I wonder if those entering the Dark Ages knew it. “Hey, who turned out the lights?”
ESPN last week suspended its lead baseball analyst, Curt Schilling, not for talking games to death, but for a social-media message equating Nazis with current, extremist Muslims.
“Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration.”
Completely unacceptable? Out of line with ESPN’s perspective?
So, then what — very strongly, no less — is ESPN’s perspective?
I could see if Schilling were told by an executive, “Hey, just stick to baseball, OK?” But what was “completely unacceptable” and “in no way represents our company’s perspective” was not only historically true, Schilling under-tweeted the truth. Islamists and Nazis were teammates!
Despite their master-race genocidal crusade, the Nazis, during World War II, recruited, inducted, trained and armed at least 25,000 Balkan Muslims into an Islamic arm of the SS. Tens of thousands more eastern Muslims fought for Nazi Germany. Their mutual attraction was a shared desire to murder Jews.
After the war, “rat lines” that provided escape and sanctuary to Nazi war criminals led to safekeeping in Islamic countries, especially Egypt and Syria. And little about radical Islam, as it today festers and explodes, has changed since the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.
So what Schilling tweeted was (a) true, (b) a vast understatement, and (c) intolerable to ESPN, so at odds with the company’s position that ESPN had no choice but to publicly censure and punish him.
Now that’s unacceptable! Yet it rhymes with the media’s selective outrages and selectively quiet pandering. And pandering continues as the frightened media’s path-of-least-resistance substitute for hard, unfortunate truths.
Saturday night’s FOX 5 News sports report, anchored by Tina Cervasio of MSG renown, was an exercise in staggering group pandering. As her “amusing” kicker, she reported that Steve Smith, now a Ravens wide receiver, was ejected from that night’s preseason game. She didn’t say why he was tossed, but it was for fighting.
Smith’s otherwise superb career has been self-diminished by team-be-damned misconduct, including a suspension for a fight in which he broke a Panthers teammate’s jaw. (During that suspension, ESPN paid him to star in a network promo.)
After his first-quarter ejection Saturday, Cervasio said Smith entered a suite to sit with his son, from where they tweeted a smiling “selfie,” along with his son’s happy message: “when ur dad gets ejected.” The kid added this was the first time he watched his father’s team play while seated with his father.
The son’s final message was, “Thank you, NFL!”
Isn’t that charming, family bonding predicated on Dad being thrown out of the game.
This brought approving, if not forced laughter from Cervasio and the pandering news folks also on the set. Anchor Antwan Lewis gave it final, full approval with, “That’s pretty cool.” Yeah, fabulous.
Reader Wesley Drake, as likely did tens of thousands, thought the tear-filled Wilmer Flores “trade to Milwaukee” drama to be extra special, something that made all feel good for all the right reasons.
But then Drake, as did others, learned that Steiner Collectibles and Flores had joined to exploit the story for every tear-soaked dollar that suckers could spend. Flores autographed photos of him crying, Steiner peddled them.
“Now,” writes Drake, “I feel like an idiot.”
Was there no one with the Mets or perhaps Flores’s agent to discourage such a pathetic sell? Was there no one to tell Flores, perhaps naïve but not starving, that there are other, better ways to make an extra buck?
You can’t buy class, so why sell it?
Saturday, during the Red Sox-Mets game, one of the most trusted voices of New York sports, Howie Rose, retold the warm-the-cockles, trade-that-wasn’t story. He said that Flores, now a crowd favorite, “is very shy” and that “he was almost embarrassed” by all the attention. Hmmm.
Maybe “almost” covered it. He couldn’t have been that embarrassed. That’s one of the economic advantages of the New Dark Ages — embarrassment is sold on the cheap.
Stewart on WWE no moment of zen
Et tu, Jon Stewart? If Stewart thought himself an idealist rather than an easy, cheesy populist, he blew it last week when he lent his presence to a WWE ringside skit.
Perhaps he didn’t care that the McMahon family has for decades headed a drug-death mill for wrestlers, or that the McMahons’ form of entertaining kids is to have wrestlers point to their genitals while hollering, “Suck it!”
But for 16 years, Stewart sat on a Comedy Central set and lampooned America’s biggest big shots for failure to choose right over wrong.
Blowing another game by the book
The Rays, up 2-1 on the Astros on Wednesday, brought in Alex Colome to pitch the eighth. He struck out all three batters — on just 10 pitches! But “playing it by the book,” manager Kevin Cash had Brad Boxberger pitch the ninth. He gave up the tying run and the Rays lost 3-2, in 13 innings.
Mets radio wrap-around man Wayne Randazzo, filling in for Josh Lewin on Saturday: “Unlike the White Sox who don’t wear white socks, the Red Sox actually wear red socks.”
Following Michael Kay’s three-year renewal at ESPN-NY Radio, sidekick Don La Greca has been renewed.
Reader Sal Zuccaro, at Saratoga, was stunned to see $5 for a bottle of water, $8 for a cup of lemonade. Maybe they used the $5 water to make the $8 lemonade.
Who loves ya, kids? Another: The Sept. 13 Sunday afternoon Royals-Orioles game, sold as a Junior Orioles Dugout Club day, has been late-switched to ESPN, 8:05 p.m.
Reader Mike Millet: “Football season’s here. Just heard ESPN’s Jesse Palmer say ‘gap integrity.’ ”
Sunday on YES was the “Brigham-Young” game. Braves pitcher Jake Brigham versus the Yankees’ Chris Young in the top of the eighth. Young popped out to end the inning.
Keith Hernandez again is referring to the Mets as “we.” So what does that make SNY’s viewers?
Reader Mike Caputo: “If you’re caught smoking pot in NYC, you only get a ticket. But it’s a ticket to a Knick game.”