EVERYTHING HE WRITES IS IMPORTANT

Programming note: due to DVR hijinks -- I'm trying to figure out which roommate I need to kill -- PSU-UM didn't get taped. Vijay has been kind enough to provide a copy, but UFR is going to be Wed/Thurs this week.

I have almost but not quite brought up the whole Whitlock-Scoop thing about six times but decided my time was better spent elsewhere. But, uh, this interview with Scoop is amazing. Like good God, man:

Actors such as Deniro, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman all vary in style, ESPN is nothing different. Coaching styles are different. Sometimes differences are hard for people to swallow. My style of writing is being presented in a whole different light. I try to do things differently....

Scoop, would you say your style of writing is different or the same? Great. Now let me ask you that question six hundred times in a row. Not two sentences later he then displays his gigantic modesty:

To certain individuals it's unique, but to others my style makes them uncomfortable. Very similar to when Hip Hop came on the scene, or when Prince came on the scene. Jazz is the classic example. When Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were doing their thing, it wasn't avant garde. There was a resistance of the masses, but they got it. Ali came along and people weren't comfortable with the way he chose to live his life, but they ended up getting it.

Um. Next, he points out that he didn't say the "resistance" to his style was just like the resistance all those people went through:

I bring up these great people to make a point. Obviously, I'm not comparing myself to their collective greatness.

Except that part just there where you did. The capper:

My style is not an urban style, it's not a Black style, it's "originatic" if you will.

"Originatic." So it's like something that's orginal... but isn't.

Later:

When I wrote the story about there being a lack of sports editors, I wasn't the one who broke the story. Norman Chad from the Washington Post broke the story. He didn't get the type of attention that I received did he? No. I'm the one who came across as controversial because I'm a Black man writing on Black issues.

Gist of Chad's article: "it's disappointing there are no black people in this survey and something needs to change." Direct statement from Scoop's: "You have a better chance of being an NBA player than a sports journalist, black children of the world." (No. Literally:

Then I make a point.

"Do you know why you can't name 300 black sportswriters?" I say to them. "Because 300 of us don't exist."

The room becomes less quiet. Mumbling. Private conversations break out.

Then I make the point: "Which means you all have a better chance to make it to the NBA than you do doing what I do for a living."

) Gee, I wonder why one of these articles garnered little notice and the other a flood of condemnation? Could it be because one of them is the stupidest thing written in the history of the English language?

I want people to finish reading all of my stuff and one day maybe say, this dude was a genius.

I give up. Where's Ashton Kutcher?