By Ryan Jones
You may already know this: The remaining Democratic presidential candidates debated on ABC last week, and most of the post-debate discussion was not about what either of the candidates had to say. It was about how remarkably and completely the ABC talking heads sucked at moderating the debate. Instead of asking Clinton and Obama about the actual issues facing actual Americans, and how they might deal with them, the network clowns tried to stir up sh*t by rehashing the pseudo-controversies that tend to dominate political discourse these days. I didn’t actually watch the debate — didn’t see the need, since I already know who I’m voting for (1) — but from everything I’ve heard and read since, the folks at ABC embarrassed themselves, their media peers, and pretty much anyone with an IQ over 40 by wasting everyone’s time over some trivial bullsh*t when they could’ve been talking about sh*t that actually matters.
I didn’t watch Game 1 of the Cavs-Wizards series, either. Saturday was Penn State’s annual spring football scrimmage, and given the choice between A) sitting inside and watching a televised sporting event, or B) going outside on a sunny, 80-degree day, drinking beer, bouncing a Nerf ball off my 3-year-old’s face, hanging with 73,000 of my dearest friends and watching half of a fake football game, well, there wasn’t really a choice at all (2). But between Lang’s inflammatory text-messaging and lots of postgame highlights, I have a pretty good sense of what went down.
For example, I know Cleveland won.
I know other stuff, too: LeBron played valuably; Antawn was pretty great; Z was necessary, and will need to keep this up if the Cavs have any chance of doing anything beyond this series; Gilbert was OK but clearly still not himself off the bench; Boobie stepped up and will need to do it again, since no one else on the Cavs’ meager bench seems interested; and DeShawn Stevenson looks like an even bigger tool than he already did, if that’s possible.
Anyway, back to that first paragraph. I watched the highlights on ESPN News, which apparently decided to let George Papadapolous and Charlie Gibson write the intro copy for its anchors. Point being, and totally unsurprisingly, pretty much the whole damn intro into the game coverage was “DeShawn Stevenson said LeBron’s overrated!” and “In his ‘blog,’ GIlbert Arenas said he wanted Cleveland!” and “Hi, we’re well-paid clowns who enunciate relatively well!” They didn’t talk about anything of substance, because why would they? As I’ve stated previously, most of the hype surrounding this series comes down to rehashing some stupid sh*t some people said. As someone calling himself The Life and Times of Roger Rabbit (no idea…) posted on this very website over the weekend, “It was so nice of the announcers for Cavs-Wiz game to remind us every five minutes that there was trash talk between the teams.”
Kind of like how most of this presidential campaign has been covered by most in the media. Now, if you really care about the outcome of the election, you are hopefully well-versed on the candidates’ stances, voting records, etc. And if you really care about the outcome of this series, you know about the matchups and recent history and questions about Cleveland’s motivation and Gilbert’s health and the general inability of any team outside of San Antonio to slow down LeBron.
The rest of it’s horsesh*t.
That said, it was a good game. My Wizards-in-6 prediction aside, the Cavs should win this thing if LeBron stays healthy. And he probably will. All this postgame talk about how the Wizards are trying to beat him up — who do they think dude is? As Bron himself said postgame, “I was built for this. I’m not 6-9, 260 pounds to shoot jump shots. I go to the hole and create contact. Don’t ever think that I’m the only one feeling contact.”
I’ll probably watch Game 2.
Footnotes:
(1) There’s an old guy who lives around the corner from me. Last week, he put a placard on his front lawn that reads “Millard Fillmore for President.” It’s even got a blown-up photo of Millard Fillmore, who, wikipedia tells me, was the 13th president of the United States. I’m not sure why my neighbor thinks (sarcastically, I assume, since Fillmore’s apparently been dead for 134 years) this dude would make the best president? Experience? The fact that, since he inherited the job after Zachary Taylor died and was never actually elected, he’s due another chance? The fact that he was the last president NOT to be either a Republican or Democrat and thus could heal our nation’s red-blue divide? The fact that he was affiliated with the two dopest-named political parties in American history, the Whigs (3) and the Know-Nothings? No idea. Regardless, Millard has my vote.
(2) Not actually my tailgate.
(3) Not the Afghan Whigs, a really cool band who were not, as far as I know, involved in 19th century American politics. Which is sort of too bad.
