December 21st, 2010
A year ago Fox Sports Radio killed what was–hands down–the best sports-talk show in America: Steve Czaban’s First Team. They replaced Czaban with all-purpose buffoon Stephen A. Smith.
First, Smith was fired from the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Which was then forced, through arbitration, to rehire him. Unions are awesome!) The reason for his firing was that his Inky gig had basically become a no-show job because he was spending most of his time with various jobs at ESPN, where he was a frequent guest, analyst, and host–and even had his own short-lived show. Then ESPN fired him.
Then MSNBC hired him and started grooming him to move from sports to mainstream news and political punditry. But that got cut short because Fox Sports Radio had to rush out and throw money a guy who was a national laughingstock and give him his own morning drive-time show.
Well, that experiment is over now. After just one year, FSR is pulling the plug on Smith. I know–who could have possibly foreseen that he would be a failure!
But don’t worry. Surely somewhere else in America another media executive is preparing a lavish offer-sheet for good ol’ Stephen A. After all, Mark Levin loves him!
Hey, I have an idea: The Atlantic is super-profitable right now and David Bradley doesn’t mind closing his eyes and letting people take his money. Why not give Stephen A. Smith a spot next to Andrew Sullivan? By comparison, he’d look pretty smart.
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You have made some powerful enemies today, my friend. Mark Levin AND Conor Friedersdorf? That’s like Poland going out of its way to piss off Germany and Russia.
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Mr. Friedersdorf has emailed me once again, suggesting that I have misrepresented his writing and demanding an apology forthwith. He suggested that he is not afraid to offer a point-by-point rebuttal of my blog comments, and that Mr. Frum has offered him a platform to do so. He assured me that he would very much like to avoid this unpleasantness, but that he will do so if his integrity as a writer is so conspicuously called into question. It saddens him greatly.
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Mr. Friedersdorf has emailed me once again. More in sorrow than in anger, he informed me that I have left him no choice other than to write a 4,500 word rebuttal to my blog comments. He noted that it was unfair, unjust, unwise, and unnecessary for me to compare him to either Germany or Russia, with their unfortunate associations with Nazism and Communism, respectively. He assured me that he is neither a Nazi nor a Communist, and that I was not being fully honest in my blog commenting by making such insinuations. It gobsmackingly vile and it saddens him greatly.
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Mr. Friedersdorf has emailed me yet again. He informed me that he has been researching my previous blog comments, and has come to the conclusion that my real name is not Mr. TubbyLover69. He has compiled significant, although not dispositive, evidence to this effect. He is not unaware of the severity of the charge, he added, and he has invited me to defend myself on his blog, should I choose to do so. He also mentioned, in passing, that Charles Homans did a very fine analysis of the demise of Culture 11, perhaps the most important attempt to bring fresh, young conservative voices to the culture. Its loss saddened him greatly.
tubbylover69 December 22, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Mr. Friedersdorf just emailed to let me know how terribly disappointed he is with my last comment. This decline of civility, he assured me, saddens him deeply. He wished, for my sake, that I would look closely at my writing, and consider a more measured, fair, and balanced perspective, not only for the sake of online discourse, you see, but also for the good of my very soul.
Then he went back to flinging shit for Andrew Sullivan.