As you know, The Score has its slogan, Home For The Hardcore. They also have Hardcore Sports Radio, a XM channel that is simulcast on TV in the late afternoon. This means kids who come home from school and flick on the electronic babysitter might hear the odd F-bomb before they find Hannah Montana (although, granted, the Hannah franchise is what's really obscene).
Anyway, so get this: A Score staffer recently asked some guys who blog on the NBA to fill out a survey about the league's All-Star Weekend and reciprocated by linking to their sites in a subsequent post. Mr. Home for the Hardcore refused to link to Don Landrigan's With Malice..., calling it a "girly-pictured site" and explaining, "I'm a Christian and don't want to promote near-pornography."
"Near-pornography?" It's always good for the future of journalism and public discourse when someone decides unilaterally that someone's opinion is not valid since he very occasionally throws a bikini shot up on his site. With Malice..., at this writing, happens to have one barely postage-stamp-sized bikini shot of a Japanese woman on its front page, plus one of figure skater Miki Ando, in competition. That doesn't seem to fit the description of one of those "thinly veiled soft-porn sites with lightweight commentary sprinkled in between the bikini pics of the plastic-looking silicone sisters."
Anyway, so get this: A Score staffer recently asked some guys who blog on the NBA to fill out a survey about the league's All-Star Weekend and reciprocated by linking to their sites in a subsequent post. Mr. Home for the Hardcore refused to link to Don Landrigan's With Malice..., calling it a "girly-pictured site" and explaining, "I'm a Christian and don't want to promote near-pornography."
"Near-pornography?" It's always good for the future of journalism and public discourse when someone decides unilaterally that someone's opinion is not valid since he very occasionally throws a bikini shot up on his site. With Malice..., at this writing, happens to have one barely postage-stamp-sized bikini shot of a Japanese woman on its front page, plus one of figure skater Miki Ando, in competition. That doesn't seem to fit the description of one of those "thinly veiled soft-porn sites with lightweight commentary sprinkled in between the bikini pics of the plastic-looking silicone sisters."
No one is judging the guy from The Score (see John 8:7). Along with the whole playing censor part, it's jarring that to find out the Home For The Hardcore is harbouring someone who gets all squeamish about a bikini shot, but hey, they have a big tent. Still, to a sports nut who loves The Score (the 4-6 show notwithstanding), this is like being a teenage metalhead and finding out the guys from Slayer all watched Get Along Gang cartoons in the '80s.
What's next? Will we find out that Cabbie isn't a cabbie? Or that Adnan Virk isn't that much of a baller?
The Score guy is really the hero in this, though, in his one-man campaign to rid the Internet of one-handed surfing. It's really reassuring to know some dudes are so hardcore about giving readers direction that they believe it extends to deciding what intelligent adults shouldn't see — and that you get can get a job in Canada providing content for a website even though you don't appreciate that it's very technologically possible to get your porn fix and sports scores at pretty much the same time.
(Of course, no one who works in the media agrees with everything their employer puts out there. This is especially true if you're work at same chain that gives Michael Coren a weekly column and don't happen to be a batshit xenophobe.)
Posts
6 comments:
I actually appreciated the link regarding Hannah Montana. It has been quite some time since I read a collection of faux-intellectual, elitist garbage quite as breathtakingly arrogant as that. I almost thought it was a put-on, as I didn't think it was possible for anyone to be as big a prick as that guy. Don't like Disney? Hey, that's fine, but don't think that makes you some kind of paragon of hipness and virtue, because it doesn't.
As a parent of two tweens, I am just fine with Hannah Montana - compared to a lot of other crap they could be watching, it's just fine. Billy Ray's daughter seems, so far anyway, to be a genuinely nice kid who is appreciative of what she has been given. She makes for a far better role model than, say, Kurt Cobain.
Heh, heh, heh... you know the story with that guy, Chez Paziena, right?
He was a CNN producer who was fired for that site ... he's kind of become media darling ever since. Besides, you gotta have a bit of breathtaking arrogance to be a writer.
That said, this comment from Kissing Suzy Kolber sort of gets at what we're getting at:
"There is no type of person I detest more than the arrogant pseudo-intellectual who thinks they're better than everyone else because they don't shop at Wal-Mart and they gave 25 fucking dollars to NPR last month. Yeah, assholes, I read books too, but I also get drunk and watch football and sometimes pass out face down in empty boxes of pizza, and I don't see any conflict there."
Hey there Sager...
Thanks for bringing this to light - was a weird experience for me... and it didn't feel right for me to bring it up on my blog.
Bit that gets me was the absolute hypocrisy of a guy who's willing to be at The Score, but wouldn't put up my ideas on his site because of - as you say - "one barely postage-stamp-sized bikini shot"...
Oh well... there we go. Who said you can't learn stuff on blogs?
Here's to the educational process continuing... o_O
Don
The Score not following through with linking to "Don Landrigan's With Malice..." due to the bikini issue is quite hypicritical considering they broadcast the annual SI Swimsuit Photoshoot to their national audience and I'm sure atleast one staffer has a Sunshine Girl calendar in their office cubical.
Unrelated, but with your Hannah Montana mention, I was puzzled why she was a presenter last night during the Academy Awards... AH, it was on ABC ~ Disney Family Channel connection.
Every Oscars is required to have at least one WTF-is-he/she-doing-here? moment with a celebrity who shouldn't be within 1,000 miles of anything that (supposedly) recognizes great motion pictures.
One year it was Dennis Rodman ... last night, it was Hannah.
(Gotta say motion pictures, not "movies," since they'll never recognize the kind of "movie" that people actually paid to see. At least Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen got to act silly as presenters.
Post a Comment