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So let's talk about Dan's Kaner article. As usual, Dan is superficially upset that the Chicago media doesn't cover the Blackhawks like they're a major team. However, when anyone suggests that he devote time on his show to said major league team rather than, say, talking about how when he was in the CBA, Flip Saunders ran a TON of stuff, he pretty much flips his shit and says he doesn't have to because no one cares about the Blackhawks. So why all the dissatisfaction with the Hawks' treatment in the media? Do you not care that at a 20-year-old sports talk station whose personnel more than significantly overlaps that of the city's two (three with the Herald) newspapers, you, too, are the media? Do you really want the Blackhawks to be covered like they're on the same level as the other four teams in town? Or do you want the Blackhawks to be covered only on your terms, which is that their games are insignificant, their league is insignificant, but their visibly sodden punkass of a star player is a transcendent figure in Chicago sports only to the extent that he is a visibly sodden punkass?
That sure is the impression I got when they talked this story to death. A few callers said, "whoa, you guys are talking about hockey" or something to that effect, only to be met with "this isn't about hockey, this is about a Chicago sports figure who is in trouble" or something to that effect. You can't shit on the Blackhawks and their place in Chicago for years and then boil over with righteous indignation that nobody is treating a Patrick Kane misadventure like a Jay Cutler misadventure, or pout about how no one is this easy on "Derrick." Perception is reality, and this station has worked overtime to cultivate the perception that the Hawks don't matter, all the while running counter to the team's post-$Bill efforts to remind Chicago that they in fact do. If you want people to be as upset as they should be that one of the best players on our local team, one whose first five seasons through age 23 have been among the best ever, is in trouble, then you have to give a flying fuck about just how good he is and how important it is that he remain good. And if that's not "adversarial" enough, then it fits right in with every other cozy media-fan-club relationship in this town.
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
Last edited by Curious Hair on Wed May 30, 2012 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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