The Mirror

Washington Post Columnist Seriously Injures Himself While Dancing To MJ’s ‘ABC’

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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Washington Post columnist Clinton Yates had a weekend he won’t soon forget. He laughed. He cried. He danced. He sliced open his hand and waited too long–more than 12 hours–to get it checked by doctors.

It happened while dancing at a wedding afterparty to The Jackson 5’s “ABC.”

Yates catalogued the ordeal over Twitter, including graphic, bloody, fleshy photographs. This isn’t unusual for Yates. As some may recall, he’s the journalist who was tossed from a Bethesda bar because he was there with a minor. The waitress thought Yates, 33, had fake ID. He also got into a skirmish at a bar off Dupont Circle when a bouncer thought he was trashed and wouldn’t initially let him in. He said he wasn’t intoxicated, but his friends, who vouched for him, were “hammered.”

Let’s begin with today and we’ll trace back to what went down.

He added, “My hand hurts so much.”

A woman, Whitney Williams, seems to feel sorry for his pain. But she’s also mad at him.

HER: “The danger of a single story: after ignoring my email @clintonyates blew up my spot/date/evening all at once. Still owes me an email.”

HIM: omg I’m sorry!

HER: Don’t be sorry–just return my email.

Rewind 20 hours:

As the result of his injury, Yates will not be able to use his right hand for a month. The incident was really emotional for him. As he explained to the world on Twitter, “The real story is when I did cut my hand, I was so embarrassed and ashamed that I just walked out of the place crying. It was pretty bad. Thankfully, since my friends are awesome, they found me and helped clean it up and asked me to return. I was pretty broken up about it. I was so upset that I had potentially ruined the afterparty that I literally wanted to leave. Awful feeling.”

His emotional outpouring actually began on the night of the injury and bled into the next day (sorry, pun intended). 

“As a child of divorce, weddings are very very emotional. In a good way. I legitimately injured myself dancing to Jackson 5 last night. I think my dancefloor days are over. #throwinghandslicedopen. After the wedding and all, yall dont understand. I got super emotional and started crying bc it made a big scene and I was embarrassed. Being the guy who breaks and bleeds at the afterparty is not cool. Trust me. And now I can’t play catch with my brother today. Double dagger.” 

Yates proceeded with a horror show of pictures.

 

The awful truth is that if Yates had gone to the ER earlier, the condition of his hand would likely be different. “So, apparently, after the first 12 hours, they can’t really do much,” he wrote. “Meaning, I’m just going to have to live with this. I feel like an idiot.” 

At least one good thing came out of Yates’ ordeal. He’s now a poster child for how not to handle a wound.

While others shared their tales of wounds, Melanie Powers, a Washington editor, said this:

Even Yates knows there’s a painfully obvious moral to this story.