Recently, a young Iowan named Carson King went viral after being photographed at a football game while holding up a sign asking people to send him money, via Venmo, to buy more Busch Light beer. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, bringing in more than $1 million. Instead of keeping the money, King decided to give it to a children’s hospital.
And for that amazing act of charity, Carson King had to be destroyed.
Zachary Evans, National Review:
The Des Moines Register is facing backlash for exposing the years-old racist tweets of an Iowa man who raised $1 million for charity.
Des Moines Register reporter Aaron Calvin profiled Iowa native Carson King…
Towards the end of the profile, Calvin mentioned that the paper had uncovered two racist jokes from King’s Twitter account dating to 2012, when King was 16 years old and still in high school…
King expressed shock over the tweets and apologized for them. Busch Light parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev said it will sever ties with King, although the company will still match his pledge to the children’s hospital.
To recap: A guy donated $1 million to a children’s hospital, so his local newspaper dug up some bad tweets from when he was a teenager. He did a good thing and gained national attention for it, and our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press had to put him in his place.
Here’s the newspaper’s rationalization for that decision:
A statement from our editor: pic.twitter.com/ZH9AhcrYbg
— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) September 25, 2019
“Routine background check.” For a story about a guy who gave a million bucks to sick kids? Bull$#!+.
And don’t let any of these scumbag journalists tell you that King’s old tweets “resurfaced.” The tweets didn’t just float up to the top of the Internet on their own. Somebody got paid to dig them up. Someone made the decision to publish them. It was a choice. The Des Moines Register chose this.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Some keen-eyed Internet sleuths decided to do their own routine background check on Aaron Calvin, the Des Moines Register reporter who wrote the story:
The reporter who “exposed” Carson has his own skeletons. pic.twitter.com/0t1OAikcFD
— Jessica Fletcher (@heckyessica) September 25, 2019
He’s got several actually. pic.twitter.com/C1o6CiYZBe
— Jessica Fletcher (@heckyessica) September 25, 2019
This doesn’t seem very tolerant of you, Aaron.
I won’t post any more of his tweets. But this cancel culture is a terrible game. You live by it, and you will die by it. It helps no one. It isn’t journalism. pic.twitter.com/MkdvapjlcS
— Jessica Fletcher (@heckyessica) September 25, 2019
Very cool @DMRegister, very cool pic.twitter.com/t94pM7lxB2
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2019
There was a lot more where that came from. Seems fair, right? If you can dig up some old tweets to humiliate a guy who’s helping sick children, why can’t people dig up your old tweets? Either these rules apply to everybody or they don’t.
So now this is happening:
The Register is aware of reports of inappropriate social media posts by one of our staffers, and an investigation has begun.
— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) September 25, 2019
And this is happening:
Sounds like the Des Moines Register should’ve run a routine background check on this guy before hiring him. Oh well!
The moral of the story: Don’t do anything good for anybody else, because some bag of garbage with a press pass will try to destroy you for it. The reporter who goes after you will probably have even worse skeletons in his closet, but that won’t help you get your reputation back.
And if you absolutely insist on doing good deeds, if you feel the need to put other people before yourself, first you must delete everything you’ve ever posted to the Internet.
P.S. This petition is gaining on 100,000 signatures.
In three hours, 36,000 people have signed a petition asking for the Des Moines Register to issue a front page apology to Carson King https://t.co/UBqTrdW9hg
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) September 25, 2019
Join the conversation as a VIP Member