It's June 23rd. The NBA season is kaput, the NFL is months away, and the Stanley Cup is being passed around like a blunt at a Snoop Dogg show. That leaves us with Major League Baseball and really, not much else.
As such, we're sure to be bombarded with "stories" that are more nuisance than substance, with today's examples being Shaq's pathetic freestyle rapping and Don Imus again ably stepping into the role of the stupid, crotchety old man.
While I realize it's a slow news cycle in the world of sports for the next couple of months, I fail to see how making rather than breaking stories is the solution.
I don't care if Shaq rapped about Kobe coming up short and inquired about the taste of his ass (hmmm...AM/PM chili dog?) And I really don't care that an out of touch, pathetic geezer STILL isn't funny.
What I care about is ESPN running the news regarding both Shaq and Imus on their bottom ticker as if World War III was breaking. I care that a video from TMZ was shown almost in its entirety (with the aforementioned "ass" being bleeped from "how does my ass taste"...thanks for leaving so much to my kids' imaginations, fellas) on a show supposedly devoted to sports.
The only thing I can think of that is worse than TMZ is a TMZ video being aired on a sports network.
This is all old hat, complaining about ESPN and how hard it sucks and how back in my day SportsCenter was funny and in college I watched it four times a day and that Baseball Tonight was nothing but highlights and Berman wasn't a blowhard and blah blah freakin' blah.
But for the love of Pete, at what point does ESPN wise up?
Perhaps when bloggers do.
Is there any doubt that ESPN aired the Shaq video in particular BECAUSE it came from TMZ? Call it a stretch and me an idiot, but there is surely a correlation between the blogosphere's using gossipy nonsense to make a name for itself and the mainstream media now beating the same type of stories to death.
Although the fellas at KSK poo poo'd the story from the LA Times about the toning down of blogs, I can only hope said story is correct in its assumption. I sure as hell can't take hearing any more so-called news from sources like TMZ, and if the blogosphere is to blame, maybe the idiots who populate it should take a look in the mirror.
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