Amidst a sea of scandal and scrutiny, ESPN has announced that it has relieved Bill “Sports Guy” Simmons of his editorship at Grantland.com. He will be replaced by Charles Barkley. In a leaked report obtained by the hacker group Anonymous, the Board of Trustees at ESPN writes that Mr. Simmons’s “ability to express rational, ethical opinions is a detriment to ESPN’s cherished traditions of stupidity, misogyny, and cynical corporate pandering.” The move comes as no surprise following Mr. Simmons’s earlier suspension for expressing doubts about the blatant lies of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Mr. Simmons falsely insinuated moral turpitude on the part of Commissioner Goodell, who is a dark wizard and our supreme overlord,” writes the ESPN Board of Trustees. “We see no other recourse but to terminate Mr. Simmons and replace him with Mr. Barkley.” Later portions of the letter recommend a tenfold raise for bloviating pundit Skip Bayless, a Congressional Medal of Honor for domestic abuse apologist Stephen A. Smith, and a company-wide initiative to throw Sage Steele down a flight of stairs. At this time, those sections of the letter have not been made public.
Considering the company in question, Barkley is the only logical successor. Fresh off the heels of his defending the NFL’s Adrian Peterson for beating his four-year-old child bloody, Barkley brings a long tradition of attention-grabbing idiocy and nauseating morality to ESPN’s already stacked bench. Most recently, Barkley referred to the protestors in Ferguson, Missouri as “scumbags” who weren’t “real black people,” in a letter so unfathomably calloused that Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Django Unchained called it “fucking racist.” Assisting Mr. Barkley in his transition will be former NFL head coach Mike Ditka, who will take a leave of absence from the Ku Klux Klan until Barkley feels comfortable in his new position. Simmons has yet to issue a response to these developments, but sources close to the embattled analyst report that he’s deciding whether this week’s Patriots v. Chargers matchup is “The Ultimate Kitchen Sink Game” or “An All-Time Loser Leaves Home Game.” Stay tuned for further updates.
UPDATE: ESPN’s parent company, the Walt Disney Corporation, has released new information regarding Simmons’s dismissal. According to information newly obtained by Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators, Bill Simmons will serve out the remainder of his two-year contract playing the role of a Jawa in the new Star Wars movies.
Indigenous to the desert planet of Tatooine, the first planet in the binary Tatoo System, Jawas are “typically short, rodent-like scavengers who crisscross the deserts, searching for technology to sell and trade.” Perhaps best-known for locating C-3PO and R2D2 and selling them to Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Lars, Jawas have a seedier local reputation as bandits and peddlers of faulty goods, known for their signature Jawa-cry “Utinni!” None of Mr. Simmons’s previous writing or recording presents an opinion of the Jawa or Jawa culture, but, given his “bad boy, let’s-go-to-Vegas persona,” the former Grantland editor should have no problem fitting right in at the Mos Eisley Cantina. Doot doot, doot doot, doot det doodle, doot det doodle, doot det.
baby pictures of famous dictators 