It’s an unspoken fact that once a company goes corporate, it’s bound to lose the very edge that made them successful in the first place. Wednesday marked a huge moment in history for Barstool Sports after one of the company’s former personalities, Ben Mintz aka “Mintzy” was fired on Monday.
The Barstool personality rapped some lyrics as he hosted his “Wake up with Mintzy” show. The rap lyrics included the N-word – the “a” version being repeated rather than “er.”
Dave Portnoy announced Wednesday that Ben Mintz, known as Mintzy, has been fired for using the n-word #barstool pic.twitter.com/X4lA06DgdB
— Breaking Trends News (@btrendsnews) May 3, 2023
Mintz took to Twitter to express his regrets on his actions, stating “This morning I made an unforgivable mistake slipping on air while reading a song lyric. I meant no harm & have never delt worse about anything.” Mintzy continued, “I apologize for my actions. I am truly sorry & ashamed of myself.”
This morning, I made an unforgivable mistake slipping on air while reading a song lyric. I meant no harm & have never felt worse about anything.
I apologize for my actions. I am truly sorry & ashamed of myself.
— Mintzy (@BarstoolMintzy) May 1, 2023
Barstool’s founder Dave Portnoy also took to Twitter to express his concerns with firing one of their guys for a careless mistake that should not be taken to this extreme. “Ok, emergency press conference time. Bad news – this sucks.” So today we had to fire Ben Mintz,” Barstool’s Portnoy began. When discussing the details of the slur mentioned, Portnoy continued, “He read it, he knew he f**ked up; he’s been super apologetic – like in shambles, basically. He knew he screwed up, and there’s no hatred behind him – still awful, but not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be sitting here being like, we have to fire “Ben Mintz.”
Emergency Press Conference – Ben Mintz Has Left the Building pic.twitter.com/31faJrI6Op
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) May 3, 2023
“Penn felt differently. I’m stunned by it, and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail, as has Erika, as has Dan to keep Ben and say this is the wrong decision. But Penn operates in a world that we don’t operate in.”
Portnoy mentioned that Penn Entertainment Inc., who fully acquired Barstool back in February, is highly regulated by the government, and has apparent licenses on the sidelines ready to be taken away the minute a slip up like this happens under Portnoy’s watch.
He finished his statement with understanding Penn’s perspective in that it’s better to let Mintz go than put the entire company at risk over this dispute.
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