Dave Portnoy Still Doesn't Get It

It took a few days, but after the Jimmy Kimmel suspension, not only did several prominent Republicans like Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro take Kimmel’s side (with obvious reservations about his politics), but even most of the manosphere sided against Brendan Carr and the FCC, including Joe Rogan.

One notable holdout was Dave Portnoy, the owner of Barstool Sports, who inexplicably insisted the day after the suspension that this was not a free speech issue but a cancel culture issue.

Not that this needs explaining again, but cancel culture involves actions by individuals to get a show, person, or employee canceled for saying or doing something with which they disagree. Sometimes that pressure is justified; sometimes it’s bad-faith attempts to silence political opponents. It can be nasty, but as long as only private actors are involved, it doesn’t directly implicate the First Amendment.

When the government gets involved, as the President and Brendan Carr so clearly did in the Kimmel situation, that is a direct affront to the First Amendment. That’s not cancel culture. That’s a free speech violation. Why so many on the right figured this out while Dave Portnoy did not, I don’t know. My guess is pride, since Portnoy doubled down.

Putting aside Portnoy’s bad-faith interpretation of what Kimmel said, as well as his unfounded belief that Kimmel planned to double down, this is obviously a free speech issue. It doesn’t take the threat of imprisonment to make it one. It only requires government officials to threaten consequences, such as frivolous lawsuits or revocation of an FCC license. This is so obvious that even Ted Cruz understood it.

Dave Portnoy did not. He was so wrong that Kirk Minihane, the host of a Barstool show took direct aim at his boss.

“Who the f**k is saying Jimmy Kimmel should go to jail? That’s when Dave loses the plot. Nobody said that. Nobody! It’s a straw man argument! And the government, the f**king head of the FCC, the president of the United States, stepped in; so it is part of the conversation.”

Minihane even went low, bringing up the terrible ratings of Portnoy’s Fox Sports show, Wake Up Barstool.

“It’s sad seeing Dave like this. It’s sad to see Dave get dominated by [Barstool’s T-Bob Herbert] on television — 4,000 people watching … He’s lost the f**king plot, you know? I don’t even know if the — will Fox even want him on the Saturday thing now? I have no idea. This is sad, sad, sad, sad.”

Last week, it’s worth noting, Minihane railed against his boss, too.

“Right now, in 2025, at 10:06 on September 18th, the extreme right are the biggest group of pu**ies that has ever existed in America … You f**king pussies have broken in half — led by the duo of Donald Trump and ‘consequence culture’ Portnoy, who is just waving his arms at the right to like him again after the thing last week where he said it was Trump’s fault, privately and publicly, that Charlie Kirk died. Now, he’s like, ‘I gotta get them back, I gotta get them back, I gotta get them back.’”

For the record, if Portnoy got super mad over this and fired Minihane, that’s not really cancel culture or a First Amendment issue. It’s a thin-skin issue. Maybe Portnoy should stick to what he knows — defending employees in messy situations with country musicians — and stay out of issues he doesn’t understand.

via Mediaite