavanaugh at the airport.
Again, I didn’t care to pay it any attention.
Pretty simply, the whole thing was the work of a hack. It smelled like a traffic grab to me — knowing the passion of Green Bay Packers fans, why not write something to incense them so they come back repeatedly to comment?
Whatever it was, it ended with Florio apologizing to Rodgers, Packers fans and Cavanaugh.
I’ve had two nights to sleep on it and plenty of other time to think about it. Once my anger at being wrongfully accused of running a payola scheme subsided and my Italian nature to never give in wore off, I realized that I felt bad. And I realized that I’d only feel better if I apologized.
Now that these meaningful and important matters have been addressed, I’d like to get back to talking about Green Bay Packers football, if that’s alright with you?