Jets kicker Jay Feely is receiving criticism for comments he made on his Twitter page following the recent death of Bengals wideout Chris Henry.
From Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com:
In the moments following the announcement of the sad end of a sad life, New York Jets kicker Jay Feely, who has political aspirations, made some curious statements on Twitter.
“You hope that these tragic circumstances will wake people to the reality that our actions have real consequences,” Feely tweeted.
What the hell was Feely trying to say? It sounded condescending and, frankly, somewhat inappropriate. The news of Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry’s death was fresh (literally minutes old) and Feely — who on an earlier tweet did wish Henry’s family well — was nevertheless entering preachy mode in the immediate aftermath of a tragic accident.
Feely added this Tweet later: “Chris Henry seemed to have turned his life around. But, you can’t live on the brink of destruction without inevitably falling off the ledge.”
He made a reference to Henry falling off a ledge just a short time after Henry was killed while falling off the back of a moving vehicle.
No, not the best choice of Tweeting words.
And then Feely Tweeted: “younger generation needs to learn the lesson that our choices have implications and those implications often entail negative consequences.”
“Spoke from the heart. My cousin died a couple of weeks ago under similar circumstances. He was finally on right path…
“Terrible choice of words with ‘falling of ledge’ I truly didn’t mean to refer to his death. I apologized for the poor wording & callousness…
“I desired to implore people to help loved ones understand that choices create a path for our lives. It’s very hard to get off the wrong path.”
This is when people need to step back and look at someone’s intentions, rather than just what they said or wrote. Feely obviously didn’t mean any harm in what he said; he was just trying to advocate that people think about their actions and the consequences of those actions.
The problem is that Feely had horrible timing. He did wind up sounding condescending because he waited a millisecond after Henry died to get on his soapbox. He should have let the grieving process start before he started pointing out potential lessons that everyone could take away from Henry’s life.
In an ironic twist, Feely should have thought about his actions and the consequences of his actions before posting what he did on his Twitter page.
