You know when you’re watching something and you can’t even look anymore. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly famously had that happen when he watched President Trump speak before the General Assembly at the United Nations. But that reaction is by no means limited to General Kelly, the Zimbabwe delegation, or even just to politics.
We’ve all been there. Whether it’s the announcer on SportsCenter who says “bulging disc” incorrectly (think, removing the “s”), being at a stadium when the lady says no to the guy proposing, or any number of things. There are things we see and hear all the time that make us cringe or wonder, “what on Earth was __________ thinking”? Well, this column is an ode to those moments. We’re going to try and make this a recurring column because we don’t think public gaffes are going away any time soon. With that, we introduce to you this week’s John Kelly All-Stars.
1. KEVIN DURANT
We always wondered how famous people deal with the 24/7 criticism that they receive not just through traditional media sources like radio and television, but now on social media where trolls are as ubiquitous as Justin Bieber and Katy Perry fans. Thanks to KD, now we know. They create anonymous social media accounts to defend themselves against the people trolling them. We’re not making this up. Kevin Durant accidentally used his official Twitter account, thinking he was on his anonymous one, to defend himself to a random person. We don’t necessarily blame Durant, but we’re not sure if that’s the healthiest way to handle random fans who have nothing better to do with their time than tweet things like “Kevin Durant is soft” or question KD’s life decisions.
2. ADELAIDE BYRD
Boxing fans finally got the match-up that we all clamored for. And the fight actually lived up to most sober expectations. Yet somehow judge Adelaide Byrd scored a fight that nobody on Earth had worse than a draw for GGG, and the vast majority had GGG winning by a few rounds, as 118-110 in Canelo’s favor. Look at those cards! On another night when it could have been boxing’s time to shine, the focus is once again on a judge with worse judgment than Charlie Sheen on a bender.
3. CAMERAMAN
Oh dear Lord, what did we just see? That was like George Costanza in the Frogger episode of Seinfeld only a million times worse! How does that even happen? There’s an entire football field full of room for that cameraman to run through and that’s the path he chose? John Kelly can’t bear to watch.
4. SENATOR JOHN McCAIN
We have to make an exception and enshrine a non-athlete as a John Kelly All-Star. We heaped praise upon Senator John McCain for his rejection of business as usual in voting down Obamacare repeal, not necessarily because of the substantive vote, but because he seemed to generally want to make Congress function again. But alas, we were wrong. He was just waiting until his best bud, Senator Lindsey Graham, came up with an even crappier bill for him to support. Our bad.