A Boston TV Station Isn’t Airing a David Ortiz Roast After Deeming Gronk’s Jokes Racist

Watch and be the judge.

Rob Gronkowski, a real-life version of the dumbass jock from every high school movie, is being blamed for ruining what should have been a friendly roast of David Ortiz after telling jokes that were so controversial, a Boston TV station yanked the yuk fest from air. 

The Red Sox legend threw the roast of himself to raise money for his charity and it was later set to run on local sports station, NESN. But those plans were scrapped after the network walked away from the recording appalled. Here’s how the Boston Globe described the jokes, which were told by a handful of comedians and athletes, including Gronk and Bill Burr: 

Beyond ribald, most of the jokes were NSFW to the extreme and had many in the crowd squirming in their seats.

The audience, which had been warned at the outset by ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman that the language would get rough, nonetheless groaned several times during the evening, notably when comics made jokes about former Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, who committed suicide in prison.

There were also jokes — and a lot of them — about sex and body parts and cringe-worthy cracks about race and ethnicity.

Doesn’t sound so far outside the norm for these kinds of things—maybe a little off brand for a charity fund raiser, but certainly in line with that you’d expect from a roast. Some of the jokes citied in the Boston Globe piece don’t seem that bad either. 

“Do you ever turn anything down, Gronk?” said Burr. “You would [expletive] spike a flaming cross at a Klan rally if they promised you travel and some buffalo wings.”

“I can’t believe they’re retiring this guy’s number,” said Burr. “He’s a [expletive] DH. Retiring a DH’s number is like putting a vice president on Mount Rushmore.”

But it’s Gronk, not Burr, whose jokes are drawing the most ire. That’s unfair, roast host Josh Wolf told WEEI. “The only reason Rob’s name is being put in this is because he’s Rob Gronkowski,” he said. “Compared to the rest of us, he was tame. But you know, TMZ doesn’t get any clicks if they say, ‘Josh Wolf went over the line.’ It’s all about clicks. He did what we asked him to do. The controversy is so ridiculous.” 

Even though the roast isn’t airing, video of Gronk’s jokes has surfaced. Many of them are cringe worthy and made even more so by his embarrassingly bad deliver. But are they so controversial that they should be banned from TV?

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Now, please enjoy Gronk being Gronk in this video for 3LAU’s “On My Mind.”