Whitlock: My response to Temu, ESPN, and 'Balls Deep' advertising porn

Years ago, at the apex of my career as strictly a sports pundit, I was celebrated for my celebration of sexual debauchery.

In August 2009, I penned quite possibly my most infamous column: “Rick Pitino ran into the biggest dynasty in sports.” The piece lampooned the college basketball coaching legend after a woman tried to extort him for millions of dollars after a tryst on a restaurant floor.

We’re trading our freedom, power, rights, and God-ordained dominion of the earth for sexual access to women who seek to rule over us. It’s absolute insanity.

It began: “The ’72 Dolphins can’t touch Pussy Galore.” It went on to lament man’s inability to resist the sexual temptation of women. Pussy Galore turned into a series of columns for me, a signature calling card anytime a high-profile sports figure found himself trapped in a sexual controversy.

In November 2009, after Tiger Woods’ Thanksgiving incident with his then-wife Elin Nordgren, I argued that Pussy Galore should be named Sports Person of the Year. In 2013, I published a fictional interview with Ms. Galore about her relationship with Tiger Woods.

Sports fans and many of my sports pundit peers loved my Pussy Galore columns. “Pussy (Galore) remains undefeated” became a catchphrase among edgy and hip sports broadcasters.

But my promotion of sexual immorality extended well beyond humorous columns. On my podcast, “Real Talk with Jason Whitlock,” I never shied away from talking about sex. When Jenna Shea, a pornstar and escort linked to Lil Wayne and James Harden, made news in 2013 by releasing text messages from a Louisville basketball star who proposed to his girlfriend, I interviewed Shea. I later brought on a Los Angeles stripper and friend connected to multiple NBA stars to discuss proper etiquette between athletes and groupies. She stripped naked halfway through the in-studio interview.

Worse yet, I had a regular contributor to the show, “Stripclub Rick,” a Las Vegas pimp and dear friend who advised my audience on how and where to get full-service lap dances just off the Strip.

Why am I reminding you of all of this?

Because none of what I just mentioned had any real negative impact on how I was perceived in the sports media industry. None. ESPN rehired me to conceive and launch “The Undefeated” well after Pussy Galore and “Real Talk.”

What has consistently caused me problems inside the sports media industry is my insistence on transparency, the perception that my worldview is aligned with political conservatism, and the fact that I rail against liberal hypocrisy and call for moral accountability.

Escape from smut

This week, the sports- and social media-industrial complexes have a big problem with me. I complained on X (formerly Twitter) about a sexually explicit advertisement that ran atop ESPN’s webpage when I was perusing the NFL standings. It was a Temu ad hawking birthday cards. The text read: “Balls deep inside me is a great way to spend your birthday.”

My tweet caused the internet to melt. My critics rushed to ridicule me, claiming I didn’t understand that the “targeted” advertising reflected my internet activity. The post has 24 million views, 5,000 replies, and nearly 5,000 retweets. The New York Post, the Daily Mail, Barstool Sports, and aggregators from as far away as Colombia have written pieces furthering the narrative that my raunchy internet browsing explains the raunchy advertisement.

It’s not true. My critics know it’s untrue. And that’s not a contention that there’s zero raunchiness to my browsing. In my line of work, raunch is unavoidable if you want to keep up to date on P. Diddy, Sexyy Red, T.D. Jakes, Hunter Biden, George Santos, Donald Trump, Deshaun Watson, and some of my former friends. We live in a raunchy world. I spent many years reveling in it.

But I’ve been trying to escape it since about 2014, when I finally figured out why I was so polarizing, controversial, and despised in the sports media industry. The revelation occurred to me during my second stint at ESPN. The relentless backlash I faced from the sports media establishment forced me to accept that the “Big Sexy” persona I had adopted was a fraud. My grandmother, Lovie Kennedy, and a tiny church in Indianapolis planted Christian seeds in me that I could not elude. The roots of those seeds were evident in all the journalistic work that upset many of my peers and critics.

The most effective piece I ever published chastised the 2007 hyperbolic reaction to radio shock jock Don Imus calling Rutgers women’s basketball players “nappy-headed hoes.” I pointed out the moral failure of the nonexistent outrage over commercial rap music’s denigration of black people and promotion of degeneracy.

The best piece of journalism I ever produced exposed the fraudulence of and the true mastermind of the 2007 Jena Six racial injustice. Alan Bean, a white liberal minister, concocted the farfetched narrative that six black boys nearly killed a white classmate because a noose was tied on a tree five months earlier. Bean spoonfed the narrative to white liberal reporters. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other black race hustlers cashed in on the racial grift served up by their white handlers. The Jena Six work was similar to the pieces I wrote pointing out the bogusness of the 2006 Duke lacrosse scandal.

My work on Imus, the Jena Six, and Duke lacrosse is among the best newspaper sports writing ever published. The sports media industry hated all of it. The Kansas City Star deleted all of my work from its website. The newspaper’s Wikipedia page mentions all of its major awards except the 2007 Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Commentary I won.

Why is that? Because in 2010, I exited the newspaper by exposing the editor’s affair with an unqualified subordinate he installed as our sports editor. He denied the affair. She resigned from her position, and the two married shortly after.

Choosing truth over fame

My point is, for most of my adult life, I had a wild, one-sided, good vs. evil battle raging inside of me. The events at ESPN related to “The Undefeated” humbled me and caused my surrender to Christ. I started taking steps to clean up my life. I began talking frequently about my Christian identity. Slowly, that public identity initiated a change in my behavior. I placed freedom and truth above money and fame. I quit frequenting strip clubs. I untangled myself from unhealthy relationships.

In 2020, I left Los Angeles to live in an environment more supportive of my Christian faith. I moved to Tennessee. I’m not saying you can’t be Christian in California. I’m saying it was a lot harder for me. It’s too close to Las Vegas. The weather is so warm, and the women are so beautiful that it feels like they’re all half-naked most of the time.

I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on and discussing my mistakes and how behavior like mine contributed to America’s moral decay.

Last week on X, I weighed in on the “conservative calendar” controversy, the dustup about right-wing female influencers posing for sexy pictures for conservative dads. The pics, by today’s standards, are extremely tame.

But I understand why evangelicals were bothered. There is no proper way to lust. Heterosexual lust is the slippery slope that has led to LGBTQ+ sexual deviance and drag shows for kids. We heterosexuals centered and celebrated our sexuality everywhere. We made it our primary identity. You couldn’t watch a movie, turn on your television, or listen to music without seeing or hearing heterosexual lust.

Well, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Alphabet Mafia is mirroring heterosexual behavior. Gay Pride parades don’t look much different from the old-school Carl’s Jr.’s hamburger commercials featuring bikinied women.

The mainstream had no problem when I would interview “Stripclub Rick” about the friendliest champagne rooms in Vegas. Should we be surprised the mainstream is OK with mentally ill men gyrating in front of children?

Recovery is a battle

My mental illness legalized their mental illness. That’s why the mainstream media never objected to my immorality.

As I have recovered my mental health and focused on educating people about who really built the sexual slippery slope (heterosexuals) and the negative ramifications of it, mainstream and social media have turned up their animus toward me.

“How dare I complain about sexualized Temu ads on Disney’s sports website? Don’t blame Disney and ESPN for getting into bed with the Chinese company looking for ways to further corrupt American culture! It’s your fault, Jason! You visit naughty websites.”

When I go to a sports website, I don’t want to be distracted by sex. I’m in recovery. I’m trying to avoid a relapse.

No. My most frequent online activities involve researching weight-loss methods and punching into Google, “What does the Bible say about X, Y, or Z.”

When I visit websites, I’m inundated with targeted ads about intermittent fasting, exercise routines, and fat-burning supplements. You know what I don’t remember ever seeing? A targeted ad about the Bible or Christianity.

I’ve seen two Temu ads on ESPN in the past six months. The “balls deep” birthday card and a woman modeling a T-shirt that says: “I Lick, Swallow and Suck.”

I’ve complained both times. I’m going to keep complaining. We have so normalized explicit sexuality that school teachers think it’s their job to discuss gender and sexuality with second and third graders, some parents think it’s a good idea to expose their kids to drag shows, and our government believes that gender confusion is a job qualification.

I’m not a self-righteous prude. I struggle daily to correct course and stay in a safe zone. I can’t handle Instagram. More than a year ago, I turned over the app to the people on my team so I don’t waste time looking at women in yoga pants and booty shorts. I signed up for Covenant Eyes, the app that blocks naughty websites.

When I go to a sports website, I don’t want to be distracted by sex. I don’t want a woman telling me she licks, swallows, and sucks. I’m in recovery. I’m trying to avoid a relapse.

Truth and consequences

American culture needs to enter a sexual rehabilitation program. It’s obvious we need a return of sexual modesty. Our overemphasis on sex has had enormous damaging consequences.

When a man defines his masculinity and identity around sexual conquests, he undermines his ability to lead and forfeits his leverage in the relationship. Our lack of sexual discipline powers the matriarchy’s defeat of the patriarchy.

We’re trading our freedom, influence, power, traditions, rights, and God-ordained dominion of the earth for sexual access to women who seek to rule over us. It’s absolute insanity.

White liberals have already lab-tested the matriarchy in America. They installed black women as rulers of black men and the black family. Look at what that rulership has wrought in our neighborhoods and our children, particularly black boys.

That’s an uncomfortable truth that will further cement me on the enemies list of progressives. I’m good with the people who tolerated me when I endorsed sexual immorality hating me for propagating biblical truth.

The recent spate of attacks on me confirms my belief that I’m hitting the right targets.

For the past two months, progressives have kept updating my Wikipedia page with details intended to place me in a bad light. They recently added a paragraph about an episode of “Fearless” in which I discussed President Barack Obama’s legacy as it relates to the LGBTQ agenda. The letter Obama wrote to his college girlfriend detailing his fantasies about sex with men sparked the episode. Wikipedia claims the show was about the conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama is transgender.

The political left is concerned about losing its grip on black men and black voters. The Obamas, particularly Michelle, are the Hail Mary the Democrats might throw to save the presidential election. Barack and Michelle are the glue of the LGBTQ-Black Lives Matter coalition, or what I call the Alphabet Mafia. Two of the three founders of BLM are lesbians. For his ability to advance acceptance of the LGBTQ, Newsweek magazine hailed Barack Obama as the “first gay president.”

I’ve spent much of the last three years connecting the dots on how heterosexual promiscuity, feminism, the LGBTQ, and racial idolatry coalesced to radically change American cultural norms.

Those on the left know I’m a lost cause. They recognized the Christian seeds taking root in me long before I did. They’ll smear me for the same reason they smeared Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, and anyone else in the media space who resists reprogramming. They want everyone to know the consequences of pursuing truth.