A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

QUICK, SOMEBODY RUN TO COSTCO AND GET US A REFILL OF SEPIA: Slate is keeping tabs on the giant wheels of cheese NBC is rolling at us during its soft-focus vignettes (and really, after "athlete from crumbling nation undertakes child-saving emigration, reaches fifth Olympics at twice the age of teammates," how moved could you really be by "giant-eared swimmer tutored by elite club coach paid by suburban single mom" or "Bay Area swimmer loves to cook and hang out with friends"?). Investigative journalism like this is exactly why they're the professionals and I'm just an amateur:

After slogging through Olympic broadcasts of yore, we drew up a list of 33 syrupy words that NBC has chronically overused: adversity, battled, cancer, challenges, courage, cry, death, dedication, determination, dream, emotion, glory, golden, hardship, heart, hero, inspiration, inspire, journey, magic, memory, miracle, mom, mother, Olympic-sized, overcome, passion, proud, sacrifice, spirit, tears, tragedy, triumph. While these 33 words are by no means an unabridged collection of schmaltzy nouns, adjectives, and verbs, they're a good sampling of NBC's bathos. Think of them as the Dow Jones of sap.

You even get a "Sap-O-Meter Tag Cloud" for a visual depiction of your hearstrings being tugged for fun and profit. I love this so much that I want to use the Sap-O-Meter as my own personal literary advance scout.

Deadspin