Comment: Dan Bernstein and "The One That Got Away"

In classic American Midwestern tradition, the big fish tale is almost an art form. Generations of fishermen, seated around campfires, diners, or taverns, have proudly recounted improbable adventures of monster catches that mysteriously escaped at the last moment. Family members, particularly wives and children, typically roll their eyes, well accustomed to the ritual exaggeration. These harmless fibs about enormous bass or pike serve as playful boasts meant to enhance status or evoke camaraderie, with everyone implicitly understanding the storyteller is stretching the truth.

But it's not just the bumbling and brash, middle-aged, awwshucksman with a Bass Pro Shops promo cooler and faded baseball hat of his favorite local team that's guilty of embellishment as full as his beer belly, few narratives are both as universal and hold as enduring a place in human culture as the "big fish" story. These tales, often humorous yet deeply symbolic, have appeared in various forms across countless cultures and epochs, serving as parables for human ambition, pride, and folly. Fishermen have long been notorious for exaggerating their catches, using stories of enormous fish as metaphors for their achievements, power, or even their inflated egos.

From ancient folklore to modern literature, the image of the big fish resonates. In biblical texts, Jonah finds himself swallowed whole, forced into reflection about his pride and disobedience. Herman Melville’s "Moby Dick" showcases Captain Ahab’s obsession with the great white whale, symbolizing humanity’s dangerous pursuit of obsession and vengeance. Ernest Hemingway’s "The Old Man and the Sea" portrays the delicate balance between nature and the nature of a man, illustrating how even a genuine, hard-won triumph over hardship can lead to profound personal cost.

These stories aren’t merely about fishing, of course, they teach cautionary lessons about the risks inherent in boasting, prideful attitudes, and unchecked egos. Historically, the bigger the fish, the more perilous the fisherman’s ego becomes, often setting him on a path toward self-destruction.

It’s within this rich historical and symbolic context I find a bizarre yet fitting irony in the recent firing of Chicago sports talk radio host, Dan Bernstein, whose downfall began, quite literally, with a big fish.

A veteran sports talk radio host at 670 The Score in Chicago, Bernstein posted a photo on social media of a northern pike he had caught, captioned, "This was a helluva fight." A user accused him of killing the fish, which he denied, claiming it was released successfully. The exchange escalated quickly until Bernstein threatened to dox the user and made a not so subtle threat to do the same to the user's kids.

Though the posts were deleted, screenshots spread widely online.

The backlash was immediate.

Camp One Step, a children’s oncology charity, removed Bernstein from its board of directors, citing a mismatch with their mission. The Score suspended him initially, but later confirmed his termination. Mitch Rosen, Operations Director and Vice President of The Score, stated on air, "We are announcing today that Dan Bernstein no longer works at The Score. We wish him nothing but the best, and thank him for his time and service."

The announcement marked the end of Bernstein's nearly 30-years at the station.

Reactions to the firing have been polarized. FS1 host Danny Parkins, a former colleague, praised Bernstein as "the smartest, funniest and most talented host in the history of Chicago sports radio." Matt Spiegel, another colleague, published a missive on the social media account for his show. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who had clashed with Bernstein previously for his treatment of Eddie at Barstool Sports while on Bernstein's show, welcomed the news by popping a bottle of champagne.

The station now faces the challenge of finding a replacement to fill his shoes and, no matter how you felt about him, his departure signals the end of an era for Chicago sports radio, and his legacy is certain to linger.

To those familiar with his career, the irony is palpable. Known for his arrogance that some might describe as wit, a condescending attitude that some could explain away as unpatronizing, and an ability to alienate listeners that others might argue attracted more attention and ratings than it lost, to many Chicagoans he had long embodied the very essence of a local sports talk radio archetype despite desperately trying to distance himself from it intellectually.

• "Wannabe tough guy..."
• "Know-it-all jagoff..."
• "Pompous asshole..."
• "Self-righteous douchebag..."
• “Insufferable prick…”

I could keep going but you get the idea. All consistent refrains heard in bars and cars around Chicagoland proper where Bernstein's voice echoed. But hey, that's what sells radio and seemingly every other form of media these days and, you know, a man can run his own show how he wants to run his show and I can choose to stop listening. Which I did. A long time ago.

Now I do not and did not know Dan Bernstein personally (so I can't speak to his character outside of the schtick), but I'll tell you I don't harbor any sadness or feeling of loss to his absence. I myself may have even said all combinations of the bullet points above about him plus more (cough).

And I won't pretend to know Audacy's or The Score's internal statistics and if Bernstein's comments were just a final, convenient excuse to exorcise a professional liability that had become impossible to ignore. Nor do I know if it may have simply been a chance to sidestep and avoid addressing more difficult conversations about declining ratings and diminishing relevance of the sports talk radio media format as a whole. But the dominoes finally falling after a seemingly minor criticism to whether he had killed a fish instead of practicing catch-and-release, the absurdity of such intense anger erupting over "questioning his sportsmanship and conservation awareness," and the laughably ridiculous and undeniably over the line, "want your kids involved?" was an almost too-perfect climax to what many of his critics have been calling for years and to say there has been much rejoicing among the people would be an understatement. I'm a little surprised I've yet see a hater-produced mashup of the incident spliced with clips from "Who Ya Crappin?" posted to YouTube. I'd guess one will be soon.

As much as this controversy seems uniquely absurd, it’s hardly surprising given the current cultural climate we live in. A cultural climate that Dan Bernstein and his comrades heavily contributed to. This era of public outrage often dictating swift and sometimes overly harsh judgments is one of Dan Bernstein's things. Bernstein's downfall, triggered ironically by something as trivial yet symbolically charged as a fish story, underscores how quickly reputations built over decades can crumble under these weights that he demanded others wear a la Vonnegut's Handicapper General and that have now been strapped to himself.

And though some may feel that Dan most certainly brought it upon himself and some might say he deserves everything he's getting, whether Bernstein truly deserved this fate is subjective. Certainly, even empty threats toward another's family cross lines of decency and professionalism, and no one seriously disputes that fact. But I'd still like to offer a mild, muted defense. If only as a hypothetical for the most vocal cheerleaders of Bernstein's implosion.

...and trust me, this is not something I imagined myself doing...

Asking a man, even someone who works in a public facing profession, to be ON at all times and at all moments, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even while they're on a fishing trip of all places(!) is, to me, a great afront to personal liberty and borders on being anti-human. That's a bit of intentional hyperbole but hysteria and constant holier-than-thou reactions is the new standard living conditions where the harshness of repercussions for missteps has meant creating a culture dominated by caution and fear. To me, there’s a broader point here about proportionality in an age increasingly unforgiving of human error. I mean, should a reckless, impulsive statement made by someone I disagree with overshadow an entire career, Dan? Does the severity of social media backlash always justify equally severe professional repercussions, Dan?

See, what I'm really grappling with here is not just Dan Bernstein’s behavior but our collective approach to dealing with mistakes, misjudgments, and the flawed humanity beneath the public personas we both love and loathe. These questions linger long after the controversy fades, echoing in our minds much like the exaggerated stories around a Midwest campfire. Part truth, part legend, and ultimately reflective of something deeper about ourselves. But one thing remains certain: the lines between personal mistakes and professional consequences have never been thinner, and in our digital age, every fish story risks becoming a cautionary tale.

Obviously, certain public positions require a certain decorum, respectability, and conscientiousness but, while Dan Bernstein is a public facing figure, let's not pretend he's some sort of emissary in a fragile geopolitical standoff. He's a local sports talk radio host, for God's sake, and there is no local sports talk radio host on the planet I'd seek out for lessons in sociological insight nor do I expect them to be a societal bastion of morality ethics. Which, I'm quite aware, his belief he was was one of Dan Bernstein's many, many professional flaws and a lesson he probably should have learned long ago surrounding his own feelings about his stature. But it was his show. Not my show. And a man can both run his show and hold himself to a standard higher than others may want to give him the credit.

But more to that point, everyone who is likely a regular listener to Bernstein's local sports talk radio show and/or has spent more than a single night wandering the streets of Chicago has witnessed arguments and things said far, far worse over other things that started for far, far less and just as stupid. Man's barroom bravado and rash confrontations fueled by egos and pride are as eternal as the river we crawled out.

This is not to excuse Bernstein's outburst or any other barroom brouhahas over the literal dumbest things imaginable, of course, and it's not a treatise to argue threats to dox some guy's kids is okay and, as far as I know as of this writing, Dan has yet to make a statement. I'm just saying that because the main character is who he is, the situation highlights the complexity of evaluating comments made impulsively and in anger and this controversy underlines how fragile professional reputations have become and a very basic, fundamental understanding of life has seemingly been lost.

Don't get me wrong, Dan was one of these people cheerleading others' loss of jobs, livelihoods, and reputations over the dumbest things imaginable and wielding "the greater good" like a scythe. I'm hoping that, in some imagined future, Dan will take a moment to reflect on the absurdity of such behavior and get some help. Because, even though I suspect that Dan and my opinions and personalities would combine as well as oil and water in private, I find this type of public Puritanism to be the scourge of our age and I would be a hypocrite to support it, even if Dan and his colleagues have not or would not give the same grace to their ideological counterparts. But I hope someday they do.

To the kids out there, it wasn't always like this. In the time before social media, similar confrontations might have remained isolated incidents, easily forgotten, or dismissed as heated exchanges. Today, public figures must navigate the increasingly precarious boundary between their private lives and professional responsibilities and the lasting impact of a poorly chosen remark is amplified exponentially by online platforms.

I mean, to lean a little further into the ridiculousness, and this may be hard to explain to outsiders but, as a son of the Midwest, a fight erupting over fishing and a man's sportsmanship and conservation awareness is not...wholly unheard of or something entirely unfathomable. I personally have witnessed actual physical fistfights over similar in Wisconsin's Chippewa flowage. Both in winter, and in summer. I had one of the hardest laughs of my life watching two charter boat captains go at each other with f-bombs flying and flip-flops flapping on a west Michigan pier until they both tumbled into the drink. In Minnesota, I remember an epic battle of two wives trying to rip each other's hair out that started over their husband's competing in the fillet race event of a fishing Olympics. Fortunately, their husbands chose to put the knives down and crack a Hamm's instead.

Does that all sound like a Charlie Berens and Myles Montplaisir skit on "You Betcha!"? Yes. Yes, it does. Is it absurd and ridiculous and laughable behavior? Yes. Yes, it is.

What can I say? It's home.

The point is, there are people who have fished before and there are fishermen. There are the type of people who cast off a dock once a year at their uncle's family lake house and there are the type of people who dedicate a lifetime to the hobby and hunker down over a grandfather's century old lathe in the corner of their small garage to craft and refine a better and better lure than the one perfected over 10,000 years ago. Now, you or I may or may not think the latter are reasonable men, but these are fishermen. This is fishing. And, while I don't know Bernstein's Ichthyology bonafides or where he falls in the fishing diaspora, for many, fishing is not your schoolboy ethical thought experiment nor a debate you buy tickets to that includes a wine tasting and free tote bag. It is ancient. It is religion and spirituality and survival and is often the only place a man may feel able to have holy conversations in communion with nature and where they are free to contemplate the Great Mystery and prepare themselves for the beyond, and the musky, the pike, the walleye, and the perch are messengers to God. And when the psychotherapeutic calm of a great day on the water is interrupted, well...people get ornery.

And, though I'm not saying it would or would not happen to me, I am saying that a man coming down from the high of what he possibly felt was a perfect day fishing to look at his phone and see a guy who trolls him all the time comment again on his social media...again, not saying I would have blown up...I'm just saying he might not have known he killed the fish.

Bernstein undeniably crossed a line threatening to bring the man's kids into it, but he didn't actually dox the other man's kids and no actual physical harm followed and no tangible crime was committed. I don't think the two were even in the same state when the social media exchange took place. Again, while I was never a fan of Bernstein and always felt his attempts to sprint away from some of his more earnest meatball listeners said more about his disappointment in himself than it did to elevate his disdain of them, and, to be clear, my own thoughts on the matter would be different had he actually doxed the man's children, I can also remember when a reckless moment of word salad spewed in angry stupor didn't overshadow a lifetime of work. Even work I didn't like.

I admit, many will have varying degrees of belief in accountability and comeuppance. Once more for those in the back, I feel no love lost for Bernstein finally (or temporarily) being kicked off the local airwaves, but I do disagree with our collective approach to the flawed humanity beneath the public personas we both love and loathe. And though it was likely to happen sooner or later in a professional setting, it coming due to a cast off in haste social media comment after a fishing trip, even an ugly comment, doesn't sit well with me and, to the most vocal cheerleaders of Bernstein's implosion, it may be easier than you think for it to happen to you.

Of course, had Bernstein followed the golden rule of social media and heed the advice of the greatest tweet of all time, it never would have happened:

Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Cyber Bullying Real Hahahaha Nigga Just Walk Away From The Screen Like Nigga Close Your Eyes Haha

— T (@tylerthecreator) December 31, 2012

But he just couldn't let it go...

...And so, the tale of Dan Bernstein and his fish joins the long lineage of stories about pride and consequence. Less Moby Dick, perhaps...but a thoroughly modern parable for an age grappling with online outrage, accountability, and the enduring, sometimes devastating, power of foolish boasts amplified for the world to see. No doubt, it's destined to be retold with both laughter and shaking heads in Chicago taverns for years to come and, like all good fish tales, the story of Dan Bernstein's downfall will likely grow with each retelling in Chicago bars. The details will become fuzzier, the fish bigger, and the consequences either harsher or more trivial depending on who is telling it. But unlike the harmless exaggerations of old, this one serves as a stark, digital-age reminder: pride still goes before the fall, and sometimes, the fight over the fish costs far more than the catch itself.

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