Reporter Asks the Right Question

There's times when everyone wants to ask this question. A teacher, a cop, a short order cook, hell, even the president of the United States. Sooner or later, we're asked to do something so trivial and moronic that we just have to ask this question (FYI, the Not Safe For Work lamp is lit):


Angry News Reporter Just Wants to Know What the !#%^ Deal Is - Watch More Funny Videos

Enough with Dave Hodge and The Hacks

Tim Thomas is still taking his lumps for not visiting the White House the other day.

Here's Billy Courtice trying to keep the non-story alive: While Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas set off a firestorm on Monday for refusing the White House’s invitation to visit, the team was not surprised by his absence...."[Expletive] selfish [expletive],” the source told the Globe.

It took me a while to figure out what [Expletive] selfish [expletive] could mean. Hint: if you end with jerkoff or asshat, you'll have an easier time of it.

Over-the-hill hockey commentator Dave Hodge decided he'd throw in his two cents by Tweeting: Don't know if it's fair to point this out, but Tim Thomas has three children named Kiley, Kelsey and Keegan.

What a simple, old hack. You don't know if it's fair to point out that you think Tim Thomas named his kids after the KKK? Then again, it's been so long since anyone cared what Dave Hodge thought about hockey, that's it's probably good to see him wander off into linguistics and race baiting.

But let's be fair to old Hodge. Here's what he had to say in his own defense, as quoted by the CBC: The tweet — and what some saw as a reference to KKK — drew plenty of social media attention and Hodge subsequently tweeted: "To clarify, yesterday's tweet was simply a satirical, tongue-in-cheek observation meant to be humorous and not intended to be offensive."

C'mon. What else could he have possibly meant?

I was watching Pardon the Interruption last night, where two of sports' mature broadcasters reside. Tony Kornheiser thought Tim Thomas should have gone to the White House, while Mike Wilbon didn't care one way or the other. They both said that goalies are like place kickers: they're off in their own world and they're probably a little weird or crazy. Then Wilbon went on to point out just how many people have skipped going to the White House, such as Manny Ramirez, James Harrison, and Larry Bird - Manny because he probably didn't know there was a President or a White House, and Bird because, as Bird himself said, "If the president wants to see me, he knows where to find me."

I have to figure that this story is big only because Tim Thomas is a hard righty who wears Tea Party stuff on his helmet, and therefore he's an easy target for the lefties that tried to make it in journalism, failed, and somehow wound up at the sports desk.

Letter to Dave Hodge: can you and your buddies get over it and get back to reading final scores? Thanks.

Child Abusers Brag About Experimenting with Child's Mental Health

I don't know which is creepier: the losers in this next story, or the fact that I'm so bored with this kind of stuff that I don't feel like writing about it.

Ah, well. Once more unto the breach, so forth:

A British couple who raised their child as "gender neutral" in a bid to break free from stereotyping revealed Friday that their five-year-old is a boy.
Beck Laxton and her partner Kieran, from Sawston in central England, referred to their son, Sasha, as "the infant" and dressed the youngster in ambiguous outfits to keep his sex a secret from friends and strangers.

Laxton, a 46-year-old web editor, told the Cambridge News of her reasons for raising a "genderless" child.
"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," she said. "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"

Oh, I dunno. I guess I'll give it a shot: you're an idiot and a child abuser. How does that box fit, toots?

Alert the Media: Tim Thomas Didn't Go to the White House

Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas decided not to take part in the Stanley Cup champs' visit to the White House yesterday. On his Facebook page, he wrote this:

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.
This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

The cynicism is ripe in media circles, so the majority of commentators that I've seen threw out Thomas' "not about politics or party" stuff and just labelled him a "conservative" or, worse, a "tea partier." They prefaced the remarks with the usual mumbo jumbo about how a man has a right to his opinion, and then they crapped all over him.

Kevin Paul Dupont is a good example, breaking out the "but" after a dishonest hat tip to the idea of free expression:

But yesterday was not about politics and government until Thomas made it about politics and government. The day, long set on the calendar, was a day when the Boston Bruins were asked to visit Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate what they did as a team last season....Shabby. Immature. Unprofessional. Self-centered. Bush league. Need I go on?

No, Kevin. We get it. Tissue?

If you've read my blog for any amount of time, then you know that I hold sports "journalists" in the same regard as mildew on a dishrag, so I'm not surprised by the breathless agonizing over a hockey player not visiting the White House. It has, however, been fun to watch the hacks try to drum up a story and then beat it to death on Twitter.

Muhammad Ali changed his name and said the US was a slave state and Vietnam sucked, and blah, blah, blah. He was left wing and anti-war, so sports writers make that part of his charm. If Tim Thomas had said he was against the Afghan war and that the Tea Party was ruining America, the hacks would have been a little more - what's the word? - considered in their opinions of his politics.

I'm neither here nor there on the political angle. Thomas can believe in Martians and recite the Constitution over dinner while wearing a pink shower cap, for all I care. But let's be real. Hockey is the ugly step child of the four major North American sports. All of the hogwash you're reading about how it's a glorious tradition for Stanley Cup champs to visit the White House is a load.

We're not talking baseball here. Hockey's only been doing it since 1991, or four presidents ago, including Obama. Two of those presidents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, screwed up the names of the team captains so badly that they've become highlight fodder for every hockey blooper reel ever since (Bill Clinton massacred Steve Yzerman's name, and George Bush asked Mario Lemiuex who he was. Mario Lemiuex, for chrissake).

Here's your story: a hockey goalie didn't go to the White House. Then he wrote something on Facebook. Outrageous!

Here's the video. Fast forward to 2:55 for the part where the Presidents show how happy they are to meet people they've never heard of:

Costa Concordia - No Surprise

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but things have been busy.

In any event, take it from someone who spent a lot of time in and around cruise ships that the Costa Concordia disaster came as no surprise. I'm only surprised that it didn't happen sooner.

Not every cruise ship captain is as reckless as Captain Schettino was, but it isn't the first time I've heard of a ship's captain changing course in order to show off. I knew of one captain some years ago who changed course all the time in order to give the passengers something different than what was written in the travel brochures. Some examples of this captain's work:

1) Pulling to within several metres of a waterfall at a fjord. I don't know how much water was under the ship, but I heard later that it wasn't much.

2) Inviting a friend's sailboat loaded with fresh fish to pull alongside the ship to drop off the cargo. The sailboat's mast got tangled in one of the lifeboat rigs, and for a few minutes it looked like the boat was going to be smashed to pieces against the ship's hull before it got free.

3) Dropping any number of lifeboats/rescue craft into the water, so that the captain, cruise director, photographers, and/or video team, could get pictures of the boat from an assortment of angles at any time. Or so the captain could go water skiing. Yes, seriously.

When I heard the news that the Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized, I wasn't surprised in the least. I'd been waiting for that kind of news for years. I didn't know which ship or cruise line it would be, but eventually one of these idiots had to screw up.

The loss of life is a tragedy. The only good thing that may come out of this disaster is that the butthead captains (and again, not all captains are buttheads) will wake up and realize that they are simply glorified bus drivers. All they have to do is get people from A to B, and that's that. They make damn good money, and they are treated like a god aboard ship. Indeed, they are a god aboard ship. Unless you're the dictator of a small Caribbean island, there is no life like that of a cruise ship captain. Now they just need to remember to flip on the autopilot and stay away from things like rocks and reefs.

While we're at it, it's worth remembering that pilots bring cruise ships in and out of harbour. Pilots are local people that know the waters, and they take over the ship when it is coming to port, or when it's heading for open sea. Once the ship is safely out to sea, a pilot will hop in his boat and say good-bye - or in this case, ciao.

I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure if a pilot ever was aboard that ship. But if there was, it meant Schettino said ciao to the pilot, then headed for shore to say hello to the island, or whatever the hell he was doing before he smashed it up. Point is, cruise ship captains more or less need to know how not to hit anything in open water, but when it comes to the in-close stuff, the pilots keep them safe - if the captains will let them.

Final thought: it was damn nice to hear the audio of the coast guard officer telling Schettino he was a coward. The translation made it obvious that what you were listening to was a man of the sea telling a cocktail party host that his playboy life was over. It's just too bad people had to die to end it.

Photo: CNN