Sports Zeitgeist

What's media hype and what's part of the zeitgest? Initially found very little of interest in the Lebron James' media tsunami, until I read Matt Taibbi's blog posting on the Rolling Stone website titled The Five Funniest Things About the "Lebron James: Global Superdouche" Broadcast. There are so many hilariously insightful paragraphs to pull. The whole piece is well the read:

I'm sure there's a larger point to make in all of this about how the insane pathology behind the Lebron spectacle (read: a co-dependent need to worship insatiable media-attention hogs gone far off the rails of self-awareness) is what ultimately is going to destroy this country and leave us goverened for all time by dingbat megalomaniacs like Sarah Palin. But for now I think it's important to just enjoy "The Decision" on a pure humor value basis, since we're unlikely to see anything that funny for a good long while.

An Anti-Climactic Death Scene on Capitol Hill

Matt Taibbi's short take on the theatrical possibilities of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Hearing on Wednesday:

I turned around and saw that sitting behind me was Joe Cassano, the patient zero of the financial crisis — the former AIG executive who nearly blew up the universe by issuing half a trillion dollars worth of credit default swaps without having any money to back it up. Nobody has really seen Cassano since AIG imploded in 2008; he's been in semi-hiding in London, as far as anyone knows, keeping clear of any wayward pitchforks I suppose. Being that he's been transformed into sort of a mythical creature in the financial crisis story it was surreal seeing him sit there in the flesh, like turning around in a diner and seeing the Headless Horseman eating a tuna melt.

...Cassano's testimony turned out to be brilliant comedy — it turns out, according to him, that he did a pretty good job and his risk management skills were top-notch! I kept waiting for some sort of cosmic Hand of Justice to reach into the hearing room (a la the climactic death scene in Mozart's Don Giovanni), snatch Cassano up in the middle of one of his mumbling self-congratulatory responses, and then pull him kicking and screaming straight through the floor into the furnace of hell — but it never happened. In fact he barely even took much heat from the panel. In that sense, a very disappointing afternoon.

Taibbi vs. Brooks

Another satisfying Matt Taibbi take-down of David Brooks. This one about Brooks' reaction to the Rolling Stone article that took down General McChrystal. The gems:

In it, the world's BoBo-in-chief says, out loud, that reporters should protect public officials from their own stupidity. The column is so full of typically Brooksian power-worshipping pathology that the fact that I failed to predict it makes me worry that I really am slipping, now that I'm past forty.

And,

Yeah, we have a press corps that goes after "impurities" these days, but you know what kind of impurities they're after? They're after Monica Lewinsky's dress, they're after gay blowjobs in train stations, they're after governors who like high-priced escorts and televangelists who like to do meth with male escorts. And yes, they go after that stuff with an Inquisition-like intensity nowadays, but that has nothing to do with Watergate and Vietnam and everything to do with the media business turning into a nihilistic for-profit industry every bit as amoral and bloodless as oil or banking or big tobacco.