So on Tuesday I broke my previous record for beating the original Legend of Zelda on the NES: the new record is 54 minutes. I was on the el when I did it and yelled out in celebration. Somehow the other passengers weren't quite as enthused as me and edged slowly away from me. Oh well; more seat room for me. I had initially set a goal of beating it in 45 minutes, but now I don't think it very likely. This new time was only 3 minutes faster than my old best and I don't really see a whole lot of places where I can get that much faster. Probably time to turn my attention to another pointless activity.
Anyone else sick to death of hearing about Tiger Woods? Am I missing something that makes this a big story that needs to be reported on daily? And I would have no problem if it was just the tabloid shows, late night TV, and E! talking about it - that's what they're for. But I have a real problem when CNN starts reporting this as actual news. Let me recap the story from my perspective: it turns out that an extremely wealthy and successful athlete was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife, who was not at all pleased with him when she found out and assaulted him, and as a result he took 4 months off of golf. Which part of this even qualifies as mildly surprising? I know that not all athletes cheat on their wives but the perception is that most do so, again, it shouldn't be very surprising. Exempting Tiger Woods from this was as foolish as exempting Michael Jordan from it.
Of course, I guess I'm the one who shouldn't be surprised. I've never agreed with the media's obsession with Tiger. I have no problem when they focus on him when he's atop the leaderboard, but I can't tell you the number of times I've seen the highlight recap or a golf tournament where all they do is show shots of Tiger and then say something like "Tiger finished in 6th, 5 shots behind the winner." And then maybe they show one 2-second shot of the winner getting his trophy and then move on. That's disrespectful to the winner and to the game.
All that being said, Augusta is easily the most beautiful course in the country and looks fantastic in HD, so I'll definitely be adding golf into the hockey-and-Cubs sports repertoire this weekend.
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I remember hearing a stat that says TV ratings go up by 2 or 3 times whenever Tiger is in contention. I can only imagine this carries over into highlight reporting. If people didn't want to hear about it, we'd stop hearing about it I assure you.
Same with the disgusting amount of news coverage we see. I remember the night Health Care passed that I was flipping between the big 3 news channels to check out their coverage and it was the same night Tiger game his interviews to ESPN and Golf Digest (Channel?) MSNBC and FOX were covering the bill signing while CNN was playing the ESPN (or was it SI) interview.
The irony of talking about things that get talked about too much is not lost on me.
Well technically we're not talking about it; we're talking about other people talking about it.
But it's not the coverage per se, it's where it's being covered that annoys me; as your comment about CNN illustrates perfectly. The tabloids should be covering it because it's sex and sex sells; the sports networks should be covering his departure and return to golf because that's big news in the sports world. But the only place that "real" news ever had in this whole saga was the few hours after the car crash until they confirmed what happened and that he was ok.
I understand that it's money but are you journalists or just whores? A lot of the biggest and most important stories are broken when journalists get info from inside sources whom they can't reveal (a la Deep Throat). The integrity of the story is thus directly tied to the integrity of the reporter and their employer. You can't blow off your integrity to chase the highest ratings one minute and then expect to be taken seriously when you quote anonymous sources the next.
And everyone suffers for it. The public suffers because it becomes harder to discern the big stories from the little ones that the are just being beaten to death. And it also becomes far too easy for legitimate stories to be dismissed as "media sensationalism" by whoever gets outed by the story.
And another great example going on right now: all the headlines on the sports sites (sportsline, ESPN, and SI) have pictures of Tiger and his current score (-3).
And oh yeah, by the way, 60-year-old Tom Watson is tied for the lead and 50-year-old Fred Couples is one stroke behind. Both of whom are ahead of Tiger, former Masters winners, and would both be the oldest players ever to win a Masters or any major in golf if they won. Seems like that might kind of be a bigger story.
Sigh.
Just flipping channels fell on Countdown and watched Keith and (Pulitzer Prize winner) Eugene Robinson talking about...Tiger.
At least it was the 3rd story of the night and not the 1st. Course, I didn't see the first of second stories, so it could have been all Tiger all the time.
Oh, and well played on the Zelda front. I can't imagine doing it that fast.
Course there were always things in that game I HAD to get, even if they weren't needed. Never even thought of a timed run back then.
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