Asshole Of The Week: Buzz Bissinger
Welcome to Asshole Of The Week, where every Friday your trusty Foul Balls editor picks out the one person from the previous seven days who makes him think, "Man, what an asshole." It could be anybody from an athlete, an owner, someone in the media, or just anybody who happens to catch my ire.This week's Asshole Of The Week is none other than author Buzz Bissinger.
Shocking, I know. For the last few days the entire sports blogosphere has been ablaze with the story about Bissinger's tirade against Deadspin's Will Leitch and sports blogs everywhere on HBO's Costas Now. (If you haven't seen it yet, go here.)
Now, I hadn't seen the show until yesterday but had been reading about it everywhere, and going off what I read on other blogs, I was expecting Bissinger to turn green, quadruple in size, and rip Will's head off before defecating down his exposed throat.
After seeing it, I think my fellow bloggers were overreacting a bit. Don't get me wrong, Buzz did act like jackass (see below), but I think the anger many expressed stems primarily from protective feelings towards blogging and Will Leitch. Let's face it, a lot of the readers of Deadspin are sycophants worshipping at the altar that is Will, and when their savior is questioned, they respond in such a manner.
I don't intend that as an insult, because I'm a huge fan of Leitch's writing myself, and having downed beers with him and heard him sing karaoke in the real world, I'm an even bigger fan of him as a person. When Bissinger accuses Will of being "full of shit," he couldn't be more wrong. Will is as genuine a person as I've ever met, and trust me, what you see is what you get.
On to the matter at hand, Bissinger did make one or two valid points. For example, when Buzz started talking about Will posting pictures of Matt Leinart partying at his house with some girls during the offseason, and questioned what exactly makes it news, I agreed with him. I don't think it's really news, either. It's just unfortunate he offered his opinion in such a maniacal manner, an approach that makes it too easy to dismiss him as a has-been scribe terrified that he and others of his ilk are becoming increasingly more irrelevant with every passing day.
But Bissinger's other criticisms just didn't make sense. He brings up Leinart party pics but doesn't make any note of the fact that there are thousands of posts that have been on Deadspin that have absolutely nothing to do with drunk athletes.
I'm not even going to get into the hypocrisy that is Bissinger's railing against Deadspin and the sports blogosphere for its vulgarity and profane nature by using nothing but profanities himself. (He came off as someone who suffers from a combination of Tourette's syndrome and a methamphetamine addiction: "You motherfuckers cuss too much and show too many cocksucking motherfucking titties! It fucking makes me sick! Shit, cock, tits, balls, asshole!") And let's not forget Buzz's comment that Will is like "Jimmy Olson on percocet." Yeah, saying things like that in no way conflicts with the argument you're trying to make.
But what Bissinger did on Costas Now that really pissed me off was that he jumped feet first on the bandwagon of journalists who question what makes a blogger qualified to offer any opinion at all. To Bissinger we're nothing but a bunch of ignorant morons who know nothing of what we speak because the majority of us don't sit in a press box, and many don't possess the sheepskin that certifies we can write.
What bullshit.
I don't need to watch a game from a press box to see what's going on. In fact, I get a better view from my television at home. As for where I find the nerve to share my opinion, it's that little thing our entire country was founded on called the Bill of Rights featuring my favorite one line, something about "freedom of speech."
This may come as a shock to the learned Buzz, but you don't need a college degree to understand how to form complete sentences, and then put them alongside other complete sentences and form paragraphs. I learned how to do this in grade school.
What also drives me nuts is how he implies blogs are solely responsible for the impending downfall of newspapers and other types of print media. That's just asinine. Yes, it's all Deadspin's fault that the newspapers are going down the crapper. It's not the fact that a few huge conglomerates, like the Chicago Tribune, are buying up all of the local papers, slashing funds and shedding most of their experienced staff, which in turn leads to much smaller and more poorly written rags. (Trust me, I'm one of the few people in my age group who still reads the newspaper every single day, be it the print version or online.) Nope. It's that post on Deadspin in which Ben Roethlisberger is wearing a t-shirt that says "Drink Like A Champion Today" that's killing American journalism.Buzz has the nerve to say we're responsible for the dumbing down of America? Really? Corporate-produced television has nothing to do with this? Have you been watching lately? While there are actually smart and informative shows still on - you just have to look for them - the majority of air time consists of glorified karaoke performances, "celebrity" dancing, and washed up rock stars trying to find "the one." I'm guessing that there are a whole lot more people who can tell you who got eliminated from American Idol last night than there are that could tell you who is running for the democratic nomination right now.
I'm also sure the dumbing down of America has absolutely nothing to do with the increasing impotence of our public schools as funding continues to get slashed, schools are forced to ax vital programs, kids are crammed 30 into each classroom, and undeserving students are passed just so the schools don't lose what little funding they do receive. Nope, it's that damn Big Daddy Drew! Damn him and those dick jokes!
I guess I'm just sick and tired of being viewed as ignorant by people who claim to judge me and my fellow bloggers without ever actually reading what we write. Sure, I take my shots at writers like Jay Mariotti from time to time, but I actually read what he has to say first. It's called "research," something I'm apparently incapable of doing since I've never been in a press box.
Also, did you ever notice how there isn't this great divide between the "establishment" and bloggers when it comes to other areas? How come politicos like Tim Russert, James Carville, and George Will never complain about all the political blogs out there? They don't get all bent out of shape when somebody who doesn't have a political science degree, or doesn't work on Capitol Hill, shares opinions on issues they don't have intimate knowledge of.
Yet, in sports, which in the end are utterly meaningless and have no effect on anything of real importance, there is this huge rift between the "have credentials" and "have nots."
C'mon, folks, sports are nothing but a distraction from our everyday lives. An escape from the mortgage, the boss, and the wife.
And this leads me to the one thing that pisses me off more than anything else. Buzz Bissinger is arrogant enough to truly believe anything he's ever written has some sort of value in the world. It doesn't. At the end of the day, nothing he's ever written, nothing Will Leitch has ever written, and nothing I've ever written will ever mean anything. Trust me, one hundred years from now nobody will be saying, "Man, Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights changed the world."
That Buzz thinks otherwise is what truly makes him the Asshole Of The Week. Congratulations, Buzz. I hope you're dumber for having read this.
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