♬ Let's Explain Bernstein's Questionable Writing ♬So basically, the tenor of this blogumn is a self-effacing, even self-flagellating "welp, here we go again with the Score's crazy stupid Bears coverage; gird your loins for that same old crazy stupidity!", which is fine enough, though for the sake of argument let's ignore that Dan is the lead host for five key hours of the Score's broadcast day and as such is eminently suited to change the tenor of the station, but bear (down) with me here.
So here we have this:
Quote:
Enough about the primitive, fetishized fondling of the Stanley Cup, people — we need to track Brandon Marshall’s receptions in seven-on-seven drills, then overreact to a post-whistle shoving match and unfairly question his professionalism and sanity!
We're in some muddy water here. Again, the whole idea is that annual training camp coverage is excessive, hyperbolic, and inconsequential. No one would deny that: they say everyone is good every year and none of it ever means anything. The Hawks winning the Stanley Cup, however, doesn't happen every year, so it should follow that when it does happen, not as an annual matter of preseason course but as a rare postseason achievement, people should make a pretty big deal out of it.
Primitive, fetishized? What does that have to do with anything? By casting judgment on excitement over a championship, you obfuscate whatever your tenuous point was. So watch this magic trick:
Quote:
Enough of the Stanley Cup, people — we need to track Brandon Marshall’s receptions in seven-on-seven drills, then overreact to a post-whistle shoving match and unfairly question his professionalism and sanity!
Ta-da! Here, you are saying "stop doing something you should be doing and start doing something you shouldn't be doing!", which in its blatant counterintuition jibes with the whole "get on board with stupid training camp radio" premise. Referring to Cup fever as "primitive, fetishized fondling," however, scans as "stop doing something stupid and do another thing that is also stupid but offends my sensibilities less," which gets away from the piece's self-effacement and comes off as simply pouty and churlish. However, to deny Dan this sentence would be to deny Dan two of his favorite things in this world: coordinating modifiers and shitting on the Blackhawks. You don't tell WSCR's Senior Columnist how to write.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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