Dan Nainan Allegedly Punches Daily Beast Reporter Josh Rogin for Tweeting—The Decoder
A Twitter feud turned into an actual brawl in Washington, D.C. last night. The D.C. Improv's Funniest Celebrity Contest is a long-running event where non-comedians like Grover Norquist, Ralph Nader, and Candy Crowley try their hand at stand-up comedy to raise money for charity.
Last night's headliner Dan Nainan was the lone professional comic at the event, but his material didn't seem to please the Daily Beast's Josh Rogin, who was in the audience tweeting things like "Dan Nainan was funny until he dusted off his 2005 Katrina jokes in a gratingly bad George W. Bush impression," and "Dan Nainan makes his umpteenth joke about how Asians can't distinguish between letters "l" and "r." Election, erection, we get it."
So, it's rude comedy club tweet-heckling, but not as rude as actual comedy club heckling, which requires the heckler to have the bravery or blood alcohol content to actually say what he's thinking to the comedian's face.
After his set, Nainan allegedly went into the audience, approached Rogin and punched him in the face...twice. Nainan was later arrested but offered no comment on the incident other than the tweet "Had a blast headlining the D.C. Improv!"
So far, the reporting on the story has been pretty one-sided. Politico described Rogin's tweet-heckling as "throwing off a few critical observations," while The Huffington Post felt it was important to mention Nainan was the subject of a New York Times article about buying fake Twitter followers. What no one seems to be mentioning is that Rogin was tweet-heckling the entire show.
For almost two hours, Rogin posted things like "Candy Crowley is bombing," "Jamie McIntyire is now singing about N.P.R. in a variety of keys. Make. It. Stop," and "Ralph Nader opens up by saying he isn't funny and proceeds to live up to his word." And remember—these people were there to raise money for charity. But I get it—I used to call the Jerry Lewis Telethon all the time pretending to be a confused Ronald Reagan...But then I turned 14 and grew out of it.
Nainan wrote to DCist claiming he told Rogin it was okay to tweet about him, but to lay off the others because they'd never done this before. He also claims Rogin took the first swing. We don't condone Nainan's alleged actions, but no matter who started it, we can all learn a valuable lesson from this: If you want to post something mean about people on Twitter, maybe wait until you're not actually in the room with them to post it. Because when you take your online trolling into the real world, there might be bigger consequences than a down-voted comment.
Also, be happy Candy Crowley didn't read your tweets—she's got a hook that will knock you back to last week's Situation Room.
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Original article from TakePart
