My commute to work takes about 15 minutes. During that period of time, I got to hear the following shining examples of Socratic reasoning:
1. On 680, Perry Laurentino is launching into a tirade about African-Americans supporting Barry Bonds and Michael Vick. When Laurentino attacks African-Americans for supposedly defending dog-fighting, Christopher Rude makes the obvious point that while dog-fighting is a bad thing, the question is whether there is a link between Vick and dog-fighting. Laurentino responds that it is "legalistic" to demand such a link. Sure.
This comes on the heels of Laurentino dismissing soccer as a "Communist" sport earlier in the morning. Let's see. The NFL has complete revenue sharing, a hard salary cap, and it derives a significant portion of its profits from state subsidies in the form of publicly-funded stadia. European football leagues have minimal revenue sharing so the best-run and/or most popular clubs can retain the money that they generate, relegation that punishes ineptly run clubs (you think that Bill Bidwell would continue to rake in profits in the Bundesliga? His team would be in a regional league right now, battling Kickers Offenbach or KFC Uerdingen 05, which is what is supposed to happen in a meriocracy.), and no salary caps so the best players can get their true market value. Which sport is "Communist" again?
2. I switch over to 790, where they are discussing Alex Rodriguez. After Chris Dimino volunteers a very interesting stat that A-Rod is hitting .520-something in the 9th inning this year and has seven game-winning hits, Mike Bell (admittedly after putting on the self-parody "Sparky the Sportscaster" moniker) attempts to argue that A-Rod winning games for the Yankees in a year in which they aren't playing well is meaningless. That makes perfect sense. The Yankees are threatened by not making the post-season for the first time in over a decade. A-Rod is the one guy keeping the team afloat and in striking distance of a playoff berth. So naturally, that means that A-Rod can't come through when the chips are down. The argument might be the Platonic ideal of the fallacy of "clutch hitting." Any game that A-Rod wins is by definition not a big game, so the sample size keeps changing and shrinking to fit the hypothesis that he's a choker. Cue Bobby Bowden's observation that "the big one" is always the one that you don't win.
6 comments:
Perry Laurentino thinks adopting universal health care would be just begging terrorists to come into the country.
Why do you even peek at 680?
Because 790 is in commercial for ten minutes at a time and I wasn't fired up to listen to a college lecture on George Elliot.
I was going to take a shot at Perry for being the sort of NFL fan Republican who is OK with government spending massive amounts on farm subsidies and stadium building, but views anything for poor people as "big government."
I'll form an opinion on publicly finanaced stadiums when Lawrenceville puts together a package to lure the Cardinals, but I hate farm subsidies. Does that count for anything?
One morning I was stuck in traffic (lights out on Ponce). Took an hour (instead of 20 minutes) to get to work. I decided to spend my time measuring how much time the 790 guys actually talked, removing commercials, sports-blasts, business bangs, and laugh-track pre-recorded bits.
Actual talking (according to my clock):
8:04-8:13
8:26-8:34
8:47-8:52
22 minutes. Out of an hour. And of those 22 minutes, a conservative estimate says 12 minutes was actually spent talking about sports.
Perry Laurentino, some how, some way, makes Jamie Dukes seem reasonable and sentient. And that is something science thought impossible just a year ago.
one more reason to get that iPod line-in to Guderian's stereo so you can listen to the WSD podcast, Michael!
Could be worse Gentlemen.
Mike and Mike in the morning could be here in an instant.
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