sinicalypse wrote:
Thanks, SHARKeroonie! * sniffles * It.... me---me---means a lot to me that you're here! If I had the autobot matrix of leadership it would be lighting our darkest hour right now.
Incidentally, man, the full-on supercorporate Danny-Bee-dichotomy is enacted in full force. One side of his mouth appeals to his listeners to keep their kids out of football because it's gonna destroy their brains, yet the other side of his mouth LOVES THE NFL and DEMANDS that they stand pat and resolutely steadfast in their resolve to not change a damn thing about player safety because he loves their product.
To me, it's kind of ?!!??!!??? that he can facilitate all of that outrage over CTE ("STOP SAYING THAT THEY'RE CONCUSSIONS!!! THEY. ARE. NOT. THE. SAME. THING.") a topic that he's spent countless hours with, and then turn around and ALSO be outraged that people want to change the NFL becase he loves the game.
Seriously, if I may be allowed to don my beardown hat for a second, there's almost some sort of a subtle "us" versus "them" thing going on re: CTE/concussions/football. He's never directly said that people shouldn't have their kids play football growing up, however it's been implied and insinuated time and time again that GOOD. PARENTS. DON'T. LET. THEIR. KIDS. PLAY. FOOTBALL. but at the same time, he's all for the actual sport (I reckon you wouldn't last long on a top-market CBS Sports Radio outlet if you seriously went after football) and he WANTS there to be carnage, destruction, and inevitable personal injury.
Well, which one is it? Like I said, I swear that there's a wink wink nudge nudge that reminds me of when George Carlin once disclaimed a PEOPLE-ARE-STUPID rant by saying "when I say everyone I don't mean YOU" and uhm, you know, I just get this weird undertone that the one side of his mouth is appealing to the intellectual upper/middle-class listeners to save their kids the injuries and look out for their future, but by constantly reiterating his love of the cerebral carnage that ensues from a lifetime of playing football, he's basically saying that he WANTS "them" to keep on playing football the way he grew up with it because he loves the sport so damn much.
Of course, Bernstein is an intelligent man well versed in the art of radio so he'll never even come close to saying the kind of stuff I'm talking about here, but like, given what we've heard Beardown speculate about DER SCHNORR and "them", welp, you distinctly get the impression that Dan has an "us" and "them" mentality and the one side of his mouth is appealing for "us" to be smarter/better than letting our kids destroy themselves on a football field, but at the same time "they" better let their kids play football without restriction limitation or evoke cuz he's so damn entertained by it.
Obviously, "them" refers to a demographic that is assumed to not necessarily be listening to the show in droves. You know, the "them" that has an extra muscle in "their" legs that makes "them" superior athletes and prevents "them" from being able to skate well enough to play hockey.
Look at the excellent posts I miss when we have two show threads.
I, too, have said all along that "all this brain damage is awful" is fundamentally incompatible with "I like watching people kill each other," and no, I don't care how much that one neurologist likes the Packers. The only way to reconcile the two is, like you alluded to, a smothering corporate culture of never ever saying anything remotely bad about the NFL, which would certainly cede their beloved moral high ground about those Booyahs being nothing more than a marketing arm of the league. Uh huh, and I don't suppose CBS is in the NFL business at all? I mean, shit, we can't even speak ill of the new Bears coach who has spent two Olympiads out of the NFL and coaching a summer league for the players who couldn't secure one of nearly 1,800 job openings on the actual circuit. How are we supposed to say that the entire sport of football might be, of all the forms of bullshit between commercials for beer and cars that are professional sports, a particularly dehumanizing and insidious form of bullshit?
The racial implications are spot on, but then it really gets confusing when you consider the guy who does the whole "golly gee, I learned in the CBA that black people are actual human beings who eat the same people-food as I do and everything!" act is also the same guy who has no problem with poor southern blacks being put through an adolescence and adulthood of repetitive brain trauma for his Sunday enjoyment. What a weirdo.
Two excellent posts. Well done, gents.
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