Hey, at least Leonard Shapiro never wrote that Sean Taylor lead his team in bullets intercepted. From the Washington City Paper’s Dave McKenna :
A huge huddle of Redskins fans have been taking out their grief over Sean Taylor™s death on Len Shapiro for his Tuesday washingtonpost.com column headlined, œTaylor™s Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising. Shapiro says he™s gotten hundreds of emails since the article appeared.
œThis is the most I™ve gotten for anything since I started doing the column, Shapiro says. œEvery time I click over, there are three or four new ones, many of them starting with ˜Mr. Shapiro, you heartless, gutless prick.™
The outcry, which has a hater/non-hater ratio of about 100-to-1, has caused Shapiro some second thoughts.
œThe headline [which Shapiro didn™t write] was a little tough, and a lot of the readers didn™t get past the headline, he says. œAnd if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn™t have been quite as cynical about Taylor™s transformation. I probably shouldn™t have used the words ™so-called.™
Shapiro has also taken a beating on WOL-AM™s sportstalk show, The Sports Groove. John Mitchell, a sportswriter for the Washington Times, went on the air Tuesday night and quickly nailed Shapiro with a one-two punch, calling him both a œracist, conniving skunk and a œracist, conniving dog of a skunk.
Last night, the barrage against Shapiro continued, as Sports Groove host Mark Gray boasted that he had invited the writer on the show to rebut the haters, of which he is a proud ringleader.
Shapiro tells me he was unaware of the invite, but he™ll be glad to discuss the situation with Gray.