Scoop Jackson's interview with a BLOG!

What up, g?

 

All your Scoop are belong to us.

 

In wrestling with Scoop's caps lock, a couple of things jumped out:

1. The Common reference. The trouble now with pop culture references isn't that they are a problem in and of themselves, but that the media landscape is so divided, you can't assume anymore that most of your audience knows what the heck you're talking about. The top-rated TV show (other than American Idol) gets 10 percent of the audience, the top-selling CD (assuming people buy it on CD) has 3 million buyers, and even though movies still bring big numbers, they are still overwhelming seen by a certain demographic.

Plus, Scoop talks about how brilliant he thought he was with the line. I have a rule that if I write something that instantly hits me as brilliant -- or more likely, I think of a "brilliant" line I try to write around, I'm better off cutting it out. It's like I learned in improv -- never fall in love with an idea.

2. The bad-speller/bad-typist thing. It's no shame for any journalist to admit his or her speling suks. Sometimes those are the writers that are the most careful, because they know they're likely to mispel a wurd hear and ther, so they double-check it while the most confident among us let it slide. I also don't think it's wrong to say that the seven or eight editors who let the typos go through might have been half-asleep. It's Scoop's fault for the typo or wrong word or whatever, but if the copy editors aren't bothering to catch it, why are there copy editors? Though I know for me, I still am mostly peeved at myself when a misspelling or typo goes through.

But then again, when I make a typo or some other error, nobody brings my race into it, as far as I know. (Maybe there's somebody calling me a stupid, mayo-eating, lite jazz-listening, minivan-driving honky, but I doubt it. Although the first and fourth adjectives are true.)

3. Let's face it -- the day a Scoop column doesn't get zillions of comments on ESPN.com, here, there and everywhere is the day he's no longer employed. I'll give him this over the flamethrowing likes of Mariotti -- it appears he acquired his opinions sooner than yesterday afternoon.

 

Agreed, that no journalist worth his or her salt would make excuses for bad spelling and poor grammar. There's such thing as a spell check, for one, and no excuse for carelessness.

 

I'm not bothered by Scoop's grammar and spelling mishaps. I can easily overlook those errors in something that is otherwise engaging and well-written.

But that's not what I think of when I hear reference to Scoop's poor writing. Instead I think of barely legible, borderline incoherent, run-on sentences. I think of the logic and reasoning of a teenager. I think of a close-minded divisive view of the world and shallow writing based primarily on a gimmick.

If Scoop had never made a spelling or puncuation error in his life he'd still be crappy writer.

 

Strong!
(But one smart-ass question: Is "puncuation" a punctuation or a spelling error?)

 

Wait you thought questions like this were rambling and leading towards a response?
"4. Are you at all surprised at the vigor with which the federal government has pursued its case against Michael Vick? Particularly knowing that the very same government that is trying Vick for cruelty to animals allows the military to train dogs, with no concern for the dogs well being, to find explosives and fulfill other combat related roles. And dogs have been killed as a result."

 

Sounds like a neutral question to me.

 

If "neutral" is code for "idiotic beyond belief," then I agree with you.

 

Oops, didn't think I needed the blue font.

 

You didn't. I just wanted to emphasize exactly how stupid it was for anybody to compare dogfighting to training police and/or military dogs.