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Media Morons

You Failed the Trials for the Human Race: Howie Carr

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I never thought I’d write these words, but I’m a big enough man to admit it: I owe Wallace Matthews an apology.

Mind you, I still think he’s one of the worst writers on the planet. But I also thought he was one of the worst human beings on the planet. I stand corrected. He has been dwarfed in hideousness by Howie Carr, a “writer” for the Boston Herald.

Matthews is cranky and joyless and seems to take pleasure in raining on parades. But he has not, to the best of my knowledge, actually caused anyone harm–or really wished harm on others. Howie Carr, on the other hand, wants people to starve.

Carr is a reprehensible right-wing talk radio windbag on Boston’s WRKO (against his will, apparently). He lies somewhere in the Venn intersection of Bob Grant, Morton Downey Jr., and a playground bully, filling his shows with Code Word Bigotry and seething anti-gay invective.

He also writes columns for the Boston Herald. You’ve probably never read the Herald unless you’ve had to line a birdcage in the greater New England area. It’s basically an angrier, more overtly racist version of the NY Post, aimed squarely at the Tommy from Quinzee set.

In this latter capacity, he authored a piece that appeared in Sunday’s Herald, “Shed no tears as Boston Globe fat gets Pinched”. I was alerted to its poisonous existence by the justifiably angry tweeting of BP’s Will Carroll.

As you may know, there’s a very good chance the Boston Globe will close down very soon. I’m ambivalent about the future of newspapers myself. And I have to cop to a snotty tweet I tapped out on Monday about how no more Globe would (hopefully) mean no more Dan Shaughnessy.

But I think we can all agree that the shuttering of the Globe would be sad. Not only because it’s a storied daily with a long history, but because it would put a lot of people out of work–very few of whom are responsible for the paper’s financial woes. It would also leave Boston with only one newspaper: the reprehensible Herald.

So again, I think we can all agree that the Globe’s imminent closing is a very bad, very sad thing.

Wait, we can’t all agree with that? Apparently not, according to Carr. He’s dancing on a grave that hasn’t even been dug yet. Why? Because the Globe is a liberal newspaper, owned by the NY Times Corp., and therefore is worse than Hitler in his book.

Keep in mind as you read these excerpts that Carr writes for the Globe‘s rival paper, and that no newspapers are doing well right now. So his insane, petty, vindictive Schadenfreude makes about as much karmic sense as the head of GM crowing about Chrysler’s bankruptcy.

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Baseball

The Unhappiest Man in the World Returns

I ain’t gonna lie: The Opening Night loss really bugged me.

Part of it was because I’ve only gotten the chance to see a few Mets games from beginning to end so far, and they’ve won only one of them.

Part of it was the team’s general lack of urgency, an eerie reminder of recent seasons.

Part of it was battling back from a 4-run deficit, only to see it depart on a petty balk that might have gone unnoticed were it not for that cancerous little midget David Eckstein. (If I hear one more broadcaster call him a “winner”, I will Elvis my TV).

Part of it was I knew it would sour my whole day, despite my best efforts to prevent such meaningless events from negatively affecting my life.

But mostly it was because I knew the media doo-doo storm would be in full poo-flinging swing. I knew that the Mets would be absolutely murdered in today’s papers, on the local sports channels, and by the radio yakkers, all of them spewing forth with absolutely no perspective whatsoever.

I avoided all three outlets like the plague for most of Tuesday, because I knew what they would say, and I knew it would just anger me. Sometimes, getting annoyed can spur you on to do great things, but Tuesday was not such a time. I wanted to coccoon and wait out the media maelstrom until the next game.

wmatthews.jpgBut for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I visited Newsday‘s online site late in the day. I felt drawn there by evil forces I couldn’t resist, like Frodo aching to slip on The One Ring. And while there, I saw a link for a Wallace Matthews article entitled “Citi Field lacks real Mets fans”. And god help me, I clicked and read.

I shouldn’t be mad at Wallace Matthews for this literary abortion of an article. I’ve documented this fact at Scratchbomb enough times: The man lives to eat joy and shit out despair. I knew exactly what he would pen on such an occasion. And yet I read it anyway. I’m at fault here, not Matthews. He’s just doing what comes naturally to him, like a dog eating its own vomit.

For Wallace Matthews, the Mets opening a new stadium with a listless, embarrassing loss is like eight Christmas mornings rolled into one. Except in Matthews’ version, there are no presents under the tree for anyone and he gets to tell all the children in the world that Santa Claus was raped and bludgeoned to death.

With all that said, let’s dive in, shall we?

Continue reading The Unhappiest Man in the World Returns →

Media Morons

All I Need Is a Case of Literary Diarrhea and the Truth!

The Newspaper, as an industry, is clearly on the ropes. (As opposed to all other industries, which are doing just fine.) Every week, it seems, some paper closes bureaus, scales back its coverage, or folds altogether. Pundits wonder what needs to be done to save newspapers (which supply the precious media real estate that keeps them employed).

I’m not sure newspapers need to be saved. I get all my news online, be it from CNN or Hot Chicks with Douchebags. I don’t need to read the news in a physical form, anymore than I need to watch a movie in a theatre. Newspapers aren’t historic landmarks or endangered species. They’re businesses. Adapt or perish, it’s that simple.

Not that I want newspapers to die off. Although sometimes I do, when I read articles in them like Bono’s op-ed in The New York Times last Friday.

Once upon a couple of weeks ago …

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety
blackness in a pint glass.

Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new.

I sense a great disturbance in the English language. It was as if a million full sentences and non-dangling participles cried out, and were then silenced…

Bono just dug out something he wrote for his high school literary magazine, right? Or maybe he was sick and asked one of his kids to write it for him? Because I refuse to believe an adult wrote this.

Remember, this appeared in The New York Times. The paper that spells out every number lower than 100. The paper that adds “Mr.” in front of everyone’s name, no matter how ridiculous it looks. (“Seen here at last year’s Grammys, Mr. Ludicris wowed the crowd with his rendition of ‘What Them Girls Like’.”)

The paper I’ve pitched stuff to on many occasions, always receiving back polite rejection letters in return. I thought maybe somebody else was working on something similar, or my ideas just weren’t good enough. But now I know better. What I really need to do to get in the Times is eat copies of On the Road and Ham on Rye, then throw up on my MacBook.