Hearne: Remember When Jason Whitlock Tweeted He’d Replace Nick Wright Sept. 5th?

Don’t look now but…

A funny thing happened earlier this month. September 5th to be exact. That’s the date former Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock teased via Twitter that he’d be heading home to KC to do a radio show on 610 Sports. Maybe even take rising star Nick Wright‘s place.

Some local bloggers were all over that story early this summer. The Royals were in the tank. The Chiefs up in the air. And MU, KU and K-State football and KU basketball were a long way off. Even the Big 12 appeared halfway off the hook. They needed something to write about.

Remember the sports talk radio war?

"He intended everyone to think he meant he was coming back to take my job," Wright says. "What he really meant was that September 5th was Labor Day, and he wanted me to know that I would still be white after Labor Day. Jason is a peach."

A peach that remains unpicked, even to the naive few who bought into the silliness.

"He is coming back…burned bridges mean nothing in radio," said Rainbow Man in the KCC  comments section. "It isn’t like he is a doctor and sewed a dropped scalpel into someone…This is radio, the gimmickiest industry on the planet…He will pop up somewhere soon and he will make a difference."

So much for Whitlock popping up…

As for Whitlock’s Labor Day metaphor, "You’re not supposed to wear white after labor day, and Jason’s big point when he called into my show a few months back – that’s when the Sept 5 stuff started – was that i was ashamed that i was white or wanted to be black or something," Wright says. "He wouldn’t outright say it, but that was his point, and that’s what the tweets were about."

Meanwhile, back in Twitter Land, Whitlock had zero to say on 9/5 about his return to the airwaves here or much of anything else of interest to locals. He did lay down a line that fit the bill : "Love media hypocrisy."

Even former KCC sports media blogger Greg Hall – who fanned the Sept. 5th Whitlock flames – allowed the date to pass without notice. That after rejoicing at the time, "Oh, how Kansas City sports talk radio (and my OTC column ) could use those fireworks!"