Tuesday, April 29, 2008

THERE'S NOTHING QUITE LIKE HEARING BOB COSTAS UTTER THE WORD "DOUCHEBAG": I am currently watching on HBO one of the more fascinating and provocative programs I have seen in some time -- a Costas NOW ninety minute town meeting on the state of sports media. Already, there has been a confrontation between Michael Strahan and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo on fairness on talk radio; and then a condescending, sanctimonious Buzz Bissinger taking full advantage of HBO's freer speech to lecture a stammering Will Leitch on his opinions as to the worthiness of online sportswriting ("the quality, in general, of the writing on the blogs is despicable"). Much like the talk radio the first segment largely decries, I'm not sure if I'm learning anything by watching this, but I'm sure having fun. Unexpected laughs all over the place, including a naughty Joe Buck, but now Costas himself is getting pressed on how free he'll be to criticize China's human rights record while anchoring the Summer Games. Set your TiVo for the re-airings.

e.t.a. Reax from Leitch ("Buzz is not alone. Sure, he might be metaphorically alone, raining spittle on the imaginary demons that clearly haunt him. But if you don't think that almost every single person — with obvious, clear exceptions — who was on all those panels last night didn't come up to him afterwards and give him a fist pound and a "yeah, we really struck back tonight!" well, you weren't there. This really is what many of them think. Though most are a little calmer about it.") and FJM's Michael Schur, who was quoted in the taped intro: ("The argument I had tried to make in the pre-taped segment was: you can't say anything about 'blogs,' any more than you can say anything about any medium. There are good blogs and bad blogs.... What Bissinger did that was so annoying to me was: he lumped all of these into one thing ('Deadspin,' essentially), and furthermore, conflated the actual blog and the people who write for it with the silly comments people make at the bottom of every article.")

e.t.a.2: YouTube has the Internet-related set-up piece and subsequent roundtable. Did you know that blogs were "dedicated to cruelty"?

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