Advice for the Outraged Internet Sports Commenter
While what follows does not apply to Algonquin Roundtable/Bloomsbury Group that is the NotGraphs commenting collective, it does apply to those who inhabit more brutish corners of This Our Internet.
Does that guy’s multiyear contract make you scream at your children? Is the latest outrage outrageous? Do all-caps value judgments make your heart and loins leap? Should pretty much everyone on that team go to jail? Were you serious about what you just said? Would you be able to play through that injury … for free? Can you discern a political morality play in a humpback liner? Do you have racist dreams?
Then this is for you …
Handsome Dayn Perry can be found making love to the reader at CBSSports.com's Eye on Baseball. He is available for all your Twitter needs.
Speaking of “political morality play,” how has NotGraphs failed to address this journalistic travesty?
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/15/bryce-harper-conservative-hero/
Actually, I’m fairly certain the writer of this also has racist dreams, as he seems to be an odd cross between Ray Kinsella and Robert Bork.
Oh my goodness, I’m pretty middle of the road but that is pure fantasy…If I had to guess the one thing in the world that young Bryce Harper cares least about, I’m pretty sure modern American politics and political ideology would be 1A, unless they are 1B behind only hot, sweaty gay sex between consenting adult males, but I’m less sure about that one than I am about him not giving a flying frack about politics. 19 year old baseball wunderkinds are nothing if not meatheads. That’s what being that kind of very rare elite athlete is all about—not having to think about anything because you can hit a baseball like Willie Mays and don’t need to think. Besides, we almost all (with the exception of Jefferson and the like…and I mean Thomas, not George) get X amount of talent at birth to be spread around…if 90% of that talent is for playing baseball, that other 10% probably isn’t going to make you a phenom-level talent in any other field, especially politics. No matter how much some racist sycophant might wet-dream about having you on his political “team.” But what better way to illustrate Harper being a conservative hero than to point out he went at least 1-2 with a GWHR against a 378 year-old Livan Hernandez and calling Jason Heyward a LAZY N****R? If there’s a better way, I know it not.
The BS-crazy RW may want to co-opt Harper for their own sports-politics crossover delusions, including implicitly calling Jason Heyward a “LAZY N****R” who is perfectly representative of all the other “LAZY N******RS” who “vote Democrat,” leach off the system and hardworking whites because they just don’t want to work, and are just like him except for their inconsequential lack of African ancestry, but the rest of us who still inhabit reality shouldn’t have to be subjected to it.
PS— Am I summing that article up correctly? Bryce Harper = Protestant Capitalist Conservative hero, Jason Heyward = LAZY LIBERAL N****R, Mitt Romney = economic uber-genius and unwavering truth-teller whose specific religious beliefs are neither frightening, bizarre, nor fantastical, & the fact that Obama “never has had to slide headfirst into a base in his entire life” means not that he’s a smart political “baserunner” who knows when to stretch a 2B into a 3B and when to round the bag hard to try to goad an errant throw, but just another “LAZY N****R who has risen up the American political ladder on a wave of racial entitlements, cheating, and liberal glad-handing?
That article made me cringe.
Bryce Harper also blows kisses at pitchers. And scouts have rated his personality as one of the cockiest in baseball. Does that mean that all Republicans are cocky show-boaters?
Next time that guy writes an article, he should pick a better role model.
Dear God. That article was one of the most misguided and obliviously self-parodying blabberings I’ve ever read. Just so stupid on so many levels.
First, there’s the embarrassingly illogical premise of literally taking whatever random thing you just heard about or saw and shoehorning it into a simple-minded political allegory. This guy had to put so much spin on these simple apolitical facts that he may have developed a Strasburg-level curveball. He had to work harder to stretch Bryce Harper’s onfield exploits into conservative heroism than Harper did to stretch his single into two bases. The straining he had to do to fit this into a political narrative must have put him on the political hack writer’s version of the 15-day DL.
I’ve got more like those, but I’m making myself as sick as this guy should have with his ridiculous comparisons. Unlike this imbecile, I’m aware of how terrible they are.
[I’m going to pause now, walk out my door, take the first thing I see happening in my backyard, and make an idiotic political allegory out of it.
OK, I’m back:
My Cat is a Liberal Archetype, by IDrago
I walked out my back door and what did I find, much to my conservative lack of surprise? My cat, lying on the deck, looking up at me and meowing. This was a watershed moment in the history of American political thought. For this mewling–so liberal-like in its complacency and sense of entitlement–signified the same thing it always does: a beg for food. A BEG FOR FOOD. This cat does not work for her food. This cat is not even grateful for being fed by me, the Hardworking Conservative Homeowner (except for the occasional bird or mouse sacrifice which this leeching animal believes, with typical liberal narcissism that won’t allow her to see beyond her own stunted set of preferences, that I will accept and appreciate). This cat begs and begs. If not fed, she scratches at the door with indignation. Not content merely to receive food at my largesse, she must demand it as if it were owed to her. Obviously, this is a perfect proof of why liberalism must inevitably wither away and lead to a dictatorship of the corporatariat (Note to self: double check to make sure none of my grandiosity has any unfortunate historical precedents). Much like my cat–who you will not be surprised to learn–is black (true story), the mewling, helpless, demanding, leeching liberal can only lie on the “deck” that is the American taxpayer’s back, crushing his hard working spine while absently dreaming of the “mice” of … Well now I’m losing the thread. In conclusion, my cat proves liberals are bad and will lose lose lose forever.]
Then there’s the obliviously racist element, which has already been covered. I’ll just add this: disgusting. Not even a proper attempt to disguise it.
Then there’s the idiocy of watching a player stretch a single into a double and having some kind of ecstatic Saul in Damascus blinding revelation. According to this guy, baseball was changed forever when Harper took the unheard of step of Randian daring and enterprise that was stretching a single into a double, setting the writer’s eyes ablaze. Um, dude? It was a baseball play. It happens sometimes. Not the Dawn of a New Conservative Age you seem to have beheld.
In conclusion: buddy, pass me some of those shrooms you clearly are stashing. They are the only explanation for what I just read. If you don’t cough them up, I’ll call the cops on you. Oh, wait… Do you hear that? Is that a siren? You better run, dude! Run like Bryce Harper, Conservative Jesus, when he stretched a single into a Golden Dawn of the GOP.
Ha. Sucker. *munch munch*
Bee tee dubs:
http://www.glittarazzi.com/images/BLOG-MAIN/Reid_harper_2012_6_20.jpg
Also, the author of that article, Mark Judge, is, as it says at the end of the article, author of “A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which has a rating of 1.2 out of 5 stars on Amazon.
Late to the party, but my favorite part about that article is its attempt at baseball analysis: After an unsuccessful PA, Bryce Harper faced Hernandez again and “adjusted his batting,” resulting in a home run. If only all baseball players would “adjust [their] batting,” they, too, could enjoy the fruits of hard work and rugged individualism.