A funny thing happened on the internet Tuesday night. The left wing sports site Deadspin, a creation of the now defunct Gawker, tried to mess with Senator Ted Cruz and got owned. Big league.
Here are the basic facts from CNN:
Univision’s Deadspin tells Sen. Ted Cruz to ‘eat s—‘Deadspin, which is owned by Hispanic media giant Univision Communications, sent a tweet on Tuesday night telling the Texas senator to “go eat shit.”Univision spokesperson Rosemary Mercedes did not comment.Deadspin previously drew scrutiny in 2013 for telling Donald Trump “go f— yourself.” At that time, Deadspin was owned by Gawker Media. It was acquired by Univision last year.The Twitter exchange started when Deadspin asked its readers to send proof of Cruz playing basketball, apparently in an effort to verify a Politico article noting that he had started playing weekly basketball games with other Republican senators.Cruz responded via Twitter on Tuesday night with a picture of Duke basketball player Grayson Allen, who bears a stunning resemblance to the Senator.Deadspin’s response: “@tedcruz go eat shit.”
Here’s how it went down on Twitter:
Even the Washington Post has conceded that Cruz won this round:
Ted Cruz makes Grayson Allen joke and wins Twitter war with DeadspinWell, that took a turn, perhaps one we should have seen coming. Shortly after Sen. Ted Cruz responded Tuesday to a Deadspin tweet by making light of his uncanny resemblance to Grayson Allen, the website shot back in terse — and highly vulgar — fashion.Deadspin had noted a Politico story from the day before about how, with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Cruz is trying to “reinvent his role in Washington.” Part of that effort is a “weekly basketball game” that the former presidential candidate has started in a Senate office building, with Politico reporting that “Cruz is said to be a surprisingly good jump-shooter with miserable form.”That prompted Deadspin to issue a call to its Twitter followers, asking for “proof of Ted Cruz playing basketball.” Cruz himself (or, more likely, someone running his verified account) replied to that tweet, humorously posting a photo of the Duke star.
Deadspin editor Tim Marchman is not taking the loss well:
Sean Davis of the Federalist notes that Deadspin did the same thing to Colorado Republican Corey Gardner.
It was October of 2014 and we covered the story:
Deadspin, which is part of Gawker Media, ran a story yesterday that Cory Garnder, the Republican running for Senate in Colorado who is ahead in the polls, had faked his high school football career.
It was game over according to the cheerleading section on Twitter.
As they were high-fiving each other and ordering extra beers for the post-election celebration, a funny thing happened. The story turned out to be false.
In Cruz’s case, he was mocking Deadspin with a parody tweet. In the Gardner case, Gardner the photo was the real thing.
What hasn’t changed is Deadspin trying desperately to attack a conservative politician over sports.
Everything old is new again.
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