WE URGE MARY KATE CORNETT TO CRUSH DISNEY AND PUT MCAFEE OUT OF BUSINESS
This is Day Two of our rant against delinquent ESPN hosts, who lie and tell fallacious online stories — with an Ole Miss freshman ready to sue McAfee and the network, which deals with Stephen A. Smith
A prominent attorney laughed when I said years ago, “Why don’t you fight the Disney lawyers?” I didn’t like how the company was ruining my TV career without hearing from our side. And I didn’t like how ESPN was protecting sports colleague Howard Bryant from wrongdoing, allowing me to drown in the ocean.
Battle, brawl, bury?
“No. Forget it,” she said.
Those of us in the television industry were told we couldn’t take on boss Bob Iger and his legal boulders. But Mary Kate Cornett will not be hearing no from her representatives. She is the Ole Miss freshman taking legal action against Pat McAfee and cannot lose her case, which should end the network’s licensing deal with the former NFL punter. Cornett thinks McAfee turned the worst of online rubbish into sophomoric-male fodder, dropping a sick comment on his ESPN program.
“At this exact moment, this is what is being reported by … everybody on the internet: Dad had sex with son’s girlfriend,” the host said.
His playtime reached the point where football analyst Adam Schefter, wondering why he was sitting beside a nitwit, changed the topic to the Ole Miss quarterback. “So where is Jaxson Dart in all this?” he said. Whatever Schefter said was much too late, because McAfee already had exposed himself to a massive lawsuit that further endangers ESPN as a betting-and-washed-up network.
Said Cornett, 18: “I have been the victim of a deliberate and coordinated cyberattack spreading categorically false and defamatory information.” And she told The Athletic in a powerful story that ran Tuesday, referencing McAfee: “You’re ruining my life by talking about it on your show for nothing but attention, but here I am staying up until five in the morning, every night, throwing up, not eating because I’m so anxious about what’s going to happen for the rest of my life.”
Said her father, Justin: “The only way I could describe it is it’s like you’re walking with your daughter on the street, holding her hand, and a car mirror snags her shirt and starts dragging her down the road. And all you can do is watch. You can’t catch the car. You can’t stop it from happening. You just have to sit there and watch your kid be destroyed.”
Hours ago, I explained why Stephen A. Smith should be fired as an ESPN host because of his wicked on-air inaccuracies, including a false claim last week that LeBron James didn’t attend Kobe Bryant’s memorial service. Today, Iger and network chairman Jimmy Pitaro must consider how regular scum from their two biggest personalities are wrecking the network and making it a no-watch blank space. Disney is paying $185 million to Smith and McAfee after years of laying off thousands of employees. Smith signed a $100 million deal and could remove his clothes with Shannon Sharpe and dance, which doesn’t speak well for his superiors, who know James won’t fire back in court. McAfee is another story.
He’ll lose the “ménage à trois” claim in large numbers, as his lame partner cracked in their Indianapolis studio. The network also will settle for a whopping amount, another loss in the ESPN Bet/Debt pitfall with deficits of $115 million in a “Snow White” remake. It doesn’t matter what Disney practitioners say if they can’t prove her boyfriend’s father is guilty, which is creepy. People connected with both families swear he’s innocent with God mentioned. He’s a victim of Internet fraud. And McAfee bought into it.
“These folks … they can just say whatever they want and destroy a young girl’s life forever,” Justin told The Athletic. “When you begin to have a following like (McAfee), you have a responsibility to society and to the people you speak about. You have to know the impact of what you might be saying and how it might affect them. And to not consider that is ignorant and naive at best, and malicious and deceitful and hurtful at worst.
“No one’s safe from this sort of attack. It could happen to you, it could happen to someone you love.”
When I worked at ESPN, back when the network was alive, I was mauled online by Deadspin and other media liars. I was supposed to deal with it because I’m male and I take strong editorial stances. Ozzie Guillen said I was a “f—ing fag” and bozos jumped on me. Did ESPN defend me? No. Did the Chicago Sun-Times defend me? No. Later, we threatened to sue GQ magazine and won a retraction. We almost sued the Sun-Times sports editor for a pile of verbalized crap.
So why would anyone from Disney reach out to Mary Kate? What would Walt Disney say? What does chairman of the board James Gorman say about the constant sports snafus? A phone call could help from McAfee, who might say, “I’m very sorry and have learned life lessons.” How about a potent meeting in Mississippi with Iger and Pitaro?
She isn’t expecting any company reaction. Those people are meeting with lawyers. “They don’t think it matters, because they don’t know who I am and they think that I deserve it. But I don’t,” Mary Kate said of McAfee and his gang. All she heard at Ole Miss were cheap shots before hiding away.
“I (can’t) even walk on campus without people taking pictures of me or screaming my name or saying super vulgar, disgusting things to me,” she said.
The Disney lawyers will say McAfee is an entertainer looking for laughs. Her attorney, Monica Uddin of Houston, should counter with McAfee’s nonsensical pledge to report big stories and make his daily way in journalism. Anyone serious about newsbreaking should not open an hour with: “Some Ole Miss frat bro, k? Had a K-D girlfriend.”
That would be Kappa Delta. “And then it was made public,” said McAfee, “that’s the absolute worst-case situation.”
The worst-case scenario is that he hosts three weekday hours on ESPN. Iger and Pitaro rent him for three more years and give him control of the content. He cannot handle responsibility, and neither can Stephen A. Both should be banned.
One might meet Mary Kate Cornett in a court of law. She should pursue $100 million, if not $185 million, their collective price. And then the dopes can pay for all damages.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.