It's not often two public figures I like and respect find themselves engaged in a highly personal and highly publicized verbal spat. Generally when these events occur there is a well defined line between camps. Remember when Joe Rogan attacked Carlos Mencia for stealing jokes? No matter whose side you fell on, my guess is that there was a consensus amongst those in your social circle. The same can be said about Jay vs. Conan or MSNBC vs. FOX News. While I do find comfort and acceptance within that social consensus, the predictable agreeability, in my opinion, can grow a bit stale. It's for this reason that I've found the recent feud between ESPN's Bill Simmons and MSNBC/former ESPN anchor Keith Olbermann so intriguing. I've yet to have been able to investigate the feud and discuss it with the friends who share my admiration for both, but the prospect is definitely exciting given the potential for divided camps.
In the previous examples, without any knowledge of the arguments, I'd already have a horse in each race. Rogan, Conan, MSNBC. Easy. Simmons vs. Olbermann is infinitely more difficult. Simmons is clearly the more likable of the two. He's an entertaining writer and is the host of the B.S. Report, one of the best podcasts around, sports or otherwise (Check out any of his conversations with writer Chuck Klosterman as a starting off point). Olbermann, while not as likable, is arguably the most intelligent pundit, political or otherwise, on the air today. And despite spending a rather excessive amount of time on his soapbox, delivering dramatic and impassioned diatribes, essentially molding a caricature, he is nevertheless always eloquent and articulate and more often than not I agree with him. Given my fondness for both of them and without any significant bias towards either man, all that's left to do is to examine the beef.
February 26
In the casual context of a live chat on ESPN.com, Simmons was asked by one reader if he thinks Tiger Woods will ever be the same upon his return to golf. Simmons replied with a harmless, albeit hyperbolic answer.
"To me, that's a much bigger question than 'Where is LeBron going?' Tiger's comeback is going to be the most fascinating running sports story of my lifetime. I really believe that. We only get a handful of truly transcendent athletes per lifetime, he's one of them, and yet, none of them have ever been tested this way."
Unfortunately, he follows the hyperbole with a Joe Biden foot-in-mouth type moment.
"The only thing that comes close: When Ali returned from 4 years of boxing exile for refusing to serve in Vietnam."
Many individuals participating in the chat were baffled by the comparison. Some were offended. After all, to respond to a rather innocuous question about Tiger Woods by comparing his return from sex rehab to Ali's return from a self-imposed, religiously motivated, anti-war exile is truly puzzling. Why even introduce a symbol of such religious and racial significance into a conversation about an embattled fornicator? Could any good possibly come from that? The answer to that question proved to be a resounding, no.
February 27
The day following Simmons' contentious chat, popular sports blog Deadspin.com, along with writer and noted Simmons-basher Charles P. Pierce got a hold of the transcript. After sharing some choice quotes from Simmons and his chatting fans, Deadspin writer Tommy Craggs humorously comes to the conclusion that no doubt was echoed by many of Simmons fans, other bloggers, and later, famous television pundits: What Bill Simmons said was moronic.
"Tiger's wayward humping is not Important History. It takes a singular set of blinkers for someone not to see any analogical daylight between Ali's comeback and Tiger's, which involves little more than coming back from the champagne room. And it takes a staggering lack of sense for someone to write that Ali "never came even 10% close to facing the scrutiny" that Tiger will — as if it were Ali's good fortune to be scrutinized only by the boys running COINTELPRO and never by Skip Bayless."
Pierce, in a blog entry entitled "History for Dummies" piles on.
"This isn't hard. This is not stuff you have to have lived through. This is stuff you can find out by, you know, reading, which is said to be fundamental. Let us be kind and suggest that young Bill perhaps is unread on the subject of The Sixties, possibly because The Karate Kid was not set in that era."
March 3
In the most damaging of his public relations blunders, Simmons goes forward with his Ali/Woods analogy, this time in the form of a sprawling, 3400+ word behemoth of an article on ESPN.com. In his introduction Simmons backtracks somewhat from his chat room hyperbole, comparing the chat format to speed chess.
“Under speed chess conditions, it becomes exceedingly possible that either (A) I might say something inappropriate, (B) I might infuriate my bosses in some way or (C) I might argue a point incorrectly without realizing it until later. On Friday, I made a mistake comparing the 2010 Tiger Woods to the 1970 Muhammad Ali, saying Tiger's comeback would be much tougher because "everyone under 35 was rooting for Ali." Total hyperbole that never would have happened had I spent more time thinking about it.”
A perfect PR response to a minor embarrassing moment. A mistaken point doesn’t call for a BS apology, however a gracious acknowledgement of an intellectual misstep certainly should quell any unnecessary backlash. And had Simmons switched gears and theses at this point and created a less loaded comparison, he would’ve done just that.
Quick sidebar - A less offensive comparison that would've worked perfectly for the guy known for his pop culture references would've been to the band Weezer. Think about it. After the critical and commercial failure of 1996's Pinkerton, singer-songwriter Rivers Cuomo goes into isolation, literally painting his house black and covering his windows to keep the light out. Then in the late 90's Pinkerton would gain momentum, eventually becoming a certified gold record. Upon Weezer's return in 2000 they had developed a rabid fan base, setting the stages for a triumphant return. Simmons could then accentuate the difficulty of Woods' comeback by contrasting the momentum free sideshow that is the Tiger comeback versus the mounting fan base that Weezer returned to. Same contrast he unfortunately tries to paint with Ali. No controversy. I digress.
Instead of switching gears, Simmons follows with the exact same contentious and unnecessary thesis that would draw exponentially more ire in column form than it ever would have as a chat transcript.
March 5
Keith Olbermann gets his hand on Simmons’ piece and issues a brief, but strong criticism towards the end of this day's blog entry. He calls the Simmons article “the most poorly-informed conclusion I've come across in sports media this year” and follows with an intellectual and personal jab.
“If the writer can let me know when Woods is punitively drafted by the military even though he is about eight years older than almost all the other draftees, I'll begin to take him seriously. In the interim I am again left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a vast bowl of word salad very quickly.”
Later in the day, Simmons (via Twitter) gets even more personal, advancing the attack from “you’re not good at your job” to “you’re not good at life.”
“KO, please know the feeling is mutual. You're my worst case scenario for my career in 12 yrs: a pious, unlikable blowhard who lives alone.”
17 minutes later he strikes again.
“I feel bad about saying Olbermann lives alone. I forgot about his cats.”
March 8
Olbermann dishes out his final attack. In response to the claim that Olbermann lives alone with cats, Keith lightly replies, “Mr. Simmons apparently uses, for factual research, old parody sketches from "Saturday Night Live." I'm not surprised. That was Ben Affleck. Thanks for playing.”
As for the “worst case scenario for my career” comment, Olbermann’s response was much more cutting.
“This assumes that Mr. Simmons' career now is where mine was twelve years ago (anchoringSportsCenter, then my own MSNBC political show, anchoring NBC Weekend Nightly News, writing a best-selling sports book, etc). In fact, this assumes that this is Mr. Simmons' career, which is remarkable. Also, anybody who could write as many words without saying anything of consequence really should throw around the word "blowhard" as frequently as he would a street sewer cover. Also, I don't think ‘pious’ necessarily means what he thinks it does.”
He then asserts that ESPN executives consider Simmons “the most uncontrollable, unmanageable talent in the history of ESPN” and were embarrassed by the Woods/Ali article.
Later that day, Simmons ends the feud, again on Twitter, saying, “I've said enough. This was not why I got into writing.”
Aaand we’re caught up…
Originally, I wanted to side with Simmons. I was going to contend that Olbermann’s argument was about plight and had nothing to do with what Simmons was arguing. This is actually true. At no point did Simmons ever argue the plight of each man. He argued that Ali was returning to greater fanfare than Woods is, that America was turning against Vietnam, and that Ali had become a hero to the vocal, anti-war left. Though the jury is still out on exactly what kind of fanfare Tiger is returning to, it is true that Ali did have a sect of society firmly on his side. But mysteriously lacking from Simmons' argument is that Ali was also an enemy to many (including his own government) in a 1970 America in which seething and outspoken racism was still commonplace. Let’s not forget, this was a mere two years after Dr. King was assassinated. Awkward as it may be for a celebrity athlete as mammoth in stature as Woods to return to his very public occupation after a very public marital rift during which a parade of women made public his most private moments, it just can’t come close to the cultural volatility in which Ali was a centerpiece. It’s an argument of feeling awkward versus feeling in danger. It’s no contest.
However, this doesn't fully settle the score in Olbermann v Simmons. But before I go all Tom Papa on y’all and give my verdict, I’d like to share a story. It’s going to seem like a wild and arguably distasteful tangent, but I promise it’ll all come back around. So I’m at a relatively small gathering at my friend’s Chicago apartment. It’s late and we’ve all consumed our fair share of liquor. I forget how the topic came up, but at some point I express the opinion that anal sex, from the male perspective, requires an aggressive disrespect for one’s partner. Now, as is the tendency of the heavily intoxicated, I hadn’t fully crafted this thesis. I just thought to myself, “Isn’t the pleasure in that experience sapped by the potential pain your partner could experience?” At any rate, the room did not respond favorably to my theory, mostly on account of the vast array of experiences people do and do not enjoy. Given that I'm not religiously or morally opposed to just about any conceivable sex act between consenting adults, and had I given the topic more thought before spouting off half baked opinions, it’s more than likely I would’ve reached a stance within the realm of group consensus. But when that delicious cocktail of dissent and whiskey took hold, there was absolutely no way I was going to humbly admit that my argument was lacking. No sir. I doubled down. Of course, amongst friends it was just fun and harmless discourse, but I definitely think a part of me just didn’t want to feel like I had the capacity to make that dumb a point. And harmless as the whole situation was, ego rather than logic was driving my end of the argument.
It seems to me that this is precisely what happened with Simmons. As an avid follower of his podcast and of his column, it seems that Simmons has a strong desire to not only be thought of as the entertaining, pop-culture referencing “Sports Guy”, but also to be within the intellectual ballpark of his friends and peers. He seems, more than other writers, to obsess about being a writer. I think the acceptance and friendship of the Malcolm Gladwell's and Chuck Klosterman's of the world make Simmons feel a part of some kind of elite writer's society. I suspect it was a massively important moment for Simmons when Gladwell agreed to write the forward for his "Book of Basketball". Contrarily, when someone as intelligent as Olbermann or Charles P. Pierce confronts Simmons, I suspect that this deep-seated inferiority complex surfaces, and the ego takes the wheel. It's the only way to explain moving forward with a thesis as flawed and rushed as the one that first appeared in that February chat. And unfortunately for Simmons, he picked a fight that he just couldn't win.
That said, it wasn't exactly a sterling performance for Olbermann either. While on the right side of the argument, he made the mistake of challenging a point that was never made. His argument that Ali was coming back from harder circumstances than Woods was a no brainer. Unfortunately the debate was about the respective situations the athletes were/are entering into. Essentially Olbermann kicked off the scoring by banking in a three ball without calling glass. When the attacks became personal, Olbermann retained slightly more dignity than Simmons, only attacking his work and never his lifestyle. The real winner in all of this was the aforementioned Charles P. Pierce, whose point for point (or hole for hole) dismantling of Simmons' article was easily the most pointed and accurate criticism.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm left underwhelmed by all of this. As I've churned through this post, my excitement for the topic has rightfully waned. When I predicted the potential for divided camps, I did not expect Simmons to have written one of, if not the most flawed and painful articles of his career. When I heard that two people I like and respect were feuding, I did not expect sloppy arguments, and in the case of Simmons, misguided pot shots. And the real travesty is that the guy who made the best arguments in all of this is a cantankerous old bastard who has a strange and creepy vendetta against Simmons, the guy who I like the most. So yeah...fuck this feud, I'm done with it.
Now excuse me while I work on my next thesis entitled, "When Charlie Pierce Wins, We all Lose". Goodnight and good luck.
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 6:18PM |