I love a good sports documentary. The great thing about sports movies which are based on true events is that often they will include a short documentary in the DVD's bonus features section telling a truer version of details without all the Hollywood rewrites. Since nothing is more dramatic than real life, it should come as no surprise that I often find these mini-movies more interesting than the feature film I just finished watching. What is even better is if I actually care about the subject, so as you can imagine I thoroughly enjoyed a documentary about the 1992 Bronze Medal-winning basketball team entitled, "The Other Dream Team." The movie goes into all the hardship the people of Lithuania had to suffer through while under communist rule and how the basketball team (for a small country, Lithuania has a habit of pumping out exceptional basketball players) was seen as a rallying cry for country once it regain its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. I especially liked that they made a point to focus on the tie-dyed shirts which were the team's calling card due to the fact that they had been sponsored by the band The Grateful Dead. I had one of those shirts as a kid and still have it to this day, refusing to throw it out even though I never particularly liked the look of tie-dye and if I tried to put it on now it would just rip in half. This documentary has been on several times in the last couple of weeks and I find myself watching a few minutes of it every time I pass by.
There is only one real problem with the movie and it is that is large chunks of it are in Lithuanian, which I do not speak. I think this is better for the film because these guys are obviously going to be able to speak more fluently and express their thoughts better in their native language. But it also created a problem because there are a lot of people who don't speak Lithuanian, so most of the movie needs subtitles. Now, I am not the kind of person who thinks that just because a movie has a lot of subtitles is automatically bad but I will admit that I think they take away from the general viewing experience. Whenever I am watching a movie with subtitles at the bottom of the screen I feel like it pulls all my focus there and thus I am missing all the action in the rest of the screen. Normally this isn't a problem because subtitled movies are never known for being action-packed and the filmmakers want you to focus on the words more than what the actors are doing, but in this case you feel like you are missing a lot of action. There are a lot of shots of basketball games which you can't focus on because you are busy reading the words of the people talking about the basketball action you aren't watching. And just like the play on a basketball court the words come fast and furious. If you are a slow reader there are going to be some sections you are just going to miss.
This is why I think the subtitle voice-over is the way to go. You know what I mean - instead of typing the words along the bottom of the screen you have the translator say them for you and then put that audio over pictures of the person who is speaking in the foreign language. That way people can go back to listening and taking in the entire picture, rather than glancing up at the action as soon as they finish the sentence on the screen and then immediately lowering their eyes when the text changes. Admittedly, when the voices and the lips don't match up it takes a little getting used to at first, but once you distinguish the various voices it gets easy enough to follow along. The other good part is that you never have to worry about the text of your subtitles blending into the background of the scene. Again, that isn't a worry in most foreign films because they are usually about some goat-herder from a war-torn country who loses both his family and his gay lover to AIDS before ultimately dying tragically and those movies tend to have one background color, which is gray. But in this case it was a lot of brightly colored athletes moving at a high rate of speed and on more than one occasion the font would match something behind it, at which point you stopped watching a movie and started playing a speed version of Wheel Of Fortune while trying to guess the word to complete the phrase.
Now, it is entirely possible that they had to go with subtitles because they interviewed a lot of people for this movie and there just weren't enough people who spoke Lithuanian and English well enough to translate an entire movie and it would have been confusing when 3 people had the same voice. Still, I think that would have worked out better because it would have eased the contrast between the people who needed subtitles and the people who didn't. It was honestly pretty jarring to go from 10 solid minutes of people speaking a language I didn't understand to suddenly hearing English again. It almost felt as though my brain was getting a quick rest in those moments and that's the real issue because movies are normally all about being able to turn my brain off. That has always been my real problem with subtitled movies - you can't really relax and enjoy them because you are always worried that turning to your friend and making a smart-ass remark will result in missing a key plot detail. On top of that documentaries (even the sports ones) have a tendency to take themselves a touch too seriously, so the combination of not being able to relax plus feeling like making smart-ass comments is disrespectful about something many people may not think is a joking matter is usually one strike too many. The good news for this movie is that I care so much about the subject matter I was willing to overlook those two things. If you can find a copy of this movie I definitely would watch it if I were you, just make sure you've rest your eyes first.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Hung Out To Dry
I often get asked by people who live in Boston why I like staying out in the 'burbs and the simple answer is that I love my truck and having a vehicle of any kind in the city of Boston is a nuisance. Your options are either paying hundreds of dollars a month for the right to park your car half a mile away from the apartment you are already paying thousands of dollars for and being (at best) 70% sure no one will mess with your car during the night OR you can not have a car at all and be at the whims of public transportation. And while I like to think of myself as both a lover of humanity and the environment who can totally see how public transportation is the community coming together to try and make the air a little more breathable, the rest of me see that the main problem I have with public transportation is, in fact, the public. While many of the people who take the train into work are capable and driven people who know that the best way for this to work is for them to focus on the task at hand and make everyone's ride as easy as possible, those are never the people on my train. I get the people who don't know where they are going, how much this "fare" you speak of is and want to talk over not only their plans for the rest of the night but for the next 75 years of their family, all while standing in my way. Confronted with dealing with those people or some traffic, the choice seems fairly easy to me.
Still, sometimes the occasional ride on the train can't be avoided and on Saturday I found myself in that situation. But even though my trips on the MBTA are not very frequent I still ride it enough to know what I am doing and I don't try and blend in as best I can when I am on the train, which means trying to inconvenience the rest of humanity as little as possible. In fact, I am so conscientious I will usually inconvenience myself just so that a total stranger doesn't have to do any extra work and comes away from our exchange thinking I'm an asshole. While I don't expect everyone else around me to engage in similarly strange behavior, I do think the world would work a little more smoothly if we all stopped to consider how our actions would impact those around us and proceed accordingly. That is why I can never understand those people who seem to go out of their way to place their needs in front of the rest of society. I can understand the theory that if you don't look out for yourself no one else will, but somewhere along the line you should also realize the world doesn't revolve around you (sadly college kids appear to be the last people to learn this lesson and I live in a city where there are 50 colleges in a ten-block radius). And that lesson should apply double when you are in a public setting.
In a previous post I wrote about how annoyed I get at the people who think the world is theirs and we're lucky to be living in it. I think at the time the main example I used were the people who took off their shoes and spread out on the couches in Gillette Stadium's Fidelity Clubhouses like they were in their living rooms. Well, this weekend I got an even better example as I encountered a man who decided a Green Line Trolley was a convenient place to treat as his own personal dry cleaners. The kid in question had decided to stand back in one of the corners of the trolley so he could sulk like a child who didn't want to be going to a family function, but then hung a dress shirt on one of the handle bars in front of him, which people had to then step around. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when he quickly grabbed one of the open seats and moved his laundry with him, only now it was swaying around the stairs in the middle of the train, which means he actually found an even more inconvenient place than he already had. What was even weirder was that everyone on the train was respecting the sanctity of the shirt and no one asked him to take it off the bar and hold it so someone else could grab the bar there. Of course, this left me full of questions: where was he going that he needed this one dress shirt? Why wasn't he just wearing it? If it was so important, why didn't he put the little dry cleaners bag around the shirt? Lastly, who did he think he was to use value space on public transportation on a Saturday afternoon to hang up his laundry?
I didn't ask him any of these questions because that would just spoil the mystery and I was having too much fun coming up with possible back stories about this person ranging from the absurd (he likes to air-dry his shirts in public places to get the authentic smell of the city) to the more plausible (he had to work tomorrow, was staying at a friend's that night and that friend didn't have an iron so he ironed his shirt at home and didn't want to wrinkle it). And while I had visions of slyly cutting off a button or discreetly grabbing a pen to draw something on the arm to teach the kid a lesson about respecting other people's space, obviously I did none of those things (again, desperately trying not to be an asshole). Plus, the biggest problem with people who do things like this is that they are completely oblivious to why their actions would be annoying to other people, so explaining to this kid why he may have been irritating the woman whose face the arm on his shirt kept swinging into or that just because he spent $2.50 for the ride into the city that doesn't mean he now owns the train would have been a waste of time for everyone involved. You can only hope that before too long he learns it on his own but until he and people like him do I'll stick to my truck as much as possible. But don't get me wrong, I still need public transportation to exist because that assures me that if someone is annoying me in my car I still have the option of dropping them off somewhere and making them take the train home.
Still, sometimes the occasional ride on the train can't be avoided and on Saturday I found myself in that situation. But even though my trips on the MBTA are not very frequent I still ride it enough to know what I am doing and I don't try and blend in as best I can when I am on the train, which means trying to inconvenience the rest of humanity as little as possible. In fact, I am so conscientious I will usually inconvenience myself just so that a total stranger doesn't have to do any extra work and comes away from our exchange thinking I'm an asshole. While I don't expect everyone else around me to engage in similarly strange behavior, I do think the world would work a little more smoothly if we all stopped to consider how our actions would impact those around us and proceed accordingly. That is why I can never understand those people who seem to go out of their way to place their needs in front of the rest of society. I can understand the theory that if you don't look out for yourself no one else will, but somewhere along the line you should also realize the world doesn't revolve around you (sadly college kids appear to be the last people to learn this lesson and I live in a city where there are 50 colleges in a ten-block radius). And that lesson should apply double when you are in a public setting.
In a previous post I wrote about how annoyed I get at the people who think the world is theirs and we're lucky to be living in it. I think at the time the main example I used were the people who took off their shoes and spread out on the couches in Gillette Stadium's Fidelity Clubhouses like they were in their living rooms. Well, this weekend I got an even better example as I encountered a man who decided a Green Line Trolley was a convenient place to treat as his own personal dry cleaners. The kid in question had decided to stand back in one of the corners of the trolley so he could sulk like a child who didn't want to be going to a family function, but then hung a dress shirt on one of the handle bars in front of him, which people had to then step around. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when he quickly grabbed one of the open seats and moved his laundry with him, only now it was swaying around the stairs in the middle of the train, which means he actually found an even more inconvenient place than he already had. What was even weirder was that everyone on the train was respecting the sanctity of the shirt and no one asked him to take it off the bar and hold it so someone else could grab the bar there. Of course, this left me full of questions: where was he going that he needed this one dress shirt? Why wasn't he just wearing it? If it was so important, why didn't he put the little dry cleaners bag around the shirt? Lastly, who did he think he was to use value space on public transportation on a Saturday afternoon to hang up his laundry?
I didn't ask him any of these questions because that would just spoil the mystery and I was having too much fun coming up with possible back stories about this person ranging from the absurd (he likes to air-dry his shirts in public places to get the authentic smell of the city) to the more plausible (he had to work tomorrow, was staying at a friend's that night and that friend didn't have an iron so he ironed his shirt at home and didn't want to wrinkle it). And while I had visions of slyly cutting off a button or discreetly grabbing a pen to draw something on the arm to teach the kid a lesson about respecting other people's space, obviously I did none of those things (again, desperately trying not to be an asshole). Plus, the biggest problem with people who do things like this is that they are completely oblivious to why their actions would be annoying to other people, so explaining to this kid why he may have been irritating the woman whose face the arm on his shirt kept swinging into or that just because he spent $2.50 for the ride into the city that doesn't mean he now owns the train would have been a waste of time for everyone involved. You can only hope that before too long he learns it on his own but until he and people like him do I'll stick to my truck as much as possible. But don't get me wrong, I still need public transportation to exist because that assures me that if someone is annoying me in my car I still have the option of dropping them off somewhere and making them take the train home.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Happy Mother's Day!
Happy Mother's Day
To All The Moms
Out There
Especially Shiv, Amy and
The Best Of Them All,
My Mom
Love You!
You know, in previous Mother's Day postings I have lamented the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a good Mother's Day card. Every one I looked at was based around a premise of, "I know we had our differences." Since that doesn't apply to me and my mom, I would quickly put it back on the rack. However, for as flawed as those cards may have been at least they were original. The other day I was looking for a card for my mom when I spotted a familiar-looking graphic. Picking the card up I remembered when I had seen this card before - February. It was a card I had received for my birthday. At first I thought it had simply been moved by someone shopping for two separate occasions and simply placed back in the wrong spot. But then I opened up to discover it was actually a Mother's Day card and all they had done is replace the word "Birth" with the word "Mother's". I was stunned by how lazy this felt. I understand coming up with new cards every single day can be difficult and the cost of printing must be rising every day, so anything which can be done to speed the process up is appreciated, but this lack of effort was disheartening. I mean, what would the editor's mom say?To All The Moms
Out There
Especially Shiv, Amy and
The Best Of Them All,
My Mom
Love You!
Sadly, the quality of songs about moms hasn't improved much in the last year either. Tons of songs about moms and daughters, not so much about moms and sons. Instead, we're going to play a song from one of my mom's favorite artists. Enjoy.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Weekly Sporties
-As the NBA playoffs continue their slow march towards crowning a champion, obviously more and more cities are going to be eliminated. Which means the NBA needs to keep the fans of those teams which have no more basketball to play interested in the sport, and what better way to do that than to throw out a few preposterous trade rumors with every big name possible? It has almost become as much a part of the offseason as the draft. My favorite insane rumor this week of course involves the Celtics and contends that the Los Angeles Clippers are willing to send Blake Griffin, Eric Bledsoe and Caron Butler to Boston for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and... Doc Rivers. Strangely, the biggest fish in this deal is Rivers. Obviously anyone who saw the Clippers lose to the Memphis Grizzlies in the playoffs can see that they are in need of an upgrade at the head coaching position and Doc is the best in the business, which may give the Clippers the best chance to keep free agent point guard Chris Paul, who clashed (briefly) with Griffin, when he thought Paul was riding him too hard. Also, KG and Pierce have said they want to keep playing together and both live in Los Angeles in the offseason and the Celtics are desperate to get younger while staying competitive, which Griffin would provide. Obviously losing Doc would be a blow to Boston but if Vinny Del Negro can get that group into a tough Western Conference playoffs, who says coaching is that important? As you can see, there are a ton of elements to make this trade 5% conceivable, which is enough to get people excited about it. However, I'm going to lean towards the 95% of this which is based in reality and say there is almost no chance this deal gets done. First off, there are too many moving pieces. Secondly, the Clippers may be consistently winning for the first time in the teams history, but that will not change the fact that Donald Sterling is one of the worst owners in sports and refuses to pay coaches what they are worth (which is why they have Del Negro as their coach in the first place). It all adds up to this being nothing more than a rumor someone threw against the wall to see what stuck. But, hey, I was asked about this rumor by people who are just casual fans of the NBA, so I guess it accomplished its goal. It certainly was more interesting than that Atlanta/Indiana series.
-Monday afternoon a story broke which revealed that an adviser and former AAU coach of Kansas freshman Ben McLemore admitted taking money from an agent ($10,000, to be precise) to steer the kid into declaring for the NBA draft and signing with that agent. Everyone's first reaction was to say how bad this was for both Kansas and McLemore, but the more I think about it the less worried I would be if I were him. First of all, no one is saying McLemore took any money, just the coach. It is probably naive to think Mclemore wouldn't at least make a cut of those funds, but so far there is nothing to link him to the funds. Thus there is really no way to prove he had any knowledge that this was taking place, which makes it hard to penalize him or the school. But perhaps more importantly, McLemore did declare for the NBA draft (where he is expected to be a first-round selection), which means there is literally nothing the NCAA can do to him anymore. Kansas didn't win a title and while McLemore had a very good season it was not like he won the Wooden Award (basketball's version of the Heisman Trophy), so it is not like they can strip him of that. In some ways, I find myself enjoying the spectacle of the NCAA looking on helpless to do anything about it. In the last few years I have found myself growing more and more weary of the NCAA for their hypocrisy regarding the idea of "student-athletes" while selling out long-standing college traditions and rivalries in an attempt to make a few extra bucks by switching conferences. On top of that they are only too happy to make example out of smaller schools which have minor violations while ignoring schools which break the rules simply because they are popular. If you want to know what is wrong with college athletics you should look no further than the people who run it, which is why I have no sympathy for them when I see a kid who may have found a way to make the system work for him instead of the other way around. I think we are just one step closer to ignoring the NCAA once and for all, and ironically ditching the people in charge of policing the games may be the one thing which actually cleans them up for good.
-As if to illustrate my point about the people running college athletics really being the people we should be watching, look no further than the Rutgers basketball team. Last month I told you about how their coach had been caught verbally and in some cases physically assaulting members of the team. That coach was eventually fired and the athletic director soon followed him out the door. What they needed was a strong leader with with a good reputation to steady the program while it got back on its feet. That is why I loved the hiring of Eddie Jordan a couple weeks ago. Jordan had a reputation as a straight-forward and well-liked coach while in the NBA and while his teams never had much success, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't like Eddie Jordan the man. On top of that he attended Rutgers and was the face of one of their most famous teams, a squad which reached the Final Four. Everything about this seemed like the program was making all the right moves. That was right up until Jordan's introductory press conference, at which he was identified as being from the class of '77. There is just one problem with that - Jordan never graduated from Rutgers. Now, in the grand scheme of things this doesn't matter. Unlike, say, the high school level, Jordan is not being asked to teach classes at Rutgers, just coach the basketball team and he has more than enough real-world experience to be qualified to do that. The problem is that this is just another thing which makes Rutgers look as though they are being run by idiot who don't know what they are doing. Considering they are about to enter the Big Ten next year and their teams are going to take a pounding for the next couple of seasons they last thing they can afford to do is look unqualified off the course as well. When the scandal went down last month I mentioned I was surprised President Robert Barchi had survived the purge. Well, there is no one left to throw under the bus, so this really should be the end of the line for him. The good news is that if Barchi still wants to work at a college, he doesn't need to update his resume because obviously no one is checking those anymore.
-I don't consider myself overly sensitive to when it comes to team nicknames which relate to Native Americans. I have never thought teams like the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves or Florida State Seminoles were doing anything wrong using those mascots (though I do find the 'tomahawk chop' used by Atlanta and FSU fans to be super-annoying) and thought the people who were fighting to have those names changed were doing it more to get attention for themselves than their cause. All that being said, I continue to be amazed that the name Washington Redskins has been allowed to exist for this long. This controversy comes up every few years and apparently we have reached that section of the calendar again, because in the last few months the nickname has once again become a topic of conversation. The difference is that this time it feels as though the conversation is being taken a little more seriously. As near as I can remember this is the first time actual alternative mascots had been discussed as one DC council member suggested the name could be changed to the "Red Tails". (I never said it was a good suggestion. Hey, every first attempt is awful.) Still, the only voice that really matters in the discussion is that of Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and this week he has emphatically said the team will "never" change their name. The team even released a poll showing how strongly the city supports the nickname, though for all we know the poll consisted of asking everyone who works in the team offices. I obviously don't have a horse in the race, but if the team really does want to keep the name the first thing they need to do is pull Snyder back from the discussion because he is pretty much loathed outside of Washington. He's the kind of owner who nickle and dimes fans and fancies himself a bit of a mini George Steinbrenner, but the difference is that Steinbrenner actually won championships. Therefore, there are a lot of people who would voice their opposition to the Redskin name just because Snyder so vehemently supports it and not because it tries to label an entire race of humans. Yep, hatred of Dan Snyder may actually trump racism. But I guess as long as the team gets a new name the end justify the means.
-One of the most frustrating things about trying to talk to baseball fans is the way they dismiss all the calls Major League umpires get wrong by saying it is just all part of the 'human element' which makes baseball so great. I'm all for cutting people some slack when things are happening in real-time and at full-speed, but somewhere along the way making mistakes stops being cute and starts getting embarrassing and we had two examples of that this week. The first happened in Cleveland where a homerun hit by the Oakland A's was reviewed after being ruled as a ground-rule double and even though the replay showed the ball cleared the fence the play stood as called. Seriously, what is the point of replay if you aren't even going to use it correctly? (I would accuse the umpires of deliberately getting the call wrong even after the review as their protest of having replay looking over their shoulders, but I don't think they are that crafty.) But what happened the next night is even worse. The Los Angeles Angels were in Houston to play the Astros. The Astros were bringing in a relief pitcher late in the game. As so often happens, once the pitcher was announced the Angels made a substitution of their own and brought in a pinch hitter. That was when the Astros brought in yet another pitcher before the first guy could ever throw a pitch. That is supposed to be against the rules (one of the few rules which actually speeds the game up), but the umps allowed the substitution. I have to say, if I were an Angels fan that would blow my mind. I mean, I can forgive someone like me for not knowing that was a rule, but knowing obscure rules is why a baseball umpire exists. They aren't like NFL refs who have Monday-Friday jobs - this is all they do for a living. Fortunately for those umps it didn't impact the outcome and the Angels still won the game. Unfortunately, MLB didn't see it as quite so inconsequential and suspended those umps for a couple games. Funny enough, it appears the 'human element' is only good for the game when there aren't 400 cameras around to see it.
-Last week I told how Vijay Singh had become somewhat of a punchline on the PGA Tour for his admission about taking deer antler spray, when it turned out buying the spray is a waste of money because it doesn't work. I assumed this would be the end of the story and we would all resume our regularly-scheduled lives, apart from Singh who would have to take a little extra ribbing in the locker room. Well, this week we learned Singh isn't laughing because on Wednesday he sued the PGA for defamation of character. Singh contends his reputation was damaged as a result of all the whispers of a suspension and he feels the PGA did him a disservice by leaking the story to the press before testing to see if the deer antler spray even worked. On the one hand, I am totally on Singh's side. The PGA totally jumped the gun on this one and should have taken investigated not only the deer antler spray but the IGF-1 more thoroughly before commenting on the story at all. It definitely would have saved everyone a lot of aggravation. On the other hand, I am curious as to what Singh actually thinks he can gain with this lawsuit because I never thought his reputation was all that great on Tour before this. He's always been prickly with the media, but that is their problem not ours, so I was thinking more about how he is viewed by fans, other players and, most importantly, sponsors. I'm sure their are people out there who are diehard Vijay Singh fans, but they are a decidedly small group. And while Singh is respected on Tour you never hear players talk about how much fun he is to work with on the range. (Filing this lawsuit the week of The Players Championship, the PGA's biggest event all year, and taking all the spotlight on Wednesday certainly won't gain him any friends at PGA headquarters.) Lastly, I can't tell you the last time I saw Vijay Singh in a commercial. That leads me to conclude this has to just be an issue of pride for him. And while I can respect that, at this point I certainly don't think a lawsuit is going to undo any damage which has been done. I can tell you this much, if you want more people to like you, hiring a lawyer and demanding they do is the wrong way to go about it.
-College baseball has always been kind of an intriguing sport for me because I can't quite figure out if these guys are really good or simply the best of what's left. You see, if you commit to play college baseball you have to stay for three years, so a lot of guys sign directly out of high school when the chance presents itself. Plus I don't know why they insist on playing with aluminum bats when they are so dangerous and it hinders a player's chance to transition smoothly to pro ball, which obviously makes you use wood bats. In fact the only way that college baseball prepares players for the majors is in the drug testing. Thanks to the steroid era, college baseball has one of the most stringent drug testing policies in all of college athletics. Still, that doesn't mean a few kids don't try and find the cracks. For as long as their has been drug testing there have been players trying to find away to get around those drug tests. The old adage is "it's our scientists versus their scientists", but for all the advances in both modern science and cheating, there are still a few people out there who like to rely on the oldies but goodies and one of the oldest ways to try and pass the a drug test is to have someone else take it for you. The only thing is that if you do that you should probably make sure your friend is drug-free. This week a player for the University of Texas convinced teammate Cory Knebel to pee in a cup for him so he would pass a drug test. One small problem: Knebel takes Adderall for ADD and Adderall is banned by the NCAA. The test obviously failed and when pressed for details the player fessed up and named Knebel as his source. But, here's the most messed up part of the whole story: Knebel was suspended for having the drugs in his system (even if they are prescription) and so far the teammate who asked him to take the test for him hasn't been punished because technically he hasn't failed a test yet (the school won't even name him). So, let that be a lesson for you kids - if you rope your friend into helping you cheat and the two of you get caught, rat him out before he has a chance to tell his side of the story and he may be the only one who gets punished. Maybe college baseball does prepare kids for life in the majors better than I first thought.
-Monday afternoon a story broke which revealed that an adviser and former AAU coach of Kansas freshman Ben McLemore admitted taking money from an agent ($10,000, to be precise) to steer the kid into declaring for the NBA draft and signing with that agent. Everyone's first reaction was to say how bad this was for both Kansas and McLemore, but the more I think about it the less worried I would be if I were him. First of all, no one is saying McLemore took any money, just the coach. It is probably naive to think Mclemore wouldn't at least make a cut of those funds, but so far there is nothing to link him to the funds. Thus there is really no way to prove he had any knowledge that this was taking place, which makes it hard to penalize him or the school. But perhaps more importantly, McLemore did declare for the NBA draft (where he is expected to be a first-round selection), which means there is literally nothing the NCAA can do to him anymore. Kansas didn't win a title and while McLemore had a very good season it was not like he won the Wooden Award (basketball's version of the Heisman Trophy), so it is not like they can strip him of that. In some ways, I find myself enjoying the spectacle of the NCAA looking on helpless to do anything about it. In the last few years I have found myself growing more and more weary of the NCAA for their hypocrisy regarding the idea of "student-athletes" while selling out long-standing college traditions and rivalries in an attempt to make a few extra bucks by switching conferences. On top of that they are only too happy to make example out of smaller schools which have minor violations while ignoring schools which break the rules simply because they are popular. If you want to know what is wrong with college athletics you should look no further than the people who run it, which is why I have no sympathy for them when I see a kid who may have found a way to make the system work for him instead of the other way around. I think we are just one step closer to ignoring the NCAA once and for all, and ironically ditching the people in charge of policing the games may be the one thing which actually cleans them up for good.
-As if to illustrate my point about the people running college athletics really being the people we should be watching, look no further than the Rutgers basketball team. Last month I told you about how their coach had been caught verbally and in some cases physically assaulting members of the team. That coach was eventually fired and the athletic director soon followed him out the door. What they needed was a strong leader with with a good reputation to steady the program while it got back on its feet. That is why I loved the hiring of Eddie Jordan a couple weeks ago. Jordan had a reputation as a straight-forward and well-liked coach while in the NBA and while his teams never had much success, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't like Eddie Jordan the man. On top of that he attended Rutgers and was the face of one of their most famous teams, a squad which reached the Final Four. Everything about this seemed like the program was making all the right moves. That was right up until Jordan's introductory press conference, at which he was identified as being from the class of '77. There is just one problem with that - Jordan never graduated from Rutgers. Now, in the grand scheme of things this doesn't matter. Unlike, say, the high school level, Jordan is not being asked to teach classes at Rutgers, just coach the basketball team and he has more than enough real-world experience to be qualified to do that. The problem is that this is just another thing which makes Rutgers look as though they are being run by idiot who don't know what they are doing. Considering they are about to enter the Big Ten next year and their teams are going to take a pounding for the next couple of seasons they last thing they can afford to do is look unqualified off the course as well. When the scandal went down last month I mentioned I was surprised President Robert Barchi had survived the purge. Well, there is no one left to throw under the bus, so this really should be the end of the line for him. The good news is that if Barchi still wants to work at a college, he doesn't need to update his resume because obviously no one is checking those anymore.
-I don't consider myself overly sensitive to when it comes to team nicknames which relate to Native Americans. I have never thought teams like the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves or Florida State Seminoles were doing anything wrong using those mascots (though I do find the 'tomahawk chop' used by Atlanta and FSU fans to be super-annoying) and thought the people who were fighting to have those names changed were doing it more to get attention for themselves than their cause. All that being said, I continue to be amazed that the name Washington Redskins has been allowed to exist for this long. This controversy comes up every few years and apparently we have reached that section of the calendar again, because in the last few months the nickname has once again become a topic of conversation. The difference is that this time it feels as though the conversation is being taken a little more seriously. As near as I can remember this is the first time actual alternative mascots had been discussed as one DC council member suggested the name could be changed to the "Red Tails". (I never said it was a good suggestion. Hey, every first attempt is awful.) Still, the only voice that really matters in the discussion is that of Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and this week he has emphatically said the team will "never" change their name. The team even released a poll showing how strongly the city supports the nickname, though for all we know the poll consisted of asking everyone who works in the team offices. I obviously don't have a horse in the race, but if the team really does want to keep the name the first thing they need to do is pull Snyder back from the discussion because he is pretty much loathed outside of Washington. He's the kind of owner who nickle and dimes fans and fancies himself a bit of a mini George Steinbrenner, but the difference is that Steinbrenner actually won championships. Therefore, there are a lot of people who would voice their opposition to the Redskin name just because Snyder so vehemently supports it and not because it tries to label an entire race of humans. Yep, hatred of Dan Snyder may actually trump racism. But I guess as long as the team gets a new name the end justify the means.
-One of the most frustrating things about trying to talk to baseball fans is the way they dismiss all the calls Major League umpires get wrong by saying it is just all part of the 'human element' which makes baseball so great. I'm all for cutting people some slack when things are happening in real-time and at full-speed, but somewhere along the way making mistakes stops being cute and starts getting embarrassing and we had two examples of that this week. The first happened in Cleveland where a homerun hit by the Oakland A's was reviewed after being ruled as a ground-rule double and even though the replay showed the ball cleared the fence the play stood as called. Seriously, what is the point of replay if you aren't even going to use it correctly? (I would accuse the umpires of deliberately getting the call wrong even after the review as their protest of having replay looking over their shoulders, but I don't think they are that crafty.) But what happened the next night is even worse. The Los Angeles Angels were in Houston to play the Astros. The Astros were bringing in a relief pitcher late in the game. As so often happens, once the pitcher was announced the Angels made a substitution of their own and brought in a pinch hitter. That was when the Astros brought in yet another pitcher before the first guy could ever throw a pitch. That is supposed to be against the rules (one of the few rules which actually speeds the game up), but the umps allowed the substitution. I have to say, if I were an Angels fan that would blow my mind. I mean, I can forgive someone like me for not knowing that was a rule, but knowing obscure rules is why a baseball umpire exists. They aren't like NFL refs who have Monday-Friday jobs - this is all they do for a living. Fortunately for those umps it didn't impact the outcome and the Angels still won the game. Unfortunately, MLB didn't see it as quite so inconsequential and suspended those umps for a couple games. Funny enough, it appears the 'human element' is only good for the game when there aren't 400 cameras around to see it.
-Last week I told how Vijay Singh had become somewhat of a punchline on the PGA Tour for his admission about taking deer antler spray, when it turned out buying the spray is a waste of money because it doesn't work. I assumed this would be the end of the story and we would all resume our regularly-scheduled lives, apart from Singh who would have to take a little extra ribbing in the locker room. Well, this week we learned Singh isn't laughing because on Wednesday he sued the PGA for defamation of character. Singh contends his reputation was damaged as a result of all the whispers of a suspension and he feels the PGA did him a disservice by leaking the story to the press before testing to see if the deer antler spray even worked. On the one hand, I am totally on Singh's side. The PGA totally jumped the gun on this one and should have taken investigated not only the deer antler spray but the IGF-1 more thoroughly before commenting on the story at all. It definitely would have saved everyone a lot of aggravation. On the other hand, I am curious as to what Singh actually thinks he can gain with this lawsuit because I never thought his reputation was all that great on Tour before this. He's always been prickly with the media, but that is their problem not ours, so I was thinking more about how he is viewed by fans, other players and, most importantly, sponsors. I'm sure their are people out there who are diehard Vijay Singh fans, but they are a decidedly small group. And while Singh is respected on Tour you never hear players talk about how much fun he is to work with on the range. (Filing this lawsuit the week of The Players Championship, the PGA's biggest event all year, and taking all the spotlight on Wednesday certainly won't gain him any friends at PGA headquarters.) Lastly, I can't tell you the last time I saw Vijay Singh in a commercial. That leads me to conclude this has to just be an issue of pride for him. And while I can respect that, at this point I certainly don't think a lawsuit is going to undo any damage which has been done. I can tell you this much, if you want more people to like you, hiring a lawyer and demanding they do is the wrong way to go about it.
-College baseball has always been kind of an intriguing sport for me because I can't quite figure out if these guys are really good or simply the best of what's left. You see, if you commit to play college baseball you have to stay for three years, so a lot of guys sign directly out of high school when the chance presents itself. Plus I don't know why they insist on playing with aluminum bats when they are so dangerous and it hinders a player's chance to transition smoothly to pro ball, which obviously makes you use wood bats. In fact the only way that college baseball prepares players for the majors is in the drug testing. Thanks to the steroid era, college baseball has one of the most stringent drug testing policies in all of college athletics. Still, that doesn't mean a few kids don't try and find the cracks. For as long as their has been drug testing there have been players trying to find away to get around those drug tests. The old adage is "it's our scientists versus their scientists", but for all the advances in both modern science and cheating, there are still a few people out there who like to rely on the oldies but goodies and one of the oldest ways to try and pass the a drug test is to have someone else take it for you. The only thing is that if you do that you should probably make sure your friend is drug-free. This week a player for the University of Texas convinced teammate Cory Knebel to pee in a cup for him so he would pass a drug test. One small problem: Knebel takes Adderall for ADD and Adderall is banned by the NCAA. The test obviously failed and when pressed for details the player fessed up and named Knebel as his source. But, here's the most messed up part of the whole story: Knebel was suspended for having the drugs in his system (even if they are prescription) and so far the teammate who asked him to take the test for him hasn't been punished because technically he hasn't failed a test yet (the school won't even name him). So, let that be a lesson for you kids - if you rope your friend into helping you cheat and the two of you get caught, rat him out before he has a chance to tell his side of the story and he may be the only one who gets punished. Maybe college baseball does prepare kids for life in the majors better than I first thought.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Join The Crowd
Late last week Rhode Island passed a law legalizing gay marriage effective as of August 1st, making gay marriage legal in all of New England. The news was not met with a lot of fanfare in this area, mostly because it was so expected. It is a little like being back in high school when that last friend gets their driver's license - the thrill is kind of gone by this point. But in all seriousness I am sincerely surprised it took Rhode Island this long, especially since they are close enough to see that the marriage debate was much ado about nothing in the rest of New England. It is not like gay marriage has sent the rest of us spiraling into the depth as so many of the old-school "pro-family" people predicted. I guess they figured between Massachusetts and Connecticut, we had it covered. But, what really surprised me was the revelation that apparently Rhode Island was being held up as the bell-cow for several other states because about five days after Rhode Island passed their measure Delaware's version of the bill passed through their state House of Representatives and is expected to become law. And just yesterday Minnesota House passed a bill legalizing gay marriage which everyone expects to pass through their Senate with no issues. The states which outlaw gay marriage are dropping like flies.
I have to say the ease with which these laws are passing make me both happy and sad. Obviously, as someone who believes people have the right to marry whomever they fall in love with I am pleased to see that the places they can go to make it legal are growing in number. (I am also happy for their friends and family because as awesome as Boston is in the Spring and Fall, no guest enjoys having to travel to a destination wedding. If you made people travel more than 500 miles to go to your wedding anyone who says they enjoyed the experience is lying to you. And if you got married on a Sunday they are openly hoping your marriage fails.) I'm also pleased at the lack of media coverage because it proves that this is becoming the norm, not the exception. However, it makes me sad that it has taken this long. Polls say that Americans are in favor of allowing gay marriage by a margin of around 3-1 and the gap is widening every single day. The fact that lawmakers are only now getting around to making it legal shows just how out of touch these people are and how afraid they are to piss off the small corner of the population simply because those people open their checkbooks the most. It also makes me sad because it reminds me that most members of Congress are terrible at math. 50 people giving you $1,000 is nice, but 500 people giving you $100 is better. Not only is the money is the same but the last time I checked elections are won by who has the most votes, not who raises the most money.
Unfortunately it will never be that simple because clearly there are some states where the road is going to be tougher than others. When it comes to this kind of issue it is never about what the majority thinks but what the minority with the power want to do and, sadly, to get that level of power you have to have been around for a while. You don't keep that kind of influence by rocking the boat. It can be really hard to undo several generations of thinking, especially when those people think changing their stance on an issue is an attack on their very way of life. I would just caution the people who support gay marriage to state their case to the hardliners who are pushing back carefully. First off, ask yourself the very simple question of how you would respond if someone came and told you that you were an idiot because they disagree with something you have been told your whole life is the correct way to think. I'm pretty sure you would not appreciate the opinion. Secondly, don't go in demanding because if there is one thing we have learned in the last few years it is that people do not respond well when they are told they have to do something. Often what results is they actually dig their heels in further than they would if the idea was simply presented better. The best thing you can do is word it in such a way as to make them think it was their idea in the first place. Allow George Takei to explain it a little further.
I have to say the ease with which these laws are passing make me both happy and sad. Obviously, as someone who believes people have the right to marry whomever they fall in love with I am pleased to see that the places they can go to make it legal are growing in number. (I am also happy for their friends and family because as awesome as Boston is in the Spring and Fall, no guest enjoys having to travel to a destination wedding. If you made people travel more than 500 miles to go to your wedding anyone who says they enjoyed the experience is lying to you. And if you got married on a Sunday they are openly hoping your marriage fails.) I'm also pleased at the lack of media coverage because it proves that this is becoming the norm, not the exception. However, it makes me sad that it has taken this long. Polls say that Americans are in favor of allowing gay marriage by a margin of around 3-1 and the gap is widening every single day. The fact that lawmakers are only now getting around to making it legal shows just how out of touch these people are and how afraid they are to piss off the small corner of the population simply because those people open their checkbooks the most. It also makes me sad because it reminds me that most members of Congress are terrible at math. 50 people giving you $1,000 is nice, but 500 people giving you $100 is better. Not only is the money is the same but the last time I checked elections are won by who has the most votes, not who raises the most money.
Unfortunately it will never be that simple because clearly there are some states where the road is going to be tougher than others. When it comes to this kind of issue it is never about what the majority thinks but what the minority with the power want to do and, sadly, to get that level of power you have to have been around for a while. You don't keep that kind of influence by rocking the boat. It can be really hard to undo several generations of thinking, especially when those people think changing their stance on an issue is an attack on their very way of life. I would just caution the people who support gay marriage to state their case to the hardliners who are pushing back carefully. First off, ask yourself the very simple question of how you would respond if someone came and told you that you were an idiot because they disagree with something you have been told your whole life is the correct way to think. I'm pretty sure you would not appreciate the opinion. Secondly, don't go in demanding because if there is one thing we have learned in the last few years it is that people do not respond well when they are told they have to do something. Often what results is they actually dig their heels in further than they would if the idea was simply presented better. The best thing you can do is word it in such a way as to make them think it was their idea in the first place. Allow George Takei to explain it a little further.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
If It Ain't Broke...
I openly admit that I am not a man who enjoys change. While I concede the occasional shock to the system is great for shaking someone out of a funk, more often than not I find it does more harm than good, especially when you start altering things which have been working well for an extended period of time just because you are bored. That is why I can never understand it when companies which have a successful business model start messing with what has been working. I tend to think all it will do is alienate the existing customers and typically I am right about this. This week the company in question is YouTube, the free video streaming site, which has announced they will begin offering a paid-subscription service for a number of channels. They have already launch a couple of channels, but plan to offer subscriptions ranging from .99 to $7.99 and the future channels will essentially be online On-Demand services, where people can watch how-to videos done by professionals as well as older episodes of shows or movies without the fear they will be yanked down due to copyright laws. This is a clear shot at the traditional cable networks and if it worked it could change the way people watch their favorite shows as well as whether or not they decide to even keep cable in their homes. Of course, all of this depends on whether or not it actually works.
I have to say I am rather skeptical about this plan. Right now YouTube can give this a shot because they are the biggest online video provider on the internet and what good is having that position if you don't use it? But even they have to know how quickly that can change. The internet is extremely volatile in that regard - Napster used to be the place you got your music and MySpace was the place you networked with friends. Now no one uses those sites as anything more than a punchline. MySpace just got run over by Facebook, but Napster died because they started charging for music and YouTube needs to know they are not immune from the same fate. Just look at their rivals over at Hulu. When they first burst onto the scene offering free shows everyone loved them and saw the site as a serious challenge to YouTube. The second they started charging for access to older shows in their library with Hulu+ their momentum died. As it is YouTube has already begun to press its luck by running longer and longer ads before popular videos. (I tried to watch a :90 second video clip. The commercial in front of it was 3:30. As you can imagine, I didn't stick around.) Sure you can skip most of them, but once advertisers start paying more money we should expect that feature to go away and that is when YouTube should expect to see a large drop in visitors. The internet will always find a way to make the things people want to see be free.
[Sidebar: My lack of faith in this plan could also stem from the channels YouTube picked to use as their flagship stations when announcing this new format. The first will be a Sesame Street channel, because finding old episodes of Sesame Street is just so damn difficult. On top of that it is not like kids need the most recent episodes of that show. Hell, they still run clips they filmed in the 1970s and most 4 year-olds don't know the difference. The second was a UFC channel. This is probably my own personal bias, but I question just how popular the UFC really is. People always say it has eclipsed boxing, but considering boxing's place in today's sports landscape that isn't all that impressive. The last was a channel centered around the show "Young Turks", which is a very left-leaning show which currently airs on Current TV. Considering the test patterns that air after network TV sign off for the night get better ratings than any show on Current TV, I don't expect this to be a major revenue stream. Reportedly YouTube has 30 channels ready to launch, but if these are the three they decided to focus on at the announcement of this plan you would assume these are their strongest offerings because normally when a company has a big press conference to announce a new initiative they lead with their best stuff. I have to say that if this is the cream of the crop they had better head back to the drawing board and do it quickly.]
Look, you're not going to hear me complain about someone who wants to take on cable companies, because those guys need to be knocked down a peg or two. I'm always complaining about the fact that companies charge extra for the channels which should be included in the basic package and that they never group the channels you want together, but they can't wait to give you all the channels you don't want and try to tell you what a great deal you're getting. If there was a way to only have to pay for the 10 channels I actually watch that would be great. Also, it would be nice to see independent artists make a little money with the viral videos they create considering they are what really lifted YouTube to its current height. (Chocolate Rain's money can stop being hypothetical and start being real.) I would just advise YouTube to not get too cocky, although it is hard to see that happening considering their CEO has already declared the site as the victors in the battle with cable. He seems to think YouTube can do to network television what cell phones did to landlines, but I would remind him that cellphones were not initially free. People have a real problem when a service which has always been free starts charging for it (if you don't believe me ask all those newspapers who now hide their content behind a pay wall). Remember, cost has a large impact on context - that random :20 second video your friend forwarded to you may be cute now, but for $1.99 it had better be damn hilarious.
I have to say I am rather skeptical about this plan. Right now YouTube can give this a shot because they are the biggest online video provider on the internet and what good is having that position if you don't use it? But even they have to know how quickly that can change. The internet is extremely volatile in that regard - Napster used to be the place you got your music and MySpace was the place you networked with friends. Now no one uses those sites as anything more than a punchline. MySpace just got run over by Facebook, but Napster died because they started charging for music and YouTube needs to know they are not immune from the same fate. Just look at their rivals over at Hulu. When they first burst onto the scene offering free shows everyone loved them and saw the site as a serious challenge to YouTube. The second they started charging for access to older shows in their library with Hulu+ their momentum died. As it is YouTube has already begun to press its luck by running longer and longer ads before popular videos. (I tried to watch a :90 second video clip. The commercial in front of it was 3:30. As you can imagine, I didn't stick around.) Sure you can skip most of them, but once advertisers start paying more money we should expect that feature to go away and that is when YouTube should expect to see a large drop in visitors. The internet will always find a way to make the things people want to see be free.
[Sidebar: My lack of faith in this plan could also stem from the channels YouTube picked to use as their flagship stations when announcing this new format. The first will be a Sesame Street channel, because finding old episodes of Sesame Street is just so damn difficult. On top of that it is not like kids need the most recent episodes of that show. Hell, they still run clips they filmed in the 1970s and most 4 year-olds don't know the difference. The second was a UFC channel. This is probably my own personal bias, but I question just how popular the UFC really is. People always say it has eclipsed boxing, but considering boxing's place in today's sports landscape that isn't all that impressive. The last was a channel centered around the show "Young Turks", which is a very left-leaning show which currently airs on Current TV. Considering the test patterns that air after network TV sign off for the night get better ratings than any show on Current TV, I don't expect this to be a major revenue stream. Reportedly YouTube has 30 channels ready to launch, but if these are the three they decided to focus on at the announcement of this plan you would assume these are their strongest offerings because normally when a company has a big press conference to announce a new initiative they lead with their best stuff. I have to say that if this is the cream of the crop they had better head back to the drawing board and do it quickly.]
Look, you're not going to hear me complain about someone who wants to take on cable companies, because those guys need to be knocked down a peg or two. I'm always complaining about the fact that companies charge extra for the channels which should be included in the basic package and that they never group the channels you want together, but they can't wait to give you all the channels you don't want and try to tell you what a great deal you're getting. If there was a way to only have to pay for the 10 channels I actually watch that would be great. Also, it would be nice to see independent artists make a little money with the viral videos they create considering they are what really lifted YouTube to its current height. (Chocolate Rain's money can stop being hypothetical and start being real.) I would just advise YouTube to not get too cocky, although it is hard to see that happening considering their CEO has already declared the site as the victors in the battle with cable. He seems to think YouTube can do to network television what cell phones did to landlines, but I would remind him that cellphones were not initially free. People have a real problem when a service which has always been free starts charging for it (if you don't believe me ask all those newspapers who now hide their content behind a pay wall). Remember, cost has a large impact on context - that random :20 second video your friend forwarded to you may be cute now, but for $1.99 it had better be damn hilarious.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Guilty Of Indifference
Despite being someone who loves a good true crime story, I have never found myself infatuated with any high-profile criminal trials. I will certainly read about the outcome once a verdict is announced, but you will never find me tuning in to see the details of what took place on a day-to-day basis. I assume this disinterest is directly related to my first experience with them being the OJ Simpson trial. That ruling was so unsatisfying that it may have turned me off celebrity trials for good. That is why I barely batted an eyelash when I heard that after four months of back and forth, looking at evidence as well as another week of deliberations the jury had returned a guilty verdict in the trial of murderer Jodi Arias who was convicted of killing her boyfriend in Arizona in 2008. However, from the way the news and social media exploded it appears I was one of the few. Everywhere you turned this afternoon there were people who had an opinion on the case and not only that but they acted as though they were invested in the outcome. Case in point: the fact a verdict was coming in was a trending topic on Twitter and around the time I assume the verdict was being delivered I swear I heard a cheer go up from my neighbor's house. Considering there wasn't a game on at the time I don't know what else it could have been. (And what else is worth yelling about?)
I'm trying to figure out why this particular case was so popular because while it had all the normal elements which make a trial interesting to the general public (violence, sex and a mildly attractive defendant), it certainly didn't have much in the way of drama. Normally what makes these proceeding interesting is you don't know how they will end. And while I will grant you that a jury trial can obviously take an unexpected twist, if you read any details of the case it appears that this girl was as deep as a kiddie pool and far from a criminal mastermind as she changed her story about that day three times while on the stand. Her lawyer wasn't much better, as apparently his entire defense appeared to be, "But she's pretty!" This wasn't exactly the crime of the century here, so what made it so damn interesting to everyone but me? It certainly couldn't be the amazing legalese the lawyers were throwing around because if you have ever been in a courtroom for any period of time the reality shatters the illusion of someone yelling, "This whole courtroom is out of order!" pretty quickly. I will grant you that humans have a primal fascination with determining if people are guilty or innocent, because if that wasn't the case shows like "Law & Order" wouldn't have lasted 20 years. But that can only be a small part of it because if people found that so interesting society wouldn't put so much effort into getting out of jury duty every day of the year.
Reportedly this trial was very popular with people who work from home and the stay-at-home parents. I guess this is what happens when they start cancelling daytime soap operas because people will always find another way to get their mid-day fill of drama. Of course, it probably helped that people like Nancy Grace have been staked out in Arizona since the trial began pumping up its significance. ("Journalists" like Nancy Grace are exactly why I hate media-circus trials because they act like just because they have a law degree they can never be wrong again when the reality is they usually get it just as wrong as your average sports analyst, which is to say all the damn time. Only when she's wrong she has a platform capable of ruining people's lives.) But when you remember that if CNN didn't have this case to fill hours of programming they would probably be filling the airways reading random people's tweets, over-hyping a trial will not impact 99.99% of Americans while ignoring things which do is probably a better use of their time. Besides, I can't totally fault CNN on this one because high-profile court cases have sort of become their thing and every 24-hour cable news network has their niche. Fox News' is trying to make everything the President's fault while MSNBC spend all day whining about how mean Fox News is, which left CNN to cover things like trials and natural disasters.
It's not entirely a bad thing either because at least in this case there was a 95% chance it was going to deliver a satisfying verdict. When there is so much depressing news out there it must be nice to be able to be the one station who gives people news they might actually want to hear (even if there were probably producers at CNN hoping she got off on some sort of technicality because not only could then they spend 2 days complaining about our flawed legal system they would have had a retrial to look forward to). But, those people don't need to worry too much about finding programming because if there is one thing which is guaranteed it is there is always another high-profile case to blow out of proportion coming down the tracks. America will wrap itself up in the details, decide the person's fate well before the jury gets a chance to and then call the jury idiots if they don't reach the same conclusion, ignoring the fact that those jurors heard every piece of evidence and we only got the highlights. Then that one will end and we'll move on to the next one and never think about that trial again. Seriously, in some ways these trials are like any other competition show on television. What's ironic is that even though I think the results of "American Idol" have a lot less riding on them, it feels like Jodi Arias is more famous than any recent "Idol" winners. Talk about a tough way to get famous.
I'm trying to figure out why this particular case was so popular because while it had all the normal elements which make a trial interesting to the general public (violence, sex and a mildly attractive defendant), it certainly didn't have much in the way of drama. Normally what makes these proceeding interesting is you don't know how they will end. And while I will grant you that a jury trial can obviously take an unexpected twist, if you read any details of the case it appears that this girl was as deep as a kiddie pool and far from a criminal mastermind as she changed her story about that day three times while on the stand. Her lawyer wasn't much better, as apparently his entire defense appeared to be, "But she's pretty!" This wasn't exactly the crime of the century here, so what made it so damn interesting to everyone but me? It certainly couldn't be the amazing legalese the lawyers were throwing around because if you have ever been in a courtroom for any period of time the reality shatters the illusion of someone yelling, "This whole courtroom is out of order!" pretty quickly. I will grant you that humans have a primal fascination with determining if people are guilty or innocent, because if that wasn't the case shows like "Law & Order" wouldn't have lasted 20 years. But that can only be a small part of it because if people found that so interesting society wouldn't put so much effort into getting out of jury duty every day of the year.
Reportedly this trial was very popular with people who work from home and the stay-at-home parents. I guess this is what happens when they start cancelling daytime soap operas because people will always find another way to get their mid-day fill of drama. Of course, it probably helped that people like Nancy Grace have been staked out in Arizona since the trial began pumping up its significance. ("Journalists" like Nancy Grace are exactly why I hate media-circus trials because they act like just because they have a law degree they can never be wrong again when the reality is they usually get it just as wrong as your average sports analyst, which is to say all the damn time. Only when she's wrong she has a platform capable of ruining people's lives.) But when you remember that if CNN didn't have this case to fill hours of programming they would probably be filling the airways reading random people's tweets, over-hyping a trial will not impact 99.99% of Americans while ignoring things which do is probably a better use of their time. Besides, I can't totally fault CNN on this one because high-profile court cases have sort of become their thing and every 24-hour cable news network has their niche. Fox News' is trying to make everything the President's fault while MSNBC spend all day whining about how mean Fox News is, which left CNN to cover things like trials and natural disasters.
It's not entirely a bad thing either because at least in this case there was a 95% chance it was going to deliver a satisfying verdict. When there is so much depressing news out there it must be nice to be able to be the one station who gives people news they might actually want to hear (even if there were probably producers at CNN hoping she got off on some sort of technicality because not only could then they spend 2 days complaining about our flawed legal system they would have had a retrial to look forward to). But, those people don't need to worry too much about finding programming because if there is one thing which is guaranteed it is there is always another high-profile case to blow out of proportion coming down the tracks. America will wrap itself up in the details, decide the person's fate well before the jury gets a chance to and then call the jury idiots if they don't reach the same conclusion, ignoring the fact that those jurors heard every piece of evidence and we only got the highlights. Then that one will end and we'll move on to the next one and never think about that trial again. Seriously, in some ways these trials are like any other competition show on television. What's ironic is that even though I think the results of "American Idol" have a lot less riding on them, it feels like Jodi Arias is more famous than any recent "Idol" winners. Talk about a tough way to get famous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)