Dan Bernstein wrote:
I’ll always agree with you about stupid Bears fans, believe me. Any of us who deals with some of these people can understand your pain and frustration. They can be under-informed and over-served, have problems stringing together the simplest of sentences, and many of them are also some combination of morbidly obese and hideously ugly.
welcome to the tribe of dan (no, not that one) --- a thoughtfully intelligent place where joy is written off as the caterwauling of the stupid, and entry to the exclusive "cool kids club" is gained by continued patronage of Dear Leader, whose comic exaggeration can't completely hide the fact that he's probably somewhat ashamed of what he does for a living.
reading stuff like this reminds me of a george carlin standup set where he's doing one of his bits about how "people are really goddamn stupid" but then he takes a slight pause and says "....well not you guys, obviously, you're obviously good people!" --- of course they are, they're making it possible for george to not have to sit in an office for eight hours a day five hours a week doing normal work.
the same thing applies to dan here... and he's clearly marked his niche/territory/etc. i think dan knows that sports have their place in society, as the distraction from our day to day lives that they provide gives many people some genuine entertainment, therefore there is definitely low-level merit to what he does for a living... but i think deep down beyond the all-too-easy penn state / CTE / lance armstrong crusading to "make a difference"; he thinks that manifesting his jaded sports self-actualization in such a way that he fosters that aforementioned carlin-type relationship with his audience is, by and large, a means of evolving his audience's means of consuming sports.
by doing things like getting people interested in some SABRmetrics and not just challenging, but outright attacking just about every instutional foundation of the contemporary chicago sports world- dan thinks that we're going to be better for the wear once we come around to his point of view. if we're willing to accept his views and embrace the way he consumes sports, and keep in mind in terms of self-validation he's making six figures a year to regurgitate the sports he's consuming, then ultimately we're going to be "better" sports fans by "evolving" beyond the "traditional" means of sports consumption.
so i get where he's coming from with all this stuff.... and i spent most of my 20s listening to his radio show while i'd clank away on the keyboards at work or drive around in my car... and by and large he has definitely helped shape the way i intake my sports.... but still, i've grown a bit weary of the "us (smart people) against the world (fucking idiots)" mentality. i'd be willing to bet that dan would cut down some coach who gave an impassioned "ITS US AGAINST THE WORLD" cliche speech, but that's pretty much what he does with his audience... and god bless him i mean it works and he's got his loyal followers and there's definitely a sense of b&b tribalism (example: once on twitter i cracked a joke @ maddux boy and schmutzie ("omfg it's maddux boy and schmutzie! i'm starstruck!" =) and they quickly fired back, so as we matched wits i had to LOL as they started dragging the @boers_bernstein and @dan_bernstein accounts into the exchanges, almost as if to point out to dear leader HEY LOOK AT THIS GUY CRACKING WISE AT US!!! almost like i'd be shamed via the process of having my idiocy brought up to the big chief and then i'd quickly rethink my position and refrain from doing such things in the future) --- and hey, god bless him for that... that's how you cultivate a loyal audience... but in the wake of stuff like this where it's laid on thick, nowadays in my old/er age i gotta kick back and detach and wash my head of it, just like many of us are doing on this board as we continue to grow more cynical and jaded with b&b as a whole.
so basically, all of this existential hooha is just my quasi-intellectual way of saying that while i'll always enjoy the show and it's burrowed a place in my soul like, say, smoking cigarettes.... an increasingly larger part of me wants to do "stupid" things like pay too much to freeze my ass off at a game with worse-than-tv views with a few in me and sing BEAR DOWN CHICAGO BEARS with some meatballs i dont know and not care that my quarterback doesnt like me cuz no matter how much money he's got he's paid to throw a damn ball for a living and like.... you know what? i think i'm plenty capable of being analytical and intelligent and all that.... but if i'm gonna choose a tribe, i'm going to side with the morbidly obese and hideously ugly under-informed and over-served meatballs who have problems stringing together the simplest of sentences--- cuz you know what? it's like weird al taught me:
dare to be stupidanyways, my next ~10 posts will be 3 sentences or less to compensate for this one. it's manic mondayyyyyyyy
Well done.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
