Tag: media

I hate announcers

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Not ALL announcers. Just MOST of them. Haven’t watched most of the Olympics since 1985 or so. And this week I’ve been watching the T&F competition. And the mic work has been AWFUL. Reason 1. These aren’t track people. They’re sportscasters. Most of whom know little to nothing about the sport/events they’re covering and simply yammer about the factoids on the little piece of paper some producer gave them. It’s insipid. It’s painful. My sister pointed out that a few of them DID actually compete in an event or two. The problem THERE is that they STILL aren’t announcers.

And then it dawned on me. There’s no time to develop as a track and field announcer. Take MLB. 162 Games per year. If you’re an announcer doing only home games that’s 81 games a year at roughly 3 hours per game. 240 hours per year. And if you played the sport you had, what, twenty years of involvement before then? Now look at the track athlete. Start in HS. Done by 25 or so? A decade. Now announce. You’ve got the NCAA’s, the World Championships and the Olympics. Maybe ten hours per year if you get to do them ALL. There’s no WAY to get better. And the masses don’t care. Because they don’t know.

Cliches? “There’s a gold medal on the line in this event.” There’s almost ALWAYS a chance at a gold medal on the line. They just run on and on and on.

It’s sad really.

It’s been 20 days

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so perhaps it’s safe to post some observations.

First, and possibly most important: Without a Single Interview, 3 Agencies Cleared Capitol Cop Who Shot Ashli Babbitt.

8 Times Left-Wing Protesters Broke Into Government Buildings And Assaulted Democracy

Including FLASHBACK: May 2020 Assault On The White House Leaves 60 Secret Service Agents Wounded, President Trump Taken to Secure Bunker.

RETROSPECTIVE: The Disruption of Congressional Proceedings During Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation.

If the January 6 Riots Are “Terrorism” Because They Used Violence to Force A Political Outcome, Why Aren’t the Year of BLM/Antifa Riots Also Terrorism?

RealClearInvestigations’ Jan. 6-BLM Riots Comparison.

  • The summer 2020 riots resulted in some 15 times more injured police officers, 23 times as many arrests, and estimated damages in dollar terms up to 1,300 times more costly than those of the Capitol riot.
  • Authorities have pursued the largely Trump-supporting Capitol rioters with substantially more vigor than suspected wrongdoers in the earlier two cases, and prosecutors and judges alike have weighed Capitol riot defendants’ political views in adjudicating their cases.
  • Dozens of accused Capitol rioters have been held in pretrial detention for months, where they have allegedly been mistreated.
  • In the summer 2020 riots, the vast majority of charges were dismissed, as they were in the Inauguration 2017 unrest. Prosecutors have dropped a single Capitol riot case.
BLM Riots vs Jan 6th

Joseph Hanneman is a veteran Wisconsin-based journalist, now working for The Epoch Times. His analysis is here.

Symptom, not the disease

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I’ve tried to get away from the aggregating that I was doing on my old site, but in light of some stuff the last few days I’m compelled.

First this, from 2007

Which leads to this, from the New York Daily News of three days ago:

Then there’s this from Obama flack Ben Rhodes in his infamous 2016 interview: “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

And finally I’ll close with Joel Kotkin writing at Quillette, we live in an “Age of Amnesia:”

This trend was most marked in the British colonies of North America. Benjamin Franklin noted that high levels of literacy helped American traders and mechanics instigate the rebellion against the Crown and sustain it. But now, with access to information unimaginable in the past, our knowledge of history is fading. Information is increasingly separated from actual knowledge; blogs replace books, and tweets replace essays. Knowledge of even relatively recent events, like the Holocaust or D-Day, is become scanty. Four in 10 American millennials, and at least one in three Europeans, say they know “very little” about the Holocaust, and one in five young French respondents are not even aware it took place.

But don’t worry …. they’ll get (insert current hair-on-fire story here) right.