Some wrongs are not difficult to right. As my friend Mark Morley says, “It’s not rocket surgery.”
Yet, and for no good reasons, we inexorably sink lower, every day, by pathetic design. Meanwhile, the modern marketing and TV content rationale has become, “It’s no worse than this” or “It’s no worse than that.”
But what is it ever better than?
For example, the Mets and MLB seem to have no problem with the team’s traditional marketing slogan, “Let’s go Mets!” having added a vulgarity. Now, cued by young Pete Alonso, it’s “LFGM.”
So if he knows the F-word is so vulgar and inappropriate that it must hide behind its initial, why use it? Why not instead lose it?
To emphasize anything, it now seems as if you have to add or throw in the F-word. Those spray-paint-armed “protesters” who desecrated the outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, after all, couldn’t stop with “BLM.” They topped it with a large “F–K.”
I guess that word is to prove you really, really mean it or really, really care.
Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Mets’ first pick, has already joined the “movement.” He tweeted “LFGM.”
LFGM T-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and even virus masks are now for sale. Reminds me of when the NFL sold framed photos of Marshawn Lynch grabbing his crotch.
Again, it’s not rocket surgery. The Mets, MLB, and Alonso’s and Crow-Armstrong’s agents can’t ask them to cut it out? Or is it protected under the collective bargaining agreement?
What would a reasonable response be to, “Please, for the sake of common public decency, stop”? “Go F yourself”?
Alonso can’t do better?
By the time he retired, CC Sabathia, proud family man, seemed unable to speak a sentence without including a string of vulgarities. Rob Gronkowski must’ve negotiated his Patriots contracts to include bonuses for cursing and speaking sexual crudities during TV interviews.
Weekday Boomer Esiason apparently thinks that crudity is the key to radio ratings success. Showtime paired two of the NBA’s all-time worst acts, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, for no other apparent reason than that they had earned very bad reputations and that they often say “motherf—er” and the N-word on the air.
What’s the upside for now and later? We grow coarser? That’s a good thing? Freedom of expression is supposed to leave us all lower?
Would Alonso teach the kids in his life to speak vulgarities? He can’t do any better?
“Dad, what does the F stand for?”
“Go ask Uncle Rob Manfred. He said kids are MLB’s top priority.”
New York AG was all talk about cable refunds
Though NY Attorney General Letitia James in April threatened to get tough with cable TV and satellite providers that continue to whack subscribers for sports channels despite the absence of live sports, she didn’t.
But, as cable and satellite operators by now are well aware, threats by politicians are inside jokes.
Consider that the fabulously funded National Cable and Telecommunications Association lobbies politicians to act against the best interests of subscribers — with money provided by subscribers. Thus a portion of your monthly payments are used by systems to purchase sticks with which to poke you in the eye.
My email continues to load with the laments of those who not only can’t receive a refund or credit, but can’t even have their calls and emails returned.
Ken K. recently shuttered his Long Island business due to the pandemic. He’d been a L.I. Cablevision/Altice/Optimum customer for 30 years. In order to reduce overhead, he wanted to cancel some premium channels. His bill is $282 per month.
“Since April, I’ve tried calling, but they tell you to go to their website. Went to their site to try to chat, and there is no response beyond the automated questions.
“I had left my contact info when in return I received, ‘We will contact you when one of our agents are free.’
“That was weeks ago.”
Belmont Stakes, in an empty park and shorted to 1 ¹/₈ miles to put the Triple Crown in distance order, will be on NBC and SiriusXM’s Ch. 82 Saturday, a post time of 5:42. If I’m any judge of horseflesh — and I’m not, I’m the original Mush — it will include a very special entry, New York-bred Tiz the Law, the expected heavy favorite.
As a 2-year-old, Manny Franco up, Tiz the Law won the 1-mile Champagne Stakes at Belmont by 4 lengths in a trip made remarkable by his effortless, almost casual run to find daylight from the 7-hole. He was bothered by nothing, including a stumble out of the gate.
Though just a six-horse race — there was a scratch — he seemed the type not to care if it had been a land rush. For Saturday he drew the eighth slot among 10.
Tiz the Law’s 82-year-old trainer, Barclay Tagg, has seen plenty. In Tiz the Law, he regularly sees what I saw.
“He just does everything easy,” he told The Bloodhorse. “He’s just a pleasure to train, because you don’t have to do a whole lot of thinking. He just does everything easy. He never comes back out of breath. Even if he goes too fast, he’s not out of breath. He pulls up easy. He’s just a pleasure to have, that’s all there is to it.”
ESPN doc tests negative for ’roids
What’s that horrible stink? It’s the smell of sell!
ESPN’s “documentary” on the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire (70) and Sammy Sosa (66) seemed an excuse to show two guys hit a zillion home runs. That both were juiced to the gills seemed of little import, thus it was produced for the simple-minded and indiscriminate.
Further, the pathetic performance of both before a congressional hearing — “I’m not here to go into my past,” said McGwire, while Sosa suddenly forgot how to speak English — went ignored. Sosa’s corked bat? Shhh, it never happened.
If you didn’t know better, you’d have been left to wonder why these two aren’t in the Hall of Fame.
But it was part of another shameless ESPN sell. ESPN’s programming, that day, was loaded with ESPN’s coverage of Home Run Derbys.
The same cheap stench was emitted all week on NBC Sports’ website, which posted The Top Headline and Top Video as Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Earnhardt Jr. calls races for NBC.
Finally, Jeff Wilpon tried to sell us on the notion that the Mets have “four to five suitors” in line to buy the greed-afflicted franchise. That sounded like the Jets’ bogus claims of “Hurry! Hurry! Our PSLs are nearly sold out!”