“You have blogs that proudly parade around saying, ‘We don’t need no stinking credibility or stinking information — it doesn’t matter what you say or do if you know how to write.’ They cover themselves under the mantle of the First Amendment. But if John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had any idea what the First Amendment would have wrought, they would have canceled it.”Congratulations, Buzz. You are now disqualified from any serious discussion about, well, pretty much anything from here on out.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Great Moments In Ignorant Hyperbole
The Boston Phoenix has yet another blogger/Bissinger story. They're kind of old hat and boring now -- Bissinger has walked back from his Costas rant and now claims to be distinguishing between good and bad blogs -- but this little quote is worth a block:
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7 comments:
maybe buzz can go to china to cover the beijing olympics so he can experience first hand the kind of 1st amendment our founding fathers really had in mind.
once there buzz can go 'ahhhh, finally a place that has the balls to execute people who write shitty blogs' and then he can bring all the great ideas home to the US and petition congress to implement them.
seriously, why does this guy try so hard to sound like a buffoon.
I'm sorry, I'm still laughing at the thought that Adams, Jefferson et al, did not consider the ramifications and/or consequences of the first amendment before they made it law. Clearly the Constitution was slapped together at the last moment with all the gusto of an 8th grade midterm paper.
In one respect it's funny, in another respect it's offensive. Either way it's stupid.
Second, the amendments were written by James Madison, not Adams or Jefferson.
Buzz the Man illustrates an important lesson that most teenages start to learn in college: Just because a person has covered one thing well, doesn't mean he deserves to be heard on other things.
My latest reflection on this lesson was triggered by all the ESPN talking head anchors who now have commentary in columns, radio and TV. Chris Fowler, Michelle Tafoya, to name just a a few, are barely competent in their day job, why do we want their opinions?
You know, I wonder what would have happened if rather than Leitch, Bissinger had faced, Shyster (lawyer), Ken Tremendous (Screen Writer) or Rany (Dermatologist)?
Or better yet all three.
In terms of how any of us would respond to Buzz that day, probably nothing all that different would have happened, actually. You can't reason with a raving lunatic, especially on television. Leitch actually wrote something on Deadspin before the taping that day about how he felt he was being led into an ambush. I think he was right not to spout back at Buzz.
If the point is more along the lines of "what would have happened if he had had a chance to read ShysterBall, FJM, or Rany's blog" I imagine it may have been different. I'll defend Leitch until the cow comes home because I think he's a good writer and a good person --- and I think Buzz was totally out of line that day -- but Deadspin and its immitators are worthy of a lot of criticism for dumbing things down and kind of missing the point about sports a lot of the time.
A tiny part of me holds out hope that this sustained insanity on Bissinger's part is actually part of a clever plot to raise his visibility online in preparation for starting his own blog.
The alternative is that he honestly thinks the repeated mention of the word "hooters" over at EDSBS is so terrible that it is grounds for toppling one of our nation's foundational freedoms.
Please, Buzz. Tell me you're blogging and this is all a publicity stunt. I'll read it. I swear.
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