Curious Hair wrote:
Oh, Dan is most definitely tired of doing sports. And why wouldn't he be? He's been doing the same shit for 16 years. It gets old. One dilemma, though, is that most of his value as a compelling talk show host is tied up to his position within the Score's stable of personalities, and as we've gone over time and time again, even that has eroded significantly as North, Fred, Murph, and Doug have given way to Spiegel, Goff, Larry, and Jordan Bernfield. Instead of being the neurotic wiseass who made you realize how stupid sports talk radio really is, now he's just the guy who tells you why you're stupid between other guys who tell you why you're stupid.
The other -- and I'm trying to think of how to explain this without making it sound paradoxical and self-defeating, so work with me here -- is that while his divergences from Chicago sports talk could be hilarious and often the best part of the show, he's also proven not to be as interesting and cerebral on greater-sports/non-sports topics as he may think he is. Remember, for instance, that all the Penn State bluff and bluster ultimately came down to "children being raped: I'm not in favor of it." Some of Dan's other big ideas include that poor people should move, poor people should make more money, unemployed architects make exquisite landscapers, and you should never make fun of a business because they could theoretically buy airtime on your show. It's not what I'd call critical thinking. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that Dan's strength in going beyond sports is mostly rooted in being able to catch you off guard with some funny wordplay or observation rather than any sort of profundity on an array of diverse topics, so without the mind-numbing bullshit of sports as a baseline, it's harder to jump out. It's kind of funny that he's throwing his hat in with Julie, Ramblin' Pizza, and the rest of the identity-politics crowd, because as a well-off middle-class white guy who just wants to pay the mortgage on his gated McRowhouse and send the kids to college, there's no voice that would be lower on the "progressive stack" than his.
I don't disagree. I think he was trying to be Chicago sports TMZ with the Penn State thing. I also think it was funny how he was treated nationally when he tried to break his big leads. That said, I think that is where his next venture will be, successful or not.
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The Original Spanky wrote:
I don't like white rappers.