That’s a pretty tame response after publicly being called an idiot by your boss…
Barstool Sports personality Brianna Chickenfry (whose real name is Brianna LaPaglia) has obviously made plenty of headlines due to the very mess breakup with country music star Zach Bryan, following the explosive accusations she made against him when they broke up last fall and her claim that he offered her $12 million to sign an NDA when they split.
Neither of them have had kind words to say about each other, but it was recently Brianna’s Barstool Sports boss, Dave Portnoy, who publicly slammed her.
It started after Chickenfry took to social media to share her thoughts on the war between Israel and Palestine, calling it a “genocide” in Gaza and admitting that she just learned about what was happening – after hearing about it on Theo Von’s podcast:
“To be honest, I feel really f—ing ashamed of myself and I feel like utterly privileged and ignorant and just like gross that I haven’t talked about this sooner.
To be honest, I think I’ve just been so uneducated and not willing to go out and learn for myself about what’s happening in Gaza and I’ve just like been ignoring it as if it’s not a literal genocide going on and I know it’s like, okay, Brianna, what can you do about that? I just watched Theo Von’s podcast.”
@ihatebriannachickenfry♬ original sound – Brianna LaPaglia
Then, Portnoy responded to her thoughts with some harsh words.
Portnoy is Jewish and an outspoken supporter of Israel while criticizing Hamas, so there’s no doubt he has a different opinion than Chickenfry. But Portnoy has also been notably defensive of Chickenfry in the wake of criticism following her split with Zach Bryan, and at one point even briefly fired another employee, Kirk Minihane, after Brianna complained that he was attacking her.
Portnoy hosts a podcast alongside Minhane (one of Brianna’s most outspoken critics at her company), and during an episode in August, Portnoy admitted that he didn’t agree with Chickenfry’s comments, and called them “spectacularly stupid”:
“It’s a very stupid comment. And then she’s like, ‘Everything I learned was from Theo Von.’ So I’m not going to put a whole ton of credence…
I think it’s idiotic. I think her take is absolutely idiotic… It’s a spectacularly idiotic statement to weigh in on something that is so controversial for two years and then say, ‘I learned it all from Theo’s trip to Qatar.’”
While he says he doesn’t believe Chickenfry was being anti-semitic with her statement, he doesn’t believe she’s educated enough on the subject to be chiming in:
“When you say it’s a genocide…and nobody wants little kids to die or anything. It’s a war. There is a war going on there. And even if you want to come to that point, which I totally disagree with, to say you didn’t really know it was going on for two years and you learned it from Theo Von and then you take to the internet and make that? Spectacularly dumb, stupid move.
But I didn’t take that as, ‘I hate Jews.’ I just took that as, ‘You’re an idiot for that rant.’”
Minihane bated Portnoy to continue calling her comments stupid, which he did, calling them “spectacularly stupid,” actually:
“‘I haven’t been paying attention to what is a worldwide conflict that everybody’s been talking about, wildly controversial for two years, but I think it’s time I speak up because I watched Theo Von?’…
It was so spectacularly stupid that she weighed into it. There’s no way…to talk about that particular issue without getting involved in it… This was a stupid move to me.”
Brianna never publicly responded, which I thought was a bit odd considering the nature of the comments and the fact that she basically creates drama for a living, but with the relaunch of her Plan Bri Uncut podcast this week, Chickenfry took a few minutes to address those comments.
She talked more about the lack of nuance in that specific discussion overall and the division we have in this country today in general, and she also touched on how herd mentality causes people to only run to their own “sides” without considering other viewpoints. Chickenfry noted how she believes most people are not that extreme, but it wasn’t until the very end of the episode where she really came for Portnoy.
She pointed out she was not going to stoop to his level, for lack of a better phrase, and call him a “stupid idiot” back because they’re both entitled to their own opinions, pointing out that is “the difference, not in between me and Dave, but in between men and women.”
I definitely think she was throwing a little shade with how she worded that…
“I did touch upon the Dave stuff and him calling me an idiot or whatever. Yeah, I’m obviously allowed to respond to that, and I still respect Dave and think that he is entitled to his opinions, and I am entitled to mine. I’m not going to call him a ‘stupid idiot’ for what he believes, though. But that is the difference, not in between me and Dave, but in between men and women.”
I’m not saying I agree with her political opinions, but it’s hard to argue with that… men and women do have very different way of handling those types of things, and Portnoy is know for being very blunt and outspoken about everything, so I’m guessing she probably wasn’t all that shocked by his reaction. You have to remember… their entire business is creating content, and Dave calling her a moron over the airwaves certainly creates a lot of content. Content creates dollars.
Still, I think I’d have a lot more to say if my boss blasted me so publicly the way he did…
@ihatebriannachickenfry We are so back new episode out now @PlanBri ♬ original sound – Brianna LaPaglia
The full podcast is available below.
