And Silvy is taking pot shots at B&B.

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-- source

do tell

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Elections have consequences.

With whom are you having this conversation, Shark?

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

Carmen was reading a trivia question regarding Watergate. The answer was "Bernstein and (blank)." Silvy replied with something like "Someone who never stops talking about Penn State."

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-- source

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I like the idea that SHARK, or any human on this planet, really, can lecture Dan Bernstein on the omnipotence of Jerry Reinsdorf. Why don't I go tell Neil DeGrasse Tyson some stuff he might have missed about stars.

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Elections have consequences.

I couldn't make it through transition since Terry was in full parrot-mode. It even sounded like Mac was rolling his eyes when Terry was agreeing with everything Bernstein was saying.

I was really looking forward to an afternoon of Rose meaningless talk followed by Wrigley meaningless talk. Sheesh.

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Elections have consequences.

Time was, Terry would come back from vacation and sound recharged with both a bit of pep in his voice and some cogent and lucid thoughts. His return would be convincing enough to merit further listening both of what had transpired while he was away as well as what he could foresee in the near future. He not only would have read a thing or two but also have shared a conversation or gained insight that would make him the straw that stirs the afternoon show drink.

I didn't listen too much yesterday and regretted the time wasted today spent listening. It was as if the Rose discussion had been put on hold from over a week ago and resurrected while being every bit as stale and redundant. These two are the only ones pursuing this tired discussion, replete with no additional voice or sources to corroborate or support what they are saying. They are sounding "expert" only because they are talking out of their asses without any palpable sources, espousing a point of view that hasn't been reinforced by the original source that broke the story, the organization, or anyone who has spoken on the topic. They aren't just in full contradiction of the blog posted on 2/22, but they can't get one single athlete, doctor, or anyone affiliated with sports to openly support what they are saying.

As much as I want to believe they are capable of so, so much more. Maybe they've decided to take the easy route, mailing it in and cashing the checks.

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DRINK BƎTTƎR. @theRIPH

I enjoyed the show's transparently manufactured sense of faux-wonder at "Go Cubs Go" beating Lance Armstrong. Wowwwwwww. Can you believe this? "Go Cubs Go" is worse than the worst person in sports? Wowwwwww. I guess "Go Cubs Go" is reeeeeally bad teeheehee!

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Who is Steve Goodman, anyway? Why do people care that he died? What did he ever do?

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He grew up on the North Side, attended the University of Illinois, engaged in an inspirational public battle with cancer, and wrote a number of humorous songs about Chicago, including three about the Cubs, so if nothing else, it's pretty obvious why this particular show cares about him so much.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

HOW DOES GETTING CANCER GET YOU ANY CLOSER TO A GRAMMY???!!!

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

He probably would have won his inspirational battle with cancer if he had had a yellow wristband. No wonder his shitty song was voted more bad than Lance Armstrong.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This is apropos of a Deadspin post I read earlier today, it links to a David Foster Wallace article that has the structure of the B&B show pegged dead to rights.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... st/303812/

The TL;DR version can be summed up as follows, just replace "Nick Berg beheading", "Abu Ghraib scandal", and "Scott Peterson murder trial" with "Jerry Sandusky", "White Sox attendance", and "Lance Armstrong":

"...It's near the end of his "churn," which is the industry term for a host's opening monologue, whose purpose is both to introduce a show's nightly topics and to get listeners emotionally stimulated enough that they're drawn into the program and don't switch away. More than any other mass medium, radio enjoys a captive audience—if only because so many of the listeners are driving..."

"The Nick Berg beheading and its Internet video compose what is known around KFI as a "Monster," meaning a story that has both high news value and tremendous emotional voltage. As is SOP in political talk radio, the emotions most readily accessed are anger, outrage, indignation, fear, despair, disgust, contempt, and a certain kind of apocalyptic glee, all of which the Nick Berg thing's got in spades. Mr. Ziegler, whose program is in only its fourth month at KFI, has been fortunate in that 2004 has already been chock-full of Monsters—Saddam's detention, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Scott Peterson murder trial, the Greg Haidl gang-rape trial, and preliminary hearings in the rape trial of Kobe Bryant. But tonight is the most angry, indignant, disgusted, and impassioned that Mr. Z.'s gotten on-air so far, and the consensus in Airmix is that it's resulting in some absolutely first-rate talk radio."

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"Host" is in Consider the Lobster. After I read it, but before I realized the "Bears game postmortems on WSCR" in the 9/11 essay were not Doug & OB but Boers & Bernstein and he had already been in correspondence with Dan, I thought "DFW writing about B&B would be perfect." Guess so, huh.

I'm pretty sure you knew, Dave, but just to remove all doubt, Matt and Dan had at one point never heard of Steve Goodman outside of "Go Cubs Go." I'm sure we have some threads about it in the archives, if they didn't get wiped.

EDIT:
viewtopic.php?f=84&t=45183
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=70419&start=125

It happened in 2010 and 2012

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A truly great piece, no doubt, but I actually think the Bad Radio that B&B do is the converse of the Bad Radio that Ziegler did. One of the biggest problems with Bernstein is that he takes such agonizing pains not to engage his listeners' emotions. The whole show is built on this absurdly exaggerated tone of reasoned skepticism. Hating the Packers (or LeBron, or whoever) is wrong because it's irrational. The NBA is the best sport because its personalities are so interesting. Sox attendance isn't low because the Sox have bad fans--they just don't know any better! Even the Penn State story was primarily a vehicle for longform examinations of the Mann Act. If there's one show that could use a little emotional voltage, it's this one.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Whoa, something just flew over my head! Apologies.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Going back to that thread from May 2012 and seeing JORR say "it's a disturbing new trend to bash Sox fans for attendance." If only we knew. If only we knew.

5/30:


10/5ish:

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Yikes. Ok, so half of Bad B&B is the absurdly exaggerated tone of reasoned skepticism. The other half is the frequency with which they say really, really, really dumb shit in an absurdly exaggerated tone of reasoned skepticism.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

That's the thing though, he may not actually believe these things (not that it really matters) and says them because he knows it will get a rise out of his listeners. Telling people that hating the Packers and/or LeBron is stupid, etc., is necessarily going to trigger people's emotions because so many Chicago sports fans have all kinds of emotional baggage tied up in those things.

Though you do have a point about the Penn State thing. All I can say about that is Dan responding to emails and callers pleading that he talk about something else with his "speaking truth to power" and "this is a story that must be told" rants.

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I suppose you could argue that Dan is like Ziegler in that both basically just want to get people angry enough to call in and scream at them. But I think Dan legitimately thinks he's enlightening all of us dolts, at least some of the time. Remember when he spent an entire segment fielding calls about the restricted area and the 2-3 zone?

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Let me include the last bit from the article and you can make up your mind:

"And when someone in the arc of chairs around John Ziegler says, almost to himself, that the one pure thing to hope for here is that Simpson's kids believe he's innocent, Mr. Z. gives a snort of reply and states, very flatly, "They know, and he knows they know, that he did it." To which, in KFI's prep room, the best response would probably be compassion, empathy. Because one can almost feel it: what a bleak and merciless world this host lives in—believes, nay, knows for an absolute fact he lives in. I'll take doubt."

I would argue that people like Ziegler and Dan occupy the same space in the radio universe, they both earnestly believe in what they are doing but also understand what they believe in is also a business. I figure that realization, that naked cynicism, would be enough to drive even a well balanced person up the wall.

Shit. I feel very Beardowny all of a sudden...

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They wanted to make sure they had consistent logic acros seasons after they said the Broncos have nothing at WR at the beginning of this the 2012 NFL year.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I really love this post.

Bernstien is to Reinsdorf as Abbatacola has recently been to Bernstien.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Without commenting on the possibility that Bernstein may be triggering listeners' emotions, I do think the kind of "rationalist" perspective you mentioned he takes on issues like Bears-Packers, etc., are in tune with the way particular kinds of fans do think. It's impersonal and emotionally detached, but there are fans that are drawn to this way of thinking about sports and sports culture, as well as fans who view these things a bit more personally, emotionally, and viscerally.

If you accept the general binary I am trying to draw between fans who approach sports impersonally and analytically, vs fans who, in generalized fashion, live and die with every hit and miss, then I think Bernstein is the kind of radio personality whose analysis and thoughts jibe with the former category. At best, perhaps he's not inclusive enough of the myriad ways fans approach sports, which is why he's so alienating and dismissive. But as a way of approaching sports, I do think the approach is authentic.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Maybe, but I think Beardown is probably correct a lot more often than he's given credit for. It's a good quote. Reminds me of the time that the shorthanded Bulls beat the Heat last year, and Bernstein tweeted a bunch of crap about how it was a meaningless game, and when people bitched about it, he said something to the effect of "Yes, I will continue to find the dark cloud within the silver lining. That's my job." Kinda proves us both right, I suppose.

_________________
The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

what everyone is trying to say is that their balance is out of whack. They've always rode the line between two stupid know-nothings who at times knew it all. They have just doubled down on the know it all side, to the point where they can be insufferable. They need to go back to the stupid aspects of the show.

Like Second Hand News.

It'll get fixed when they shore up Mac's show and flip flop B&B to mid-mornings again.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

It seems to me you and bernstein might be attempting to redefine "fan".

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don