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This meme about a disabled Army vet losing to Caitlyn Jenner for an ESPN award is taking over the internet - and it's completely bogus
This meme about a disabled Army vet losing to Caitlyn Jenner for an ESPN award is taking over the internet - and it's completely bogus
Molly MulshineJun 3, 2015, 20:45 IST
A meme that says Army vet Noah Galloway was the runner up for Caitlyn Jenner's ESPY award has been making the rounds on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
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The only issue: ESPN has confirmed that it's completely untrue.
Here's the photo and text in question:
Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce, was named as the recipient of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award yesterday. The announcement came just after her Vanity Fair cover - the first instance of Jenner appearing publicly while presenting as a woman - hit the internet. She'll accept the award at the televised ESPY award show on July 15.
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It took a few hours for people to become angry that Galloway, who lost parts of his arm and leg in an explosion while on active duty in Iraq and took third place in "Dancing With The Stars," wouldn't be receiving the award.
Instead, it's going to Jenner, a former Olympian who is also a transgender woman and TV personality whose fame was reignited back in 2007 thanks to her family's TV show, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," now in its tenth season.
Search #noahgalloway on Instagram, and you'll see that the meme above is especially popular on that image-driven platform:But a spokesperson from ESPN confirmed to Business Insider this morning that there is no such thing as a runner-up for the Arthur Ashe award. The organization is currently not going into further detail about how the award's recipient is selected, but it's not through a process that results in winners and runners up the way a vote does.We've also contacted Noah Galloway's camp for comment, but have yet to hear back.So where did the idea that Jenner swiped the title from Galloway come from? Snopes traces it back to a tweet from Boston radio personality and columnist Gerry Callahan, sent at 4:46 p.m. on June 1:It's unclear whether Callahan was being sarcastic or not, but either way, what he said in the tweet is untrue, but the idea clearly picked up steam.People also named Lauren Hill, a college athlete who played basketball despite an inoperable brain tumor and died earlier this year, as a more worthy recipient of the award.In fact, ESPN usually honors those who are fighting cancer with the Jimmy V Perseverance Award, which is named after Jim Valvano, a North Carolina State basketball coach and ESPN commentator who died of cancer in 1993.They year, the Jimmy V Perseverance Award is going to Leah and Devon Still at the ESPYs. Devon is a tackle for the Bengals and Leah is his daughter. She's currently in remission after fighting pediatric cancer.
