I bet Pittsburgh Steeler Rashard Mendenhall will keep his opinions to himself from now on.
Yesterday it was reported that the 23-year-old Steelers running back lost a major endorsement contract with Champion over his controversial tweets about 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden.
Hours after Bin Laden was shot to death during a raid of his hideout early Monday, Mendenhall took to his Twitter page and tweeted:
“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”
But it was his next tweet about September 11 that really did him in with the corporate sponsor. Mendenhall, who probably flunked physics and science in high school, tweeted:
“…I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”
The Steelers front office was quick to respond to Mendenhall’s tweets, saying “…it is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments.”
Champion soon followed with a statement, saying they were “ending our business relationship” with Mendenhall since the athletic brand doesn’t think he “can appropriately represent Champion.”
Naturally, black people everywhere cried racism — and they would have had a point if Mendenhall had just left out the part about September 11.
But the fact is, he gave his ill-informed opinion on a touchy subject involving the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans — and that’s what sealed his fate.
Corporate sponsors will turn a deaf ear to certain personal opinions expressed by their spokespersons, but they won’t tolerate stupidity, bad judgment, or a stunning lack of sensitivity.
