Sports

Charles Barkley Claims Vegetarians Don’t Exist — Is An American Hero

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Jena Greene Reporter
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Charles Barkley recently went out on a limb and said there’s no such thing as a vegetarian.

And in completely unrelated news, he also became my hero.

During Thursday night’s coverage of NBA on TNT, Charles Barkley went off on a small tangent about meat eating.

Talking about LaMarcus Aldrige’s superior composure under pressure, Barkely got a little sidetracked. He told his cohost, “He’s a terrific player, but he’s one of those guys… he makes me nervous. I don’t like people who don’t get mad, Ernie. I don’t trust people. Like vegetarians. That’s not a thing. Everybody likes meat.”

Ernie pressed him a little harder, asking, “You don’t think there are actually vegetarians?”

And Charles doubled down. “There’s no such thing as a vegetarian. Nobody doesn’t like meat Ernie…It’s not a thing. Nobody doesn’t like meat!”

Now Charles Barkley has been one of my heroes for a long time. Not because of his impressive NBA track record. No, I’m a bit more selective with my heroes. I mostly admired him for his golf swing.

But now that I know he also doesn’t believe in vegetarians? Well I’m all in.

 

I think life is chaos and darkness without meat. It may be an unpopular opinion among millennial girls. Do I care? No. I absolutely do not. I’m pretty much a 50 something man in a 20 something girl’s body. I don’t believe in pink hats and women’s marches and I bleed red white and blue. I’m not afraid of a few ribs and unapologetically lobby for turducken every Thanksgiving. But I have been too afraid to go as far as saying that vegetarians don’t exist. Terrified of the backlash by PETA and the like, I have been silenced. I even began to believe that — in a land far, far away (like France or Tibet) — vegetarians may in fact exist.

But now, thanks to Charles Barkley, I can live out my truth. We can all scream it from the rooftops. Vegetarians are fake news. In the words of the great Charles Barkley, nobody doesn’t like meat. Those words will forever be gilded. You can etch it into my gravestone someday. What a way to be remembered.