Simmons apologizes for podcast with Russillo
Exactly two days after posting an embarrassing podcast about the George Floyd protests with Ryen Russillo, Bill Simmons apologized before having activist and podcaster DeRay McKesson on The Bill Simmons Podcast.
“On Sunday night, Russillo and I did a shoot the s—t podcast, coming off everything that happened on Friday and Saturday night. We taped it before Sunday night really heated up, and all hell broke loose, and Monday night Trump basically turned into a dictator,” Simmons said.
“I’ve been thinking long and hard about my podcast in general, and this platform and what I want to do with it in the next weeks and months,” he continued. “I think I just misread the moment on Sunday night. I was trying to do a shoot the s—t, take your mind off things kind of podcast like we would always on Sunday, and the moment was bigger than that. I wish I had had an expert with us that we could have bounced some questions off of and tried to learn from instead of treating the moment like we did.”
This is exactly right. Simmons’ (and particularly Russillo’s)
failure was not that their words were particularly heinous, although Russillo’s were extremely embarrassing. It’s that no one was asking for them, and Russillo was issuing hot takes on a genuinely important subject that he clearly knew very little about.
“So I apologize for that,” Simmons said. “Look, I’m 50 years old, I still barely know what I’m doing, I’m still gonna make mistakes, I’m still not gonna to throw a nohitter every step of the way. The only thing I can do is learn from a mistake and try to get better at it. And I think the mistake on Sunday night was not bringing somebody with us who brought a little extra knowledge to the table which is what we’re gonna try to do here in a second with DeRay McKesson. I want to use this platform to educate people, and make them think, and make them think about what’s going on. And right now, there’s only one thing going on. So, that’s what we’re gonna do. So, here we go, first Pearl Jam.”
The apology is also notable for what it doesn’t mention. Russillo’s comments about the Floyd protests and Simmons’ supposed commitment to diverse hiring — and the fact that he was given a massive platform to discuss them in the first place — were obliquely condemned by the Ringer’s staff union on Monday. “Diversity in the newsroom is essential to covering police brutality and systemic racism, including in the worlds of sports and pop culture,” the union said in a statement. “In 2019, 86% of speakers on The Ringer Podcast Network were white. We have zero black editors. We have zero black writers assigned full time to the NBA or NFL beats.” (The union declined to comment on Simmons’ apology. Russillo also has been quiet publicly since Monday.)