Ignorant jackass.
(Daily Blend) — The mixture of professional athletes and Twitter is rarely a positive one for sports organizations. For examples, you could look at Max Pacioretty’s insult toward Brad Marchand last week, WNBA player Cappie Pondexter’s assertion that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan may have been punishment for Pearl Harbor or Bills receiver Stevie Johnson blaming God for a dropped pass in the end zone. The list goes on and on and on.
Now, you can add Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall to that list, and he may have instantly vaulted directly to the top.
The 23-year-old native of Illinois didn’t like the way Americans were celebrating the death of Osama bin Ladenon Monday, and he let out his frustrations on Twitter.
“What kind of person celebrates death?” Mendenhall, who last made national headlines for fumbling in the Super Bowl and “celebrating” a little too hard with Ben Roethlisberger in the playoffs, wrote. “It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side. . .”
Aside from the obviously questionable position of defending the most well-known terrorist in the world, Mendenhall is factually incorrect. Osama bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, claimed to be the mastermind behind the horrific attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, has shown no remorese in targeting women and children in his attacks and has been the No. 1 most wanted targets of the FBI. Maybe — maybe — you can make a case against the celebration of a man’s death, but to say we’ve only heard one side of the story, to suggest that we, as Americans, are brainwashed into hating this evil man, that’s more than a little over the line.
That wasn’t all, though, as Mendenhall expressed doubt that airplanes could have demolished the World Trade Center.
“We’ll never know what really happened,” Mendenhall wrote. “I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”