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More spitting into the storm: When was honesty eliminated as the best policy? When does a nasty, dishonest and expensive habit become a significant part of your legacy?
NBC’s Olympic presentations continue to condition even minimally intelligent viewers to suspect they’re being taken for a ride — the way NBC News rigged that GM truck to explode on impact in 1992.
It’s not just a matter of the IOC auctioning the Games to communist China, the USOC’s willingness to play by China’s malodorous freedom-starved conditions and NBC’s willingness to bow to its unsavory hosts.
And it’s not just that NBC’s national news anchors — Lester Holt’s credibility (and fanny) again scorched by the Olympic Flame — must be seen and heard at or near the tops of newscasts as poorly disguised pregame show shills. “Tonight’s big story: the Olympics!”
As Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, “I owe my soul to the company store.”
But it’s this I don’t get: As long as we, by now, fully anticipate such journalistic tank jobs, why not instead travel the high road? At a time when network newscasts have never been more suspect, why would NBC choose added suspicion and derision?
What would the IOC do if NBC News engendered trust and admiration by not rolling over and playing dead for the Olympics? Refuse to cash its checks?
These NBC Olympics have needlessly resorted to the usual commercial con artistry and sophistry.
NBC has spent tens of millions of dollars to hustle viewers with flag-waving come-ons to watch U.S. teams covered in the logos of slave-wage-stitched ensembles, some from factories within a country so bereft of elemental human rights that NBC News would otherwise encourage viewers to assiduously avoid and despise.
But such are TV’s malleable journalistic convictions. Not until 1998, when CBS lost Olympic rights, did CBS’ “60 Minutes” produce a segment alerting viewers to what was already widely known:
IOC ruler Juan Antonio Samaranch, since deceased, is a creep. He was an unrepentant World War II Spanish fascist and diplomat who bestowed honorary Olympic gold medals on murderous dictators including executed Romanian president Nickolae “The Butcher of Bucharest” Ceausescu.
He was Samaranch’s kind of guy.
But that didn’t prevent NBC’s Dick Enberg from addressing Samaranch, during NBC’s ensuing Olympic coverage as, “Your Excellency.”
NBC’s invention of “plausibly live” (intentionally deceitful) coverage has only added to the mistrust as per voiced-over, post-event “live” commentary.
Monday, on NBC’s Olympic spillover, USA Network, the women’s biathlon was contested. As a competitor skied toward the finish line, NBC’s commentator shouted that she was very close to the leading time, but then added, “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
And … she just missed. Surprise!
As for events in which Americans have a shot, no amount of plausibly live can compete with cell phone alerts.
That the men and women within NBC News have been relied upon to betray the public trust to sell the Olympics — a transparency so conspicuous that NBC by now should have chosen to cut it out — is so undignified as to cause nausea.
Before Holt, Brian “Incoming!” Williams was NBC’s traveling Olympics salesman. Before that, Tom Brokaw. Fellas, check your credibility in the Olympic coat room.
In 1996, Brokaw was in Atlanta to anchor the Olympics. Shortly before they began, TWA flight 800, JFK-to-Paris, exploded, killing all 230 aboard.
In a preamble Brokaw said, “The explosion of Flight 800 was a tragic and unexpected prelude to the Games. So tonight the Opening Ceremonies take on a richer meaning of healing and celebration to temper the anxiety and despair.”
How was that for a shameless sell, a stretch of a sell far beyond decency and dignity? And NBC’s still at it.
ESPN sidelining sports in favor of race
Though most sports fans haven’t oppressed a minority since breakfast, ESPN, which has a poor grasp of sports, continues to shape itself less as an all-sports network than a broadcast entity selectively obsessed with race.
ESPN recently announced the hiring of African-American Angela Rye, as “a Special Correspondent to contribute topical features, commentaries and essays.”
In the news release distributed by ESPN, her qualifications as a knowledgeable sports presence went unaddressed. However, “Rye will provide perspective on sports-related matters of race and culture and social issues. She will also make in-studio appearances and produce stories under the ‘ESPN Black History Always’ banner.”
Continuing: “Angela is one of the most talented and distinctive commentators of race and culture working today.”
Perhaps she’ll address ESPN’s firing of 10-year tennis commentator Doug Adler for calling Venus Williams “a gorilla” when he in fact complimented her “guerrilla” tactic of charging the net, a self-evident observation that nonetheless cost Adler his career and reputation in a sustaining hideous miscarriage of justice.
Or Rye might examine the end of Rachel Nichols’ ESPN run after she was heard, in private conversation, suggesting that ESPN’s sense of diversity was to replace her, a white female, with a black female.
But don’t count on it.
Saints star Alvin Kamara, arrested this week, was charged for being one of four to have severely beaten and kicked a man who tried to enter a Las Vegas elevator in which they were riding. He has at times worn one of those I’m-socially-sensitive helmet messages for fans to contemplate.
On WFAN, Evan Roberts rationalized the alleged attack as understandable: “Let’s be honest, who hasn’t quickly closed an elevator door in order to ride it alone?”
Well, Evan, you can start here.
Some folks always hold the door for others. They do so not only for strangers, but for themselves — as an act of self-respect and common decency. Perhaps they were raised that way.
If I hadn’t held the door, Evan, the beating I’d have risked would’ve been from my father.
Don’t dare speak ill of WNBA!
Up and down its menu SiriusXM is a safe harbor for vulgar-for-vulgar’s-sake content — music, discussion and even an obscenity-filled sports talk show. Howard Stern, coarse and crude, is paid a reported $120 million per.
Yet, PGA channel commentator Mark Lye, who covers the LPGA, this week was fired from his SiriusXM gigs because he said — and he’s hardly alone as per proof-by-attendance and TV viewership — he can’t indulge WNBA games, thus he was branded a misogynist.
Let freedom ring!
We’re told WFAN is adding Trysta Krick as a weekend host. Her rep: a transparent, attention-coveting, put-down act, first with Barstool Sports then Philly sports radio’s WIP. She also hosts a gambling operation-sponsored show. Yep, everything WFAN now values.
Before losing at Arkansas on Wednesday, Auburn’s basketball team declared a holy war, gathering at mid-court to dance on Arkansas’s logo. College men, student-athletes, tomorrow’s leaders.
Catch of the Week: Reader Mark Piotrowski, during NBC’s telecast of the U.S.-Canada women’s Olympic hockey match, recognized the organist playing the Rangers’ victory music.
Is there no one at ESPN who can discourage Jay Bilas from talking down to us throughout college basketball telecasts? Silly question.
CBS still believes that Bill Murray playing in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am makes must-see and hear comedy. It’s not. It’s not even mildly amusing. Has never been. And no amount of CBS’ golf crew’s strained laughter and delight can change that.
Kevin Durant may be the last to take ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith seriously, ya’ll.
Who says the Red Chinese don’t have a sense of humor? A brand of clothing made in China for sale in the U.S. is named “Free Country.” Seriously.
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