We Like Them All
Michael Whatley and the politics of fake fandom
Michael Whatley just made a gas grill barbecue level cultural misstep.
North Carolinians love their sports. And I mean their sports - home grown sports fans care deeply about leagues that are a joke to the rest of the country like the ACC and NASCAR. One does not have to be a sports fan to be a North Carolinian, but Roy Cooper has used it as a way to bridge partisan divides and bring the state together. Cooper is especially fond of the Canes, having been a fan since they moved to Raleigh, and frequently appears on Raleigh sports podcast Ovies & Giglio to talk Hurricanes hockey.
His Republican opponent in the Senate election seems to be riding the bandwagon.
Now let me be clear: I do not mean to gatekeep fandom of any sport or team. Had Whatley posted a simple “Let’s go, Canes!” sans AI-hallucinated player mashup, I’d have found reporter Bryan Anderson’s request to name three Hurricanes players a bizarre moment, akin to seeing a girl wearing a band T-shirt and demanding she name three of their albums. Had Whatley responded by acknowledging his roots lie in the western half of the state where Hurricanes fandom has permeated less and he’s just now getting to know this team, that would have seemed fine to me.
Instead he awkwardly fumbled his way through an answer pretending to be knowledgeable, refusing to name a favorite player because “we like them all.” After being pulled aside by NCGOP spokesman Matt Mercer, he came back for a redo. Before Anderson could even ask the question again he blurted out Jaccob Slavin’s name. Anderson asked if anyone had told him to say that and Whatley replied, “no, we’re good.”
The clip itself is fascinating and well worth a watch. It feels relatable, we’ve all pretended to be more knowledgeable about a particular sport or team or subject than we are and end up muttering the exact same kind of garbled nonsense he did. It would almost be humanizing if it wasn’t so inauthentic.
And that’s exactly the point. Raleigh is a hockey town, through proximity to the Canes they’ve built a serious homegrown hockey culture closer to what exists in the Northeast and Midwest that just does not exist in the rest of the state. Being honest that, as a guy from Blowing Rock who lives in Gaston County who’s primarily worked in national Republican politics, he hasn’t paid a ton of attention to the Canes until this playoff run, that would’ve showed humility. Instead he showed the same instinct a politician does when they can’t pick between Duke and Carolina.
Someone should ask him that one next.
Very on point.