Bill Livingston Calls Out Dan Gilbert For Sending Out Late Night Drunk Messages, Including the Infamous Letter

This really flew under the radar, but it merits a mention here. The PD's Bill Livingston was on Tony Kornheiser's radio show on ESPN 980 back on Sept. 11. In the course of a wide-ranging discussion on Cleveland sports, Kornheiser and Livingston begin talking about Dan Gilbert and the infamous letter. Livingston starts out hinting at what he's talking about but soon comes right out and says, first of all, what many around the country assumed when the Comic Sans screed came out (he was probably drunk) and then adds some background, saying that PD reporters were the target of other late-night, angry Gilbert messages when the casino issue was being debated.

He's not wrong, if we can pipe in. We've heard from a handful of local (and national) reporters that post-midnight texts and emails from Gilbert can certainly seem booze-influenced and can be absolutely be vitriolic. Anyway, here's what Livingston had to say. You can listen to the full podcast here. The Gilbert stuff starts at 41:30.

I could understand playing to his base, but this is not the first time that he had released statements like this that were pretty... that were sent out late at night, and draw some connotations from that if you will, under some stressful things from the casino issue that was being debated here. He can have a bit of a hair trigger, he can become influenced by all the things that a late night would engender. I think probably alcohol probably played a part of it, just to come out with it. It's just suppositional on my part, but he's sent out messages like this before, to Plain Dealer people on the casino issue, that were over the top.

Livingston is just saying what every reporter who deals with Dan Gilbert already knows.