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Saturday, October 18, 2003Rumor has it that ESPN has fired Gregg Easterbrook for his supposedly antisemetic comments. I didn't originally comment on his New Republic blog post since I thought that the situation was overblown and would go away-- essentially, he said that 1) Hollywood produces over-the-top violent movies, 2) such movies influence cultural views of acceptable violence, and 3) since Jews were victims of culturally acceptable violence, Jewish movie producers should be more careful about the movies they greenlight. The biggest problem was that he opined that Hollywood Bigwigs value money over ethics. True, but since these specific Hollywood Bigwigs are Jewish, it's easy for his words to be interpreted as expressing a Hateful Stereotype. Although there is no confirmation yet from ESPN, I noticed links to Tuesday Morning Quarterback have been removed from the main "Page 2" site, and Easterbrook has been taken from the list of regular columnists. Geez, first Rush Limbaugh, then TMQ; ESPN tries to spice up its chest-thumping macho sports coverage with political analysts and intellectuals, then fire them when they say or write anything the least bit uncomfortable. (By the way, isn't the point of "Page 2" where TMQ resided, to provide a forum for less staid, more experimental journalism that expands stylistic and topical boundaries? It's not like Ralph Wiley has never written anything controversial about race there.) Would it be inappropriate for me to note that Easterbrook criticized Disney head Michael Eisner by name, and that Disney owns ABC, who owns ESPN? Incidentally, ever since Disney bought ESPN the whole network has gone to shit. Everything is streamlined for mass appeal, and it falls flat. Sportscenter has become cliched and boring, and does far too many human interest pieces; NFL Primetime is no longer a raucous must-see madcap recap of Sunday's action. Back when ESPN was new and struggling for ratings it pushed the envelope in analysis (Mel Kiper Jr. ripping the Colts' draft strategy) and good fun (the chemistry between Berman, Tom Jackson, and Robin Roberts). Nowadays, the attitude is, "Here is a highlight of a large man dunking the ball over another large man. I will say something witty and noncontroversial about Jennifer Lopez or Fifty Cent, then present another highlight reel dunk. And then, a promo for Playmakers." I miss the good old days of flicking on ESPN at four in the morning when, desperate for programming, they'd televise the American Putt-Putt miniature golf championship, or a group of junior highschool kids in their backyard playing Smear the Queer. Then, a few hours later, Keith Olbermann, whose oft-imitated smirking sarcasm conveyed that he Didn't Give A Shit About Sports and that the audience should turn off the tv and read a book once in a while. And that leads me to the Official Swankypimp Boycott: I plan on not watching ESPN anymore if this turns out to be true. It'll be tough with NHL season kicking off (mixed metaphor, but "dropping the puck" sounds... dirty), but I'll manage. As for Internet sports coverage, um, errr... CNNSI, I guess. Not that I want to visit a site in any way affilliated-- past, present, or future-- with Ted Turner, but this is one of those "lesser of two evils" deals, like when I voted for Bob Dole in 1996. UPDATE: Swankypimp.com has been told that the above mention of the playground football game "Smear the Queer" is Offensive and Bigoted. Instead, as a way to reverse thousands of years of discrimination, the game shall now be referred to as "Wreck-shooal the Heterosexual," or "Black Eye for the Straight Guy." UPDATE2: GHR raises the point, "It seems to me that this calls for a much closer look at the dangers of media consolidation. When a guy who works for ESPN can't criticize Disney in The New Republic without being fired for dissing his "boss," which is quite possibly what's happened here, then something is seriously rotten." posted by Nate on 2:42 PM link Friday, October 17, 2003This is the last baseball post for several months, I promise... Three runs ahead, five outs away from a trip to the World Series, fans getting rowdy as the lovable losers look to end their curse... then BAM!!! And not the benign, Emeril-cooking-pork-products BAM, either. Boston is defeated 6-5 in extra innings by the Yankees. At least us Cub fans aren't the only ones to be disappointed. In German they call taking pleasure from another's misery schadenfreude. In English, we call it good plain fun. By the way, Sox fans, Bill Buckner used to play for the Cubs. And two years before Buck's infamous gaffe, Chicago first baseman Leon Durham muffed an identical play that gave the Padres the NL Pennant. We're joined at the hip, see. Like VISA Shill Bob Dole, we just can't win. We're cursed; get over it. Go download Internet Porn instead of watching the World Series, or crawl into a bottle of Johnny Walker Black for the week, or make fun of the sketchy Europeans on the new Joe Millionaire or something. And oh yeah, Yankees Suck!!! posted by Nate on 12:31 AM link Thursday, October 16, 2003I've not known chickens to be particularly conniving and evil. White Castle rules! posted by Nate on 11:10 PM link Wednesday, October 15, 2003I'm not particularly torqued off about tonight's Cubs game. They overachieved this year; despite what Steve "Terrible Announcer" Lyons repeatedly says, this is not a disappointment. There's no way this team should have been in the playoffs, so anything after that is a bonus. Seriously, other than Sosa and the pitching staff, they started the year with a heaping helping of Jack Squat. Aramis Ramirez was a solid pickup via trade (as if Lenny Harris was the third baseman of the future), and veteran Moises Alou and midseason pickup Kenny Lofton were improbably hooked up to the Juvenation Machine for the pennant race. Even Alex Gonzalez (that's Alex S. Gonzalez, thankyouverymuch) caught fire for the postseason. The victory over the Braves was a lot more than most of us expected. Wait till next year. Anyway, the thing that really pissed me off about the game was Fox's repeated camera shots of Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. Smug bastard; Loria sucks. He drove the Montreal Expos franchise into the ground, then convinced his friends in Major League Baseball HQ to bail him out. He must have been reading the Underpants Gnomes' latest business plan: 1) Sell off players; ruin baseball for an entire country, 2) make friends, influence people, take control of another team, 3) PROFIT. I'm no Commie, but if he's not a metaphor for what's wrong with The System, I don't know what is. Really, you have to be a bottom-line, profit-oriented douchebag to succeed in a capitalist society. Jeffrey Loria is very successful. Fucking Marlins. posted by Nate on 11:54 PM link ’’Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices, are made too delicately for the sea’’ --Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea (Yes, a book about the futile struggle against the harsh realities of life, expressed via the metaphor of a Marlin.) posted by Nate on 11:47 PM link Tuesday, October 14, 2003"I grew up in Champaign, Ill., midway between Chicago and St. Louis. At an age too tender for life-shaping decisions, I made one. While all my friends were becoming Cardinals fans, I became a Cub fan. My friends, happily rooting for Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and other great Redbirds, grew up cheerfully convinced that the world is a benign place, so of course, they became liberals. Rooting for the Cubs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I became gloomy, pessimistic, morose, dyspeptic and conservative." --George Will posted by Nate on 11:24 PM link Um... Err... Um... And that, my friends, is why God invented Whiskey. posted by Nate on 11:21 PM link Monday, October 13, 2003Yankees Suck!!! I'm glad Boston beat them tonight. Now I'm not mad at the Yankees for the same reason as most people. They want to spend big money on players? Fine with me! Spend your brains out! I wish more owners would do that. Mike Illich has gone with replacement level players in one of the bigger baseball markets so he can spend his scratch on his other team, Dominik Hasek and the Stevie Yzerman All Stars. And it's not like the Yankees filthy lucre wins the World Series every year; for years they and the Mets would toss major coin on players who did jack squat. Kinda like the Boston Red Sox. You need to be able to evaluate talent in order to win, period. Sure the Yanks can fritter away the GDP of Guam on a Raul Mondesi or Aaron Boone during the stretch run, and that might be the deciding factor in a playoff game or two. But the playoffs overall are a weird, surreal experience where anything can happen, like a Lewis Carrol opium-induced novel. Schilling and Johnson can start (and win) almost every day; the thoroughly mediocre Anaheim Angels can catch lightning in a bottle and put up ten runs a game. Who do we remember of the Yankees / BoSox series 25 years ago? Bucky Freakin' Dent. So it's a bit disingenuous of Billy Beane to say that with $50 million more he could guarantee a playoff series win. But I digress. The real point of this rant is: Yankees Suck!!! Why, you may ask? Well, first off they blew a huge lead against the Tigers back in June. As a result, my trip to see Roger Clemens' 300th career victory was wasted. The second reason needs a little back story. I haven't seen my old college roommate in three years. Err, that's my former college roommate, not a college roommate who is elderly. Sure we partied a bit at UM, but none of us were on the "eight year plan" like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. ("Lots of people go to college for eight years." "Yeah, they're called doctors." "Shut up, Richard.") Anyway, Oliver resides in New Jersey, which last time I checked was near New York. Since my beloved Cubbies are a mere game away from The Big Show, I figured I'd take a week off work, see O, and go to a game. Tickets for the games at Wrigley will be ridiculously hard to get for obvious reasons (first Series in fifty years), and Ticket Master had a bunch of open seats for the divisional playoffs in Atlanta, so I thought I'd have a better than average shot at getting tix to a game in the Bronx. Or so I thought. Ticket Master put the Wonka-esque Golden Tickets on sale this afternoon at 11:30. (I think that's the definition of hubris, selling tickets to the next round three games into the AL Championship Series, but whatever.) I took a looong lunch break and hovered at my workplace's DSL-equipped machines for the minutes to tick away. 11:28. Refresh the page; "Tickets are not yet available." 11:29. Refresh the page; "Tickets are not yet available." 11:30. "Select Quantity." Bomb-ass!!! At that point I thought I was In Like Flint. Among the first in the queue, the website reported I had a fifteen minute wait while the system "processed my request." Then, ten minutes later, I had a twelve minute wait. Ten minutes later, five. Then three. Then Five again. Then Fifteen. Then Twelve. Then Two. Less Than A Minute Remaining. Then Eight. I think they were using The New Math. Then finally, after thirty minutes of waiting, came an error message. Grrr... Start over, go to the end of the queue. Wait an agonizing ten minutes, then an error. Lather, rinse, repeat. I spent an hour on the Ticket Bastard site, hoping against hope, praying to Jesus and Vishnu and Ed Asner for divine intervention. Yet I was unable to emerge victorious. A winnar is not me. =( Although most of the blame belongs with scalpers (tickets are already available online for "only" $2400 a pop), a part of me still blames the Yankees. I mean honestly, how many casual fans would want to travel to the middle of nowhere and muddle through the late October freezing rain to see a game in the homey environs of Minneapolis' Metrodome? But to go see the All American Team on the Game's Biggest Stage in the Big Apple? Of course people will shell out two grand for the privilege, thinks Mr. Scalper Man. Which leads me back to the point of this article: Yankees Suck!!! posted by Nate on 11:05 PM link
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your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
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