PWD People Of The Year: Matt Donegan

Way back early in the year, our collective attention was drawn to the town of Dover, Del., and The Dover Post. Normally, when my attention is drawn to a small weekly newspaper, it’s because of some funny typo or letter to the editor. But, in this case, it was because of Matt Donegan, who was fired because of what he wrote on his Myspace blog.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and take a look at some of his comments, shall we?

• “Thanks for that one, Doctor [Martin Luther King]. Now, because of you, I feel like I’ve been backed over by a black pickup truck today. Further, because of your life, it would be considered a racial crime for me (aka ‘The Man’) to shoot up a house full of black people who don’t know how to keep their car stereos, or voices, at a normal tone in a residential area in the middle of a black night…. It’s that kind of dick move by black people that turns all other people into racists. I bet James Earl Ray was woken up by black people yelling pointlessly in the streets the night before he killed your civil rights leader.”
• “At least I inherited the mighty fallace [sic] gene, and therefore have no need for computer knowledge, or smarts of any kind for that matter.”
• “That gym was a god damned zoo. I can’t believe most of those animals are allowed out of the house. There was a mini-brawl between a couple of black fans (95% of them were black), some kid said he was going to steal my camera and half of the people there smelled like pot.”
• He also cursed out — uh, in writing? — a person who had called the paper asking for coverage of handicapped persons’ rights.

And, Donegan offered this spirited defense on NBC 10:

“That’s preposterous,” Donegan said when asked if he was a racist. “If you can’t separate that work environment from what I do on my own blog, then you’re a moron. Everything written there was meant as a joke, and somebody doesn’t take it as a joke, then I’m sorry, but that’s your problem, not my problem. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.”

If you’re wondering how old this story is, I made a Drew Rosenhaus joke about this quote. Donegan also made some free speech defenses — but since Delaware doesn’t have right-to-work laws and Donegan was hired at will, he was sort of out of luck.

But his story made headlines — even, somehow, national ones — back in February, with various people decrying “political correctness” or whatever. The story quickly faded, but not before getting his own horrible Wikipedia entry. No word on Donegan’s whereabouts now; his Myspace page is gone; this is presumably him working for The Hometown News in Florida.

Anyway, a reporter fired for blogging? Totally a Philadelphia Will Do Person of the Year. There’s really no way I could keep him off this list.

Philadelphia Will Do People of the Year | The List So Far
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