Back to Crashburn Alley

A REAL BLEND OF SPORTS AND POLITICS

As if we haven't been submerged in 2008 election news and rumors, the entertainment gods have cast a storm upon us: FOX News is going to be mixed into FOX Sports' Super Bowl coverage.

Given Keith Olbermann's sky-high ratings following his injection into NBC's NFL half-time show, it's easy to see why FOX would want to try their hand at mixing football and politics. It's too bad that FOX News is easily the least credible of all of the news channels, ever. Thumb through Crooks and Liars' posts under the FOX News category if you're skeptical.

As a liberal, I think Olbermann is one of the greatest things to happen to the television world since the original American Gladiators. However, mixing Olbermann's political observations into half-time of a football game just doesn't sit well with me. Sports and politics merge in many ways: the playing of the national anthem before games, Congress' mingling in baseball's drug issues, et cetera, but both are deemed necessary. Olbermann's show and FOX News during the Super Bowl are superfluous.

I want to know why Tom Brady will pick apart the Green Bay Packer defense during the Super Bowl, not why Barack Obama will pick apart Hilary Clinton's voting records. And given that it will be FOX News doing the reporting and opining, I imagine we'll be hearing about why Mike Huckabee's plan to Christianize the U.S. Constitution is flawless, or why John McCain's idea to stay in Iraq for 100 years is guaranteed to both turn Iraq into a worldwide beacon of democracy and strengthen our national defense. In other words, we'll be inundated with patently false statements backed up with skewed and made-up facts, like the cries of a liberal media bias.

And for the record, it's not that FOX News is blatantly right-wing that makes me detest it so; it's that they unabashedly ignore reality and make up their own facts and figures on the fly so it suits their agenda. And I'd be just as irritated if they had decided to throw in a bunch of liberals to report and opine during the Super Bowl coverage because it has no reason being there in the first place.

It's bad enough most of us subject ourselves to the irritating Super Bowl commercials, only 5% of which are entertaining (well, maybe this will make it more entertaining this year). Now we're going to sit through war cheer-leading and Republican back-patting.

Did I mention that the election is still 10 months away?

In Other News

You can tell it's the baseball off-season when I go two weeks without one inspiration to write about something. Counting down the days 'til pitchers and catchers report...

Once I get Photoshop CS3 working on my computer again (or once I can get a few graphics done by someone else for free), I'll have a new design for Crashburn Alley up. I haven't really liked either of the designs I've used thus far but I think the one I am waiting to use is pretty snazzy.

Links

The Doug Glanville Perspective. [Balls, Sticks, & Stuff]

Amen... this is the longest off-season ever. [Bugs & Cranks]

Grading the top-ten starting rotations in baseball. [I'm Writing Sports]

Why do some Phillies fans hate Pat Burrell, again? [I've Made a Huge Tiny Mistake]

It's NFL Championship weekend. [Josh Q. Public]

Sportsmanship, where art thou? [Moondog Sports]

A Thought on the Rolen/Glaus Trade. [The Good Phight]

John Brattain hands out The Pujols Awards. [The Hardball Times]

No surprise that the BBWAA got it wrong again, this time with Tim Raines. [The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort]

Bud Selig may be bad, but he's making the owners a lot of money. [Ump Bump]

Hey, Scotty, big girls don't cry. [We Should Be GM's]