Jay Feely didn’t wait too long to stomp on Chris Henry’s grave. Some people, no matter what the timing, just love saying “I told you so.”
Jets kicker Jay Feely has post-football political aspirations; he makes no attempt to conceal them. But his comments regarding the late Chris Henry fail to demonstrate a high degree of political savvy.
Feely, with whom we’ve interacted in the past and who seems like a well-intentioned man and without question is a skilled kicker, had this to say on his Twitter page regarding Henry’s death: “Chris Henry seemed to have turned his life around. But, you can’t live on the brink of destruction without inevitably falling off the ledge.”
Later, Feely realized that he probably shouldn’t have said what he said.
“Maybe I did a poor job of expressing my sympathy while trying to look at the bigger picture of why this happened and how to avoid in future,” Feely explained in a subsequent tweet.
Well, that’s a “holier than thou” statement if I’ve ever seen one. At least Feely could have waited a couple of days before bashing Henry’s lifestyle. Once again, an athlete puts his foot in his mouth by using Twitter. And once again, I’ll say that it’s a great idea for team owners to ban the use of Twitter for their players. Nothing good can come of it, and 90% of these guys are too stupid to be trusted with a service that beams their opinions to the world.
But here’s the thing…as poor as the timing was, does anybody really think that Feely is right? When someone dies, we talk about how great they were and what a saint they were and avoid any negative comments about them whatsoever. I get it, but it’s kind of disingenuous. I’m not saying we should have a character assassination on Chris Henry, but let’s not pretend that he was working in soup kitchens every weekend, and let’s not pretend that Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was the fucking pope, and let’s not pretend that Michael Jackson wasn’t gobbling little boys’ penises four times a week.
Ban Twitter. Just do it already. Please.
