Mrs P: The Chosen 1 who played on the team with a $90,000,000 payroll in a city where the median income is under $30,000? The one who got a Hummer for his 18th birthday? Yeah, I know.
Mr P: He's only 25 and he grew up in tough circumstances. Give him a break.
Mrs P: But Hummers are such gas guzzlers!
Mr P: He signed with the Miami Heat.
Mrs P: Where the lowest priced season ticket is $6,450. AND they're sold out.
Mr P: How do you KNOW this stuff?
Mrs P: I don't WANT to know this stuff. It's on every network, pretending that it really MATTERS to the real world. Even PBS is following this story like it's a hurricane instead of a pro basketball business contract. I can't spare the room for this in my brain, but it's THERE now!
Mr: What's on ESPN tonight?
Mrs: CLUCK!
I don't follow sports, but even I was astounded with the amount of attention given to this guy. Keith Olbermann had a segment on James' "cliffhanger" announcement. He likened it to a bad infommercial.
ReplyDeleteJust about any time I want to be socially ostracized, I can release the information that neither I nor anyone in my family gives an almighty rip about televised group sports. On that score, we are ignorant by long-standing policy.
ReplyDeleteI admit to growing up watching live ACC basketball and loving it(Tarheel fan here, but I alternated secondary allegiances to The Blue Devils and The Wolfpack), but that was the early sixties, before college ball became so crassly industrialized and the shorts got too long to be much fun.
I caught a part of a game recently as a nod to a blogger friend in Arizona and found myself vocalizing audibly, but that was about loyal blogship rather than about basketball.
Research project: Do fewer liberals follow team sports? Do fewer women liberals follow team sports? Among those who are registered democrats and who do follow team sports, does political allegiance show a correlation to sports preferences? Stuff like this keeps me twisting on my henhouse perch all night long.