By now you’ve obviously heard the news: Rashard Mendenhall hopped on Twitter on Monday and made two hopelessly uninformed comments about Osama bin Laden and 9/11.
In case you’ve been living in a mansion hideout in Pakistan, here’s what the Steelers running back had to say: “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side.”
And then …
“We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”
After much was made of his controversial tweets, he deleted the second one. The first one remains. I have no beef with his death comment, but the “we’ve only heard one side” line is abhorrent. Did Mendenhall, who spent three years at the University of Illinois, miss all the times Bin Laden had bragged about 9/11?
Nobody expects Mendenhall to get traded or cut — heck, Ben Roethlisberger’s been in bigger trouble and the fans still cheer for him — but if Mendenhall doesn’t want to be booed by the hometown crowd or watch overzealous fans burning his jersey on YouTube, the guy should probably apologize and keep his ridiculous conspiracy theories to himself.
Hot or not? Maxim list boggles the mind
The “Maxim Hot 100” list is out and — for reasons that still remain a mystery — the selections get more perplexing every year. There’s no rhyme or reason to the magazine’s list except that “Hot” is defined as current movies, music, TV shows or, most importantly, who will show up when Maxim has the party.
Top honors went to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. She’s the new Megan Fox in the upcoming “Transformers” movie. Olivia Munn is No. 2, and she’s got a new TV show called “Perfect Couples,” along with a few movies due out. It goes on and on like that.
New English princess Kate Middleton checks in at No. 26 (you can see why people have tuned it out.) The highest-ranked person I had to Google was Cobie Smulders, at No. 9. She is on a show (“How I Met Your Mother”) that I’ve tried to watch twice, but never took a liking to, much like “Two and a Half Men.”
Since this space is about athletes, here are the sports-related people on the list:
Anna Kournikova (19; this is totally random since she hasn’t been relevant in years); Brooklyn Decker (36; married to Andy Roddick); Minka Kelly (52; she dates Derek Jeter); Arianny Celeste (70; wildly popular thanks to MMA) and Erin Andrews (91; way overrated sideline reporter).
–Jason Raj McIntyre covers athletes off the field and runs the popular blog, TheBigLead.com
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