A Pats Fan Tried to Kiss the Reporter Interviewing Him. It Went About as Well as You'd Imagine
Ah, the parking lot outside a stadium. There’s no other place like it left on Earth. I’ve done these “Man in the Street” type videos before. And as anyone who has will tell you, the tailgate scene is the last bastion of utter lawlessness left in America. It’s the Wild West. “Lord of the Flies” with charcoal grills and cornhole. I once did one for my old employer and watched a man on all fours puking his brains out at 10 AM. Outside of a Harvard-Yale game. His wool overcoat cost more than my car and he’ll probably be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court one day. But in the Harvard Stadium lot on game day, he was just another wetbrain asshole talking to Ralph and leaving a stain of Natty Ice and breakfast burrito on the pavement. And for sure I appreciate that no one was trying to stick their tongue in my mouth.
So it’s no surprise that the #MeToo movement hasn’t made it to the lot outside of Met Life yet. It certainly was no surprise to Erin Kate Dolan, who was ready for this guy with a counter move that would’ve awarded her a point at any Ju-Jitsu match in the world. You’ve got to, in the dog-eat-dog world of conducting on camera interviews with drunks. It takes fearlessness mixed with a sense of self-preservation plus the innate sense when that tongue is coming at you. A woman in her position has to be able to tell that the notion of “consent” turned into “shoot your shot” about six Fireballs and .10 BAC ago.
Naturally the reaction on Twitter to this can mainly be summed up with some variation on the words “typical Patriots fan.” But let me remind everybody that it’s Jets fans who coined the term that became their “Commitment to Excellence” or “America’s Team.” And it’s “Show Us Your Tits.” And let’s address the herd of elephants in the room with this:
This guy was way out of line. And he may or may not be a Masshole. But if ever there was a case where you can’t blame the whole group of us, this is it.