It’s been all the talk in the state of Iowa for a couple of weeks now. If you follow any Iowa sports pages on social media, or really if you have talked to anyone who is an Iowa State or Iowa football fan, you’ve probably already heard about the Carson King situation. But, if you haven’t, here’s a rundown. ISU football fan Carson King appears on College Gameday on ESPN for the Cy-Hawk rivalry game, holding up a sign in the background asking for donations to his Venmo account so he can buy beer. It is a harmless sign, and as is the case with all signs held up on College Gameday, it was just intended to be a joke. However, this joke actually did rake in donations from around the nation, totaling upward of 1 million dollars. Now, King had the option here to take the money and run, after all it is now his money and he can do with it as he pleases. But King decided to do a good deed and donate all the money (minus enough to buy one case of Busch) to the University of Iowa’s Children’s Hospital. It became a national headline, as both Busch and Venmo made matching donations to go along with Carson’s donation. Everything is fine and dandy and everyone is happy, which is where most people would expect the story to end. But that brings us to our first example. A profile of King by Aaron Calvin went on the Des Moines Register. The profile included at the end a mention of some racist tweets King made when he was 16.
First off, I'd like to give my thoughts on the tweets. I couldn’t find the tweets on any news outlets and when I checked Twitter they were deleted. The 2 tweets were described as “comparing black mothers to gorillas” and “making light of black people killed in the Holocaust”. Again, I couldn’t read the tweets for myself but let’s put it into context. A 16 year old kid watched a program on Comedy Central, heard a joke that he thought was really funny, and then, being the edgy high schooler he probably was, tweeted the jokes out hoping to cause a bit of a stir to those who read it. The tweets are insensitive, but ultimately harmless. Carson has since deleted the tweets and expressed his remorse over his actions. He handled the situation well: he deleted the tweets, he explained his position while still admitting he was at fault, and he apologized. Any reasonable person would see that and move on, just as King is doing himself.
Second, I want to look at the Des Moines Register article. The article was written by Aaron Calvin and was a profile of Carson King. Its intent was to just learn a little more about a guy doing a lot of good, and ultimately making the most of his 15 minutes of fame. The article was mostly praise, talking about how the original College Gameday sign came into fruition, detailing how the sign got him to this point, and detailing a little backstory of King’s community and how he got washed into the Cy-Hawk rivalry that everyone in Iowa does. At the end of the article, Calvin mentions the tweets. It talks again how King is remorseful and actually thanked the Register for bringing them up. Upon reading the article, mentioning the tweets seemed a little out of place. It really does not fit the tone of the rest of the article at all. Upon release of the article, the tweets were exposed to the public. In response, Busch dropped all connections with King. Obviously a company does not want to associate itself with a racist, but that really is far from what King is. If King had known that he would be in this position 10 years ago, I’m sure he would’ve never made the tweets. Like I said before, all this was was a teenager trying to be funny, this isn’t a mission statement from a KKK supporter. So outrage ensued, and most Iowans seemed to rush to the support of King. In response the Des Moines Register fired Aaron Calvin. In an interview, Calvin said that his discovery of the tweets was apart of regular background checks on all people who they right profiles on. In other words, Calvin was just doing his job. He asked his editor if he should include the tweets in the article and says he got the green light. Calvin probably could have just left the tweets out of the article. He made King aware of the tweets, and they were deleted. The thing about it, though, is that nobody really cares. Nobody reading the article is interested in what King does in his free time, what he tweets, what his favorite color is, any of that. Including the tweets in the article could only have gone bad. My life, and most everyone’s lives, are not affected by what some random football fan tweeted when he was 16. Even if King was an open racist, does it really affect anyone? The donations still would have been made towards a good cause and people would quickly forget who Carson King ever was. Calvin could have just left the tweets out of the profile, because they don’t really have anything to do with what King is doing, nor are they a reflection of him as a person.
So, what’s the takeaway? You can’t blame Busch, as they have a brand to protect (despite the fact that they are disassociating themselves with someone because of something they said in their adolescence). King should have never made the tweets, that’s obvious, a first grader could have told you that. But King handled everything just about as well as you can and is still remaining very professional about it. Aaron Calvin could have very easily have left the tweets out of his article, and then we wouldn’t have had this useless unnecessary controversy. But really, Calvin was just doing his job, and you can’t put all the blame on his shoulders for doing his job. The Des Moines Register seems to be the most culpable. They set a guideline for their writers to follow, and when bad weather rolled around they fired the man who was just following procedures. They could’ve been the ones to tell Calvin to leave the tweets out of the article, and they are the ones who could’ve taken responsibility about the situation. All in all, the Carson King debacle was one of the most unnecessary and uncalled for controversies we will probably see this year.
“Desmoineregister.com.” Desmoineregister.com, Des Moines Register, www.desmoinesregister.com/story/entertainment/2019/10/02/carson-king-raises-3-million-thanks-local-busch-light-distributors/3846700002/.
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