Media and Messages....

Foodies, take a seat, no content for you today. Got one in the works, but will take a bit more work before going public..

Sometimes it takes the feeder a while to figure out what probably comes intuitively to most people.....

So there I was lying on the couch yesterday, a normal Sunday afternoon activity, watching (in this case) the final round of the Torrey Pines golf tournament, hoping (in vain) that Mickelson would pull it off. I believe the people in contention were around thirteen strokes under par, and they were having a pretty good battle for the lead. But, instead of showing me the youngster Vegas trying that pesky twenty foot par putt, they cut to a shot of Tiger Woods a few holes ahead, making a routine wedge shot to the green trying to get close enough for a birdie to get back to TWO under. Now, anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of golf knows that a player with only a few holes to play and
eleven strokes off the lead is not going to win anything. In fact, there were probably ten or so golfers in better position than he was, but did we see them? No sir! “Here’s Tiger 90 yards out, addressing the ball…Uh oh, looks like it’s going left! that will be a tough putt…” On and on. Then back to contenders with “This just a bit ago….”.

As this continued I got more and more upset, and started cussing out Tiger, rooting for him to miss and so forth. Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks! (or maybe a bag of golf balls in this case). It ISN’T Tiger I hate so much, it's the damn (for want of a better term)MEDIA! He doesn’t ask to be covered on hole 16 with no chance of winning, it’s the TV folk that figure I have to watch it. Actually, I even felt a little bit of sympathy for Tiger, his game was bad, his triumphal return (media again) to Torrey Pines which he has destroyed in the past in shambles, missing putts he would routinely make, you could see the pain and embarrassment on his face. Some might argue he gets what he deserves, but he was not having a good time. But my epiphany was that I was transferring my animosity to the person being covered rather than to the persons doing the covering! THEY decided what I should see, not the subject!

And then, I started to thinking about other things in that category. Readers of this rag will remember I have gone off on Notre Dame, Da Duuukies (baaaaaby), etc. In reality the teams and players are most likely pretty nice people (well, except maybe that twerpy little point guard (Steve Wojciechowski) for Duke years ago), it’s just that the press/media/networks put these people on a pedestal and worship them and figure I will also. I am getting so I hit the mute button if Vitale is covering a Duke or ACC game, he’s just a publicist for them. Team OK, Vitale not.

And I must admit that during the aftermath of the horrible shootings in Arizona a few weeks back I got more and more agitated at the almost hourly “updates” on the congresswoman when there was no real new information to be had. There were other tragic stories besides hers, with at least six other families whose lives were altered forever. Did we hear much about them? Nope. Just about her. Obviously, I along with the whole Nation, wish a complete recovery, but gosh, network people can’t we spread the coverage around a bit?

Okay, I’m done. I’ll try to be better in the future and keep a little more composure and perspective…or, maybe not..

Sports fans, even you have to

DFD

Got your super bowl menu in your head? Remember if it's snack food it has to be orange