I Fixed Bob Costas' Halftime Monologue
For those of you too busy keeping up with things of actual importance to notice, we live in a culture that in many ways grows more stupid and graceless by the moment. Sports coverage both reflects and influences that sorry trend, so on television networks everywhere, true style is in decline, while mindless exhibitionism abounds.
In the late ’80's, NBC had a personality named Bob Costas. He invented nothing that was great; but he did show up on Letterman and seem to not take life too seriously while having an education, so people who were not meatheads who watched sports tolerated him. He has somehow devolved into this…(video of cranky old white man taking athletes to task for showing any semblance of personality)
Given the tone of the times, it's probably too much to expect that most media gasbags would appreciate that back in the day, this guy (Bob Costas back then) was much cooler than this guy (Bob Costas right now), or that there is a difference between spontaneous and/or good-natured displays of enthusiasm and calculated displays of obnoxious self-indulgence. No, that train has already gone so far down the wrong track, there's probably no turning back.
So our suggestion here is a more modest one: hey, knuckleheads, is it too much to ask that you confine your buffoonery to situations that don't directly damage the viewing public? Week after week, game after game, we see guys who think nothing of wasting our time with pointless curmudgeon behavior, costing their viewers valuable brain cells, even late in close games.
Today's most conspicuous culprit: NBC's Bob Costas, who weighed in with the incredibly tedious point that Buffalo's Steve Johnson was wrong wrong wrong for making fun of Plexico Burress, who did nothing more than shoot himself in the ass during a felony. But in this case, it was Costas who shot himself in the foot, as his display cemented his reputation as a humorless drone, corporate suck-up, and defender of a questionable at best morality that allows for 15 yard penalties when you hurt someone's feelings.
Which raises this question: where are the networks in all this? Analysts are routinely fired or suspended for profanity, racist, sexist or homophobic statements. When is a network going to make an overdue statement and sit a gasbag down on the grounds of pure selfishness and unprofessionalism detrimental to his network?
By the way, late in his screed of the obvious, Costas made everyone under the age of 65, or people of color, drop any good feeling they might have had about him. Shockingly, he didn’t follow it with a rehearsed “my bad” dance of apology. Maybe he just forgot.
5 comments:
Bob Costas is the new Frank Deford.
The lesson, as always: don't stay too long. If you are going to be a 60-year-old defender of the status quo gasbag, go to politics.
Aside from his love of baseball, I used to sort of like Costas, but somewhere along the line he got to be an old fart. Funny, too, cause I'm older than he is. Come on, folks, it simply isn't possible to make enough fun of Buress for shooting himself while carrying an illegal weapon.
Back in the day, editorializing was common. Many sports commentators did essays or commentaries including Howard Cosell, Jim McKay and Jack Whitaker. Bryant Gumbel still does it.It's a lost art. I see nothing wrong with Costas trying to rein some of this stupidity and calling it what it is. The fact that you people accept this stupidity at face value is far more disconcerting to me than whether or not you agree or disagree with Bob Costas.
Yes, because the NFL jumps to the whip that is Bob Costas' commentary.
Look, there's a way to make the point he's trying to make, and if you really get bent out of shape by this, well, whatever. You do it by pointing out that if networks did not show touchdown celebrations (the way, say, that they don't show streakers), they wouldn't happen. You could also question why routine mangling and head collisions in the trenches are nothing, but making fun of a guy that shot himself is 15 yards. You could also point out that the 15 yards was compounded by the Bills' kicker blowing the subsequent kickoff, or ask if there is something endemic to WRs (the most likely of people to get these flags) that causes this situation, or how coaches are hamstrung by their need to attract and use this talent, so they can't just bench them.
You know, you could actually put some freaking thought into the thing. Instead of shaking your fist at those kids, like a lazy old hack. Or defending the lazy old hack.
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