Media

March 26, 2006

'Love' Isn't Fit to Print

South Park retaliated at a former star by skewering his belief in Scientology—and a New York Times reporter modestly declined to quote from the episode. The show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were lashing out at Isaac Hayes, the voice of the character Chef, who walked out on his contract because he was angry at Parker and Stone for creating an episode that mocked Scientology. In this season's premiere, Parker and Stone didn't mention Scientology, but instead made Chef a member of the Super Adventure Club, "a ring of globe-trotting, mind-controlling pedophiles," Alessandra Stanley writes in the New York Times. "After the boys snap Chef out of his trance (he yells disjointed phrases too obscene to print here), his former captors hunt him down and he appears to die a gruesome death." Among those disjointed phrases—strung together from voice clips from prior episodes—that were apparently too obscene to print here (according to spscriptorium): "Well, how about I meet you boys after work and we make love?" How is that worse than "mind-controlling pedophiles"?

Media

March 24, 2006

The CNN Factor

Why would a company pay enormous sums of money to hire a famous actor to do a voiceover for its product, and then not even bother to identify him? According to a recent AP article that appeared on CNN.com, it has something to do with creating a mystery, and thus increasing the brand's "cool" factor. One angle the article does not probe, though, is that perhaps companies do things like this to get free publicity on sites like CNN.com.

Sports

March 24, 2006

'Much of the Information You Read Is Unreliable'

This week, Sports Illustrated published a Chris Ballard article (subscribers-only link) about online sports coverage that's alternately illuminating and maddening. Illuminating, because Ballard interviews many of the most-intriguing figures in online sports, including ESPN.com's Bill Simmons (who is too cool to be interviewed by Gelf; more on that soon), Deadspin's Will Leitch, and Tyler Bleszinski of Athletics Nation; maddening, because Ballard shoehorns his findings into the questionable and tired angle that the ubiquity of online sports coverage is lessening the importance of reportage and causing proliferating bias and inaccuracy. Some sports sites are stupid, biased, fact-free zones; but so is plenty of mainstream sports-media coverage. Gelf, a subscriber for nearly two decades, wouldn't place SI in that category—though it's embarrassing that the heavily and expensively fact-checked magazine wrote of online sports coverage "much of the information you read is unreliable (page 62)" and then placed the sidebar on unreliable information on page 64—but ESPN Radio's Chris Cowherd certainly seems to belong there.

Media

March 22, 2006

Mike Wallace on Mike Wallace

This Gelfer expected a certain blogger who shall go nameless to cover the talk by legendary CBS newsman Mike Wallace at the New York Press Club, so I didn't take notes. But since she couldn't make it, here are a few tidbits from memory (I type this as I watch Steve Kroft tell Stephen Colbert that the 87-year-old Wallace's imminent retirement from 60 Minutes will lower the average age of correspondents by 10 years):

Media

March 20, 2006

Cunt: Anatomy of an Apology

On March 15, the Baltimore Sun issued an unusual apology:

A photograph published yesterday with an article about the court-martial of a guard at Abu Ghraib prison showed a book cover that contained an obscenity. The obscenity went unnoticed during editing and should not have been published. Publication of the photo violates The Sun's guidelines. The Sun apologizes for the oversight.

Sports

March 19, 2006

The Tourney Gods Dislike Jewish Jokes

As if touched by an angel, Bruce Pearl's Tennessee Volunteers won their first-round NCAA tournament game after Chris Lofton broke a tie game in the final seconds with an improbable jumper against Winthrop. But two days later, the Vols couldn't shoot straight in the endgame and Wichita State hit two late jumpers to knock off the D.C. bracket's No. 2 seed. Perhaps Tennessee simply wasn't as good as the Shockers. But Gelf prefers to think that the tourney gods didn't care for Bruce Pearl's nationally televised Jewish joke.

Sports

March 18, 2006

The Leveling of College Hoops

Last year, after the first round of the NCAA tournament, Gelf noted that so many of the highest seeds had close calls. But in the 2006 tournament, the differences between the sport's elite and the low men on the bracket pole have seemingly been all but erased—until the very end of games.

Media

March 17, 2006

On African Optimism

In an article in Granta entitled "How to Write about Africa," Binyavanga Wainaina sarcastically advises would-be journalists and authors to write as though the continent is a single primordial entity, complete with bare-chested noble savages, destitute but jolly.

Sports

March 15, 2006

Bubble Fatigue, Redux

If you're a college-basketball fan, you may have subjected yourself to hours of breathless coverage of big-conference bubble teams—Seton Hall made the NCAA tournament, Cincinnati did not. Now you can promptly ignore those five teams that limped into the tournament (Texas A&M, N.C. State, Alabama, Seton Hall, and Wisconsin). Here's why:

Sports

March 14, 2006

Your March Madness Argot

For an unconventional guide to the players to watch this March in the NCAA tournament, you can turn to the Urban Dictionary. It's a self-edited online resource, but unlike Wikipedia, it allows for many truths, rather than one authoritative guide. So, for instance, the J.J. Redick-inspired urban slang "redick" can mean both, "An overrated basektball player from Duke who shot 4-14 in their loss to Michigan State in the 2005 NCAA tourney" and "Quite possibly the best collegiate shooter of all-time." (There's also the apparently unrelated definition, "In gay male slang, going home with the same trick more than one time"; and no mention of the famous beat poet.)