A reply from the third-worst person in the world (tied)
Of course, you know, this means war.
For those who don't watch MSNBC's "Countdown" - which is about 99 percent of you, if not more in these parts, to judge by Nielsen ratings - Keith Olbermann on Monday named me the third-worst person in the world, tied with some other sports-media columnist (who no doubt deserved it a lot more) for criticizing Alex Flanagan's remarks on NBC's Super Bowl coverage about Kurt Warner and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Hey, I'm not averse to some playful media give-and-take, but I have to say it's a little daunting to be considered the third-worst person (albeit tied for the honor) in a world that includes, if not Hitler, Stalin and Walter O'Malley, at least Osama bin Laden, Gary Glitter and people who get paid big bucks for thinking up new, ever-more-moronic Bud Light ads.
And I have to insist, the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime, if crime there was, to the point where I doubt Olbermann even read what he condemned me for. Instead, he probably got it secondhand from some Internet-surfing intern or, worse yet, a blog.
My 37-word diatribe, listed as a "lowlight" in my Super Bowl overview Monday, reads as such: "Alex Flanagan uses F. Scott Fitzgerald's now-cliche line about how 'there are no second acts in American lives' to describe Kurt Warner. You're a sideline reporter, not an essayist. Who do you think you are, Jack Whitaker?"
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Now, I might have been guilty of a little columnist's shorthand in trying to cram 15 points into 12 inches for a front-page piece of what's now called "alternative storytelling," but all I was suggesting is that reporters who draw on that threadbare Fitzgerald line - whether referring to Kurt Warner or Jennifer Hudson or Richard Nixon or John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Olbermann himself on any of his many comebacks since his career peaked alongside Dan Patrick on ESPN's "SportsCenter" - should find another line of work, and anyone who defends it is a hack as well.
Flanagan's remarks were made before the game, and my simple point was: "You're a sideline reporter, assigned to cover the Arizona Cardinals, and all you can offer before kickoff is some boilerplate literary clich#233; about Warner enjoying a comeback? If that's news, it was news three months ago. What have you been doing in the hours before the game?"
That seems pretty clear, the way I read it, but for Olbermann it borders on the heinous. That's a willful obfuscation to score his own cheap shots, a tactic not unfamiliar to a certain Bill O'Reilly. So yes, be careful what you hate, Mr. Olbermann, because all too often it becomes a part of you. Now go back to your noble work trying to get George W. Bush indicted for war crimes and defending the inalienable right of sideline reporters to use hackneyed sayings.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>The offending column</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=268767">Super Bowl XLIII: the highs, the lows and the in-between <span class="date">[2/2/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>