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Katie Nolan Represents The Elimination Of America’s Meritocracy And Exposes The Fraudulence Of Her Supporters

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Katie Nolan is Karen, the epitome of white privilege masked by woke posturing and protected by the white and black media elites allegedly dedicated to ending white privilege.

Katie Nolan’s television career and the protected space she’s occupied within the industry for eight years expose the fraudulence of the social justice warriors ruling the mainstream sports media and blogosphere. 

Jemele Hill, Bomani Jones, Dan Le Batard, Sarah Spain, Pablo Torre, Shannon Sharpe, Nick Wright and countless others love to bloviate about the white privilege, racism, sexism, homophobism, trans-race-sex-phobism of people hundreds and thousands of miles away from their television or podcast studios. 

They won’t utter a word about the person right next to them, even if that person embodies the very thing they say they’re fighting to end. 

Karen Nolan and the people allegedly fighting to end white privilege are the people who actually support the system that maintains white privilege.

I gotta hand it to them. These damn liberals are brilliant. Whatever they truly support they publicly claim they despise. 

Sunday, I wrote a column advising ESPN’s super-talented Maria Taylor to avoid making the Twitter-inspired mistake that undermined Michelle Beadle’s and Jemele Hill’s promising careers. Avoid wallowing in victimhood and don’t allow social media to convince you that sports fans are stupid and racist. Within the column I referenced “beauty privilege” and pointed out that Nolan had ridden that privilege to a 7-figure salary and a Sports Emmy Award despite a paper-thin resume and even less on-camera ability. 

It was a passing observation, not the focus of my column. Nolan took offense. She tweeted a response to my remark:

“You’re this close to making an actual point about the expectation of women to not only be good at their job but also beautiful, but actual points don’t pay the bills huh. Keep this same energy next time I see you though.”

Her response is weak. I should probably let it go. I’m punching down. But I can’t help it. 

Nolan epitomizes everything I find fraudulent about this era of sports journalism, this era of corporate politics. Narrative has eliminated facts and any semblance of a meritocracy.

She’s cast herself as a victim when she’s the most pampered and protected person in sports media. In an industry that values live television, she can’t do live TV. She’s not the next Hannah Storm, Linda Cohn, Michelle Beadle, Robin Roberts, Sage Steele or Maria Taylor — broadcasters with the rare and valuable skill of being engaging and personable in front of a red light. 

Nolan is adequate at reading the words of other writers on tape. She’s paid more than a million dollars for work that would earn virtually every other man or woman with her resume $50,000. She’s not a journalist, like Mina Kimes. She’s not informed, prepared and knowledgeable, like Doris Burke. Nolan is adept at working the grievance system.   

She’s a flaming example of how the business world has been forced to mirror academia. Executives huddle in their corner offices and mandate the outcomes they desire. Seven years ago, a Fox Sports executive, Pete Vlastelica, decided Karen Nolan would be a sports television star. He talked his friends in the blogosphere into joining his campaign to tout the then-26-year-old Nolan as the future of sports television.

Awful Announcing treated Nolan like she was Lil Oprah Winfrey. Eventually Richard Deitsch and Sports Illustrated jumped on board, and then the rest of the media followed in. 

The next thing you know, Fox Sports and ESPN are in a holy war to secure the long-term services of a TV personality who raised hell and cried every time she was tasked with doing live television, a personality with a niche audience barely big enough to fill a Southwest Airlines flight to Bugtussle. 

For a solid year, blogs and mainstream outlets repeatedly blasted Fox Sports for failing to turn Karen Nolan into Chris Berman. 

In 2015, with no supporting evidence, The Atlantic hailed Nolan as the future of sports television.  At the time, she was doing a show appropriately named “Garbage Time” that drew 40,000 viewers. It was a 22-minute show that took Karen and her staff a full week to prepare. Her highlight moment was her brave and incisive commentary calling former Cowboy pass-rusher Greg Hardy a “garbage human being.” 

Yeah, the entire world had already criticized Hardy and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but when Nolan read the words “garbage human being” that someone wrote in her teleprompter, well, the conversation about domestic violence went to the next level.

GQ Magazine fell in love with writing about Nolan. In 2016, GQ hired Drew Magary to write a fawning piece about Karen centered on her dumping on her alleged friend and peer Julie Stewart-Binks for accepting a faux lap dance from Rob Gronkowski. Two years later, GQ followed up with a long profile piece on Nolan focused on her arrival at ESPN.

No one in sports media — not Stephen A. Smith, not Colin Cowherd, not Rachel Nichols, not Scott Van Pelt, not Kirk Herbstreit, not Skip Bayless, not Erin Andrews — has had more fawning words written about them than Katie Nolan. 

It’s white hot privilege. You punch her name into Google and you could spend the next month reading everything you need to know about a TV personality without a single legitimate accomplishment. Oh, that’s right she accepted an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social TV Experience. 

It’s really the Outstanding Social Media rigjob. 

Social media is the driver of false narratives. Nolan is one of the best examples. She’s White Lives Matter. Over Twitter and Instagram, everyone pretends she’s rip-roaring funny and talented. We pretend she’s a victim of a sexist, male-dominated industry. If you question the narrative, you’re labeled as sexist.

Nolan is Michael Brown, hands up don’t shoot. We all know it’s a lie but we continue with the facade because it’s not worth the backlash.

She was lazy and spoiled at Fox Sports. She’s lazy and spoiled at ESPN. Her most consistent skill is complaining about a lack of support and using smitten writers to advance the narrative that she is mistreated.

The entire sports media industry — white and black — has pandered in celebration of Karen Nolan’s white life. But these are the people determined to end white privilege? 

It’s laughable. Hill, Jones, Le Batard, Sharpe, Wright, Spain, Torre, Deitsch and all the rest fight to keep power in the hands of the white liberal executives who will sit in their glassed offices and determine outcomes that favor their puppets.

Hill, Jones, Le Batard and Co., are no different from Nolan. They don’t want to compete in a meritocracy. 

If you want Jason Whitlock for your TV or radio show or podcast, contact gary@outkick.com.

Written by Jason Whitlock

Jason Whitlock is a longtime sports writer, TV personality, radio host, podcaster and the newest member of the Outkick family.
Read more about Jason >>

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  1. After viewing Whitlock’s tweets yesterday teasing some hot fire coming……this was well worth the wait. Big Sexy and Outkick continue to write thought provoking pieces that the rest of the MSM won’t dare touch. Nowadays anybody with a “social media following” can be turned into the next WOKE star at MSESPN. So long as their woke followers champion them and have the looks to go along with it.

  4. What’s that famous Jack Nicholson phrase: “You cannot handle the Truth”. Sounds like Jason laid it out there and Katie Nolan cannot handle the truth. She is spoiled and just average. I grew up watching Robin Roberts and Linda Cohn, they were very good at MSESPN. Nolan is just a pretty face, with average talent and she is no victim or supporter, but is 100% ALL WHITE PRIVILEGE!
    Thanks for taking down another one Jason.

  5. Great Work Jason.

    It’s not just sports media where this is happening. It happens in corporate executive search committee meetings.

    It happens the Real Estate Business.

    It happens in the hospitality business too.

    Generally elevating a person (usually an attractive person) without a resume’ is fatal to business. It is usually corrected quietly when it fails.

    I don’t know any woman that turns on sports to watch a woman pretend to know about sports. I know plenty of women that would keep their husbands from watching TV if a hot woman was broadcasting.

    Makes me wonder what they accomplish with these hot Chica’s making cash, wearing make up and mailing it in.

  6. @jim – the Nicholson line is from ‘As Good As It Gets’ and he tells a secretary at his publishers office, when she asked how he writes women so well in his books?

    He says: “I Think Of A Man, and then I remove reason and accountability”

  8. I had to Duck-Duck Go her name to find out exactly who she is. Since I’ve not viewed a single ESPN show that wasn’t a college football/baseball/basketball game in years, I was unaware that she was supposed to be the 2nd coming of Hannah Storm.

    She doesn’t impress at all. I’m glad the folks at Disney have attached to her bumper. Everything else they’re doing is losing money.

  9. Jason, I’ve admired your work and you as a person during your career. You’ve managed to raise your game to an even higher level at OutKick. I had very lofty expectations for this particular column ever since yesterday. You somehow managed to far exceed them! Cool, calm, collected. Thank you for continuing to tell it like it is about people like Lebron James and Katie “Karen” Nolan to name a few.

  12. “Katie Nolan is Karen, the epitome of white privilege masked by woke posturing and protected by the white and black media elites allegedly dedicated to ending white privilege.”

    It was basically over after the first sentence. lol

    Somebody tweet that, I’m banned.

    • Douglas, I love that line also……….It is amazing to me that we as a country are letting the racist white liberals tear us apart. The very liberals who tell us they are saving us from racism are the ones who promote it behind the scenes….And now the corrupt democrats have nominated a senile old white man who if you don’t vote for “You’re not black”(what the hell is going on with our country?!?!!?)….It is complete madness how corrupt the liberal elites are (all of them, no matter their race, their ethnicity, or their gender)

  13. Good job, Jason. I’d call Nolan’s situation ATTRACTIVE, WHITE, LIBERAL FEMALE PRIVILEGE. Because if she ever dared point out the social justice hypocrisy in sports, or gave Trump any credit for pushing the Big 10 back to the playing field, her media brethren would unleash their fury on her. But she’s not going to rattle any cages, because she is not a sports journalist, she is a pretty teleprompter reader. The same can be said for the majority of males in sports media, BTW. Play it safe, savor the social media praise & cash the check. Rinse & repeat.

    • which is exactly the point. I’m the very same way. We’re dudes, we dig hot. She’s hot. They don’t want us to dig hot anymore … which is hilarious, because as Jason has alluded to, she’s on top of the industry because, you know, she’s …. hot

      So was Beadle, but, Beadle was actually talented, is I guess what Jason is saying. I don’t really know, I’m not a pro like Jason when it comes to knowing this stuff. I am just drawn to hot. Can’t help it, it’s just how I’m wired (not apologizing for it!)

  17. Great piece, JW. I am not a fan of Katie Nolan and was surprised that network execs at ESPN and FS1 gave her a platform. Probably due to her attractive, white privilege. She, along with Rachel Bonnetta are two grievance alums who use their unearned platforms to preach to the Woke Choir. Your piece about her was spot on, and I would love to have the execs who promoted her given the opportunity to say why she was promoted. None of them will have the balls to do that.

    I wish more deserving people of all stripes were given opportunities to get on the air. However, the liberal execs who have a major influence on who gets on live tv will never change or be removed unless subscribers to ESPN and Fox Sports speak with their wallets and cancel their cable subscriptions.

  24. I have to be the (slightly) dissenting voice here. I don’t think this is “white privilege” and the article doesn’t really explain what being white has to do with it. I think Jason had it right the first time, this is more of a “beauty privilege” issue than white privilege. I think Nolan’s a decent sports analyst and, if you’re attractive like she is, that put her ahead of the crowd. I don’t think that’s a ground-breaking hot take, as there and are numerous legitimate studies backing up the correlation between attractiveness and success in media (and many other jobs). If she was a different race, I don’t think that changes anything.

    I think the issue here is that insults hit harder when they have hints of truth. Nolan’s probably heard her whole life that she only got xyz position because she was cute. And there’s a little truth in that, but it’s the icing, not the cake. If she were just hot with zero talent, she wouldn’t get those jobs.

    In other words, I agree with the premise of the original Maria Taylor article that Jason wrote: that these uber-attractive reporters need to acknowledge the natural advantage that they have of being attractive and refrain from the hypocrisy of playing victim. Still, I don’t Nolan’s success has anything to do with race as the headline suggests.

  34. Great article Jason you have earned the right. I call this your ministry God using you to expose the hypocrites in sports reporting and being used to manipulate male masculinity in sports using social justice and sexism racism and everything else. Your experience and intellect is no match for your contemporaries that can’t fight back lot of them didn’t earn it and they know it. So keep up the good fight change is going to come in the sports world for the better reporting of sports that you and outkick are doing

  35. Hopefully we’re not admitting white privilege is real. I can find many white women (liberal too) that ESPN wouldn’t touch. It’s not her fault she was unjustly promoted and told how great she was. It reminds me of the people around LeBron who say “that’s brilliant, keep talking.”

    • Ken, this is probably a longer reply than you expected or wanted. And I’m not claiming to speak for you or anyone else. I’m certainly not speaking for Whitlock…but in my opinion, as another VIP mentioned, ATTRACTIVE, WHITE, LIBERAL FEMALE PRIVILEGE exists. Also, obviously, “wealth” privilege exists. And right now, wealthy white racists who control the media are trying to tear down our country and rebuild it in their image. In their world, as Whitlock says “narrative eliminates facts and any semblance of meritocracy”. Their world is completely corrupt and it’s coming for all of us if we don’t stand up for truth and integrity. …………And we do need to stand up. We can’t let it go any further. ……They control social media. They control print media. They control television. They control the entire narrative.

      They want to lie about details of Breonna Taylor’s death so that “good day to lock up Breonna’s killers” is endlessly retweeted? They got it. They want to create a “hands up don’t shoot” narrative so that purpled haired white kids in Portland chant “hands up don’t shoot”? They got that. They want to edit video of Jacob Blake shooting so that WNBA players support a violent sexual offender? The racist white liberals got that too. …..They want to create a narrative that our entire country is racist???? We better not let them do that, but they’re sure as hell trying.

      And in the midst of making money of Kaepernick jerseys, slave labor, and by selling hate, these disgusting liberal pigs have the gall to use that very same money they make off “saving us from racism”, by handing out a seven figure salary to a Karen with ATTRACTIVE, WHITE, LIBERAL FEMALE PRIVILEGE. The hypocrisy is astonishing. (but there is hope in my opinion, and the name of that hope is OutKick. We VIP’s have to do our small part. I already canceled my cable subscription)

    • This isn’t about white privilege, but playing the victim, no matter who you are. In her case, she’s a woman that identifies as a victim.

      At my company, someone tried to make a point that the world is rigged against people who are left handed. I told my wife this, who is left handed, and she thought this was a joke. The moral of the story is, it’s easy to find something to feel victimized about.

  36. Hey Jason,
    You gave us a terrific snapshot of the sports media world that you move through.
    The white liberal is an entity completely full of itself. It is smarter, more clever, more nuanced, and has an intellect that it believes to be superior.
    When it bumps up against the real world and has to deal with valid criticism…well, it lashes out and thinks of all the words…all the “isms” and “ists” it has memorized to deflect the truth.
    Half the world recognizes the pale, fraudulent liberal entity, and more still are slowly coming around to the reality that is hiding behind the curtain pulling the media strings. Liberal “true believers” will always be there…we gotta have some fun.

    • Rick, good post. The white liberal certainly is an entity which lashes out with all the “isms” and “ists” it has memorized to deflect the truth…..(and I might add, since joining OutKick, I have become much better at remembering that love begets love, as Jason says. I can’t even remember the last time I got angry with a family member, neighbor, acquaintance, or coworker over politics. Not saying I don’t stand firm in my beliefs, just that I don’t lower myself to their level when they lash out)

  38. Hey Whit, that is such a spot on article. I saw her do a special on Liverpool and I thought she was cute so I watched the late night show. It was the opposite of funny. It was uncomfortable and truly terrible. She seemed like someone who thought she was great and no one had the heart to tell her she was crap. Glad to see you did.
    Andy

  45. Jason I Love IT! You bet on yourself and the first amendment! None of your critics stand a chance against The Brain and Master Wordsmith! When you first joined Outkick I had 2 questions 1. Whats Outkick and 2. Who is Clay Travis? Now I’m really loving it. No one can stop you its capitalism at work. You speak the truth and the mob can’t silence you. I’m so happy for you. Keep telling the truth and keep growing and signing these great young writers.

  47. Bugtussle….Jason used Bugtussle. I’m laughing my ass off picturing Jason google, armpit towns of the USA…he scrolled through numerous towns like Sparta, GA., Wartburg, TN. and others until he arrived at Bugtussle, Ky. That folks, is journalistic superiority. Well done, Jason! Well done indeed!

  48. I’ve always loved how the diversity agenda in hiring never results in the woke bosses, middle managers or outspoken “talent” giving up their jobs to give opportunities to the favored race, gender or whatever.

    That agenda always seems to begin right where their asses end.

    Great piece, Whitlock.

  50. Great article. I like Katie Nolan but she has not been good on a national level. She is better regionally as a Boston fan. She used to always play up her crushes on Tom Brady and was quite funny doing it. You spoke the truth even though I rooted for her to succeed.

  52. Since I now watch ESPN reports for approximately 11 minutes per year, as I flip past them or wait for them to end to get to the actual sports entertainment, I have never noticed Nolan until this column. I would say Jason‘s experience at both of the same media companies she works at gives him cred if he weighs-in about what’s going on behind the scenes with personnel decisions. Doesn’t surprise me that ESPN panders irrespective of actual talent. They run in the same propaganda circles as the other msm organizations, charged with keeping the fire of identity politics stoked for their masters. This is the same reason they’ve wasted air time on WNBA games no one watches. It takes a desperate willingness at being “pimped out” by special interests to operate that way and stay afloat.

    • Nolan preaches against sexism; yet she considers herself part of the BLM crowd — the same crowd who pushes the Jacob Blake narrative… Jacob Blake…. a guy who mistreats women……The whole thing is one big joke. I can’t believe people are gullible enough to take Nolan seriously.

  55. Tyson in his prime vs Mickey Mouse would’ve been a more compelling battle. Although (maybe I just can’t turn away from looking at the carnage) I would kind of like to read her “reply” to this one. But I think we can safely presume this one is over.

  57. Face it, JW is guilty. Guilty of being a Conservative black man who thinks outside the stereotypical leftist box. They despise him and will use all their propaganda weapons everywhere to manipulate the minds of their useful idiots to turn JW into an enemy. I for one, hope JW stays the course and never yields to these egregious types as doing so would be to admit defeat.

  58. Mr. Whitlock you lowered your self just responding to her .Your the adult in the the room she a F in fraud. Her wining and Emmy means nothing to normal people we don’t watch the Emmy show anymore it F in joke .O that right I forgot about all those blue checks twitter followers . But maybe they don’t really exist. She may be propped up by Twitter. With fake followers and likes.

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