Posted on 11/29/2023 11:29:25 AM PST by Red Badger
A story published by Deadspin that accused an underage Kansas City Chiefs fan of racism has imploded more than anyone could have anticipated.
Deadspin senior writer Carron Phillips accused child fan Holden Armenta of wearing blackface at a Chiefs-Raiders game in Las Vegas on Sunday. In an article published Monday with the headline “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” Phillips included a photo that showed only the black-painted side of the child’s face. Other images and video clips show that the other half of Armenta’s face was painted red to display both of the team’s colors.
Armenta also wore the traditional headdress resembling the team logo from the 1960s and early 70s. Without any mention of the red paint or any other context, Phillips accused the team and the National Football League (NFL) of allowing fans to display “racism and hate” at games.
“The answers to all of those questions lead back to the NFL,” Phillips wrote. “While it isn’t the league’s responsibility to stop racism and hate from being taught in the home, they are a league that has relentlessly participated in prejudice. If the NFL had outlawed the chop at Chiefs games and been more aggressive in changing the team’s name, then we wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s no place for a franchise to be called the ‘Chiefs’ in a league that’s already eradicated ‘Redskins,'” he added.
Phillips received major backlash from conservatives and other prominent figures for targeting the young boy.
Twitter’s Community Notes flagged Phillips’ post for being out-of-context, citing images that showed both sides of Armenta’s face.
“This Deadspin’s author failed to provide full context of the photo presented in the article, which is a boy wearing face paint of which the two colors (black and red) represent the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team,” Community Notes added below Phillips’ tweet.
Phillips got so much backlash that he later deleted his tweet claiming that the red and black paint might be “even worse” than full blackface. The now-deleted tweet read, “For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument it makes it even worse.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk called Phillips “an unapologetic racist and a deceiver,” while Twitter personality Harrison Krank denounced him as the “most despicable and bigoted man in media.”
During a Wednesday morning interview with “Fox & Friends,” Outkick founder Clay Travis called on Armenta’s parents to sue Deadspin.
“I think this kids and his parents should sue Deadspin’s website for defamation. The writer, as well,” Travis said. “It’s clear they ran with something that wasn’t remotely true.”
Amid the widespread backlash, reports revealed Wednesday morning that Armenta is Native American. His grandfather, Raul Armenta, is a business committee member at the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. The elder Armenta visited his grandparents and other relatives who lived on the Native American reservation throughout his childhood, according to a short bio.
A 2012 obituary of Holden’s great-grandfather, Manuel Armenta, identified him as “an elder of the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash Indians.”
The boy’s mother, Shannon Armenta, angrily responded to Deadspin’s article and CBS News for airing the misleading photograph published by the sports blog. She posted several photos of her Chiefs super-fan son appearing to have a fun time at the game, and shared a video of him doing the iconic tomahawk chop and receiving a positive response from black Chiefs players.
“This has nothing to do with the NFL. Also, CBS showed him multiple times and this is the photo people chose to blast to create division. He is Native American – just stop already,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
Deadspin has yet to issue any correction to the article or respond to the backlash as of Wednesday morning. Both Phillips and the outlet’s editor-in-chief, Jim Rich, refused to respond to the Daily Caller’s Tuesday inquiries about whether they would include the full photo showing both sides of Armenta’s face.
It would be cool if the chiefs organization did something for/with this kid.
Call these f$+king a$$holes out every chance we get...
Here is video of the little “racist” at the game doing the chop with chiefs players showing the full face with the other half painted red
It would be cool if the chiefs organization did something for/with this kid.
—-
They won’t of course
But fans are organizing and many will paint their faces next home gave to support
Race hustlers are the true racist.
Black “journalists “ that jumped on this are stupid.
And they wonder why some people think blacks are dumb. They feed them evidence.
Hamas mentally justified the murder of infants with their radical ideology. I wonder how far the American left is from that position? What was once completely unfathomable is starting to look now like a real possibility.
Schadenfrueude
Pass thee popcorn
I don’t think he’s dumb, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
And prior to Musk buying twitter, he probably frequently got away with it.
Carron the Coward has restricted who can comment on his Twitter/X feed and has even blocked most people from seeing the comments.
We have reached peak retard.
With all the problems in the world, this is what this a-hole worries about. The collapse can’t come soon enough.
Yep, like retain a lawyer for him to sue this outfit out of business.
Clay and Buck on AM radio now joyfully discussing this epic woke fail.
First World lunacy.
Sometimes I think God sets these people up. He has THE great sense of ironic humor!................
No, sue them at every chance we get. Lawfare from their side is partially how we got to this state of affairs, it’s time we returned the favor. If every time some leftist made a defamatory accusation their organization got sued for megabucks, pretty soon nobody would employ them.
Phillips and the rest of the Deadspin staff are the type that should be regularly tracked down and humiliated soundly until the crawl back into the basements the crawled out of.
Get woke...Get sued...Go broke losers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.