“Jay The Joke II”
On October 1, making their first-ever appearance on NBC TV’s new Sunday Night Football broadcast—free-TV’s heir-apparent to the legendary but now defunct Monday Night Football, after the Disney Company unceremoniously moved it from its ancestral home on ABC TV to the ESPN cable channel—the Chicago Bears defeated the Seattle Seahawks at Soldier Field. The final score: 37 to 6. By all accounts, it was a mauling.
During the post-game interviews, the victorious Bears’ quarterback Rex Grossman said something very close to the following:
"Thirty seven-six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that. They're a lot better than they played tonight and we realize that….We realize we may face them down the road at some point, and we're glad we got the win."
Here I happen to be quoting the version of the Grossman quote as it was reported by Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman (“Bears 37, Seahawks 6,” Oct. 2). Of course the ellipses (….) belong to Seligman’s transcription, and were not part of Grossman’s original utterance. More important, the eleventh word in the quote, we're, was in fact misquoted. Although I've left Seligman's mistake in the quote, what Grossman really said was something like "but they're a lot better than that."
The misquote included, Seligman’s AP report was picked up by newspapers around the country. (At a minimum, I’ve been able to find copies of it on the pages of the Albany Times Union, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star, the San Jose Mercury News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Petersburg Times, the Vancouver Columbian, and the Ventura County Star.)
The very same day, Mike Dodd of USA Today reported Grossman’s post-game comments as follows (“Grossman, Bears roll 37-6 past Seahawks,” Oct. 2):
"I think 37-6 just shows what we're capable of, but they're a lot better…than they played tonight. We realize that," said Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, who completed 17 of 31 passes for 232 yards, two TD and no interceptions. "We realize we may face them down the road [in the playoffs] at some point."
Bob Hurst of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer handled Grossman’s comments this way (“Trash you very much. Bears respectfully say all the right things after dominating Seahawks,” Oct. 2)
"We're off to a good start at 4-0," Grossman said. "I think 37-6 just shows what we're capable of. They're [Seahawks] a lot better than that."
While according to Reed Schreck of the Rockford Register Star, Grossman’s comments went like this (“Clark passes pregame, game tests,” Oct. 2):
"We're 4-0. We're off to a good start. That's all I'm going to say now," he said. As for the convincing victory, he added: "It shows what we're capable of. They [Seahawks] are a lot better team than coming in here and getting beat 37-6. I'm just glad we got the win. Things snowballed in our favor."
I’ve taken the trouble of reproducing these four different versions of Rex Grossman’s comments following the Bears’ victory over the Seahawks on October 1 for one reason only. Over at the serial disinformation dispenser known as Jay The Joke, the Disinformationist-in-Chief Patrick Dahl has posted no less than four different blogs in which he pretend that the following two sentences in a recent column by the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti are scandalous ("In Which Jay States the Obvious," Oct. 5):
Take Grossman, who said this after the Seattle romp: ''Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that.'' Mere days later, Rexstraint prevails.
According to Patrick Dahl ("In Which Jay Kinda Sorta Admits He Made a Mistake," Oct. 10), Mariotti’s column was guilty of “lambasting Rex Grossman for being too cocky,” with Mariotti having “based an article, not to mention one that unfairly ripped a player, off of a quote he obviously didn’t hear in person.”
The Grossman quote, of course, is the one with which I began, and which was rendered in different manners by different reporters beginning the next day after the game, Monday, October 2.
Patrick Dahl continues ("In Which Jay Kinda Sorta Admits He Made a Mistake," Oct. 10):
For those of you keeping score at home, this doesn’t qualify as an admission of fault. Jay spins this sentence to make it seem as if he wrote a column about how great the Bears were last week, when really it was about how cocky they were. He actually thinks this city is stupid enough to forget that he was criticizing the team, not praising it.
That’s pretty much Mariotti in a nutshell. He makes a huge mistake, basing criticism of somebody off of misinformation, and never really apologizes or admits he was wrong. He just makes a pathetic attempt at being “wacky” by spinning it into a future column.
I’ve already dealt at length with Jay Mariotti’s October 5 column, "Thankfully, Lovie not type for hype." (Check out my "Jay The Joke I," Oct. 9.) Contrary to what the Disinformationist-in-Chief contends, rather than lambasting any of the Bears' players over how cocky they are, Mariotti's October 5 column praised the Bears' head coach for how much calm, stability, and focus he has brought to the organization, its players especially. But inverting what Mariotti actually wrote in his October 5 column happens to be the kind of gig that the serial disinformation dispensers at Jay The Joke are all about. Unlike Jay Mariotti, that is, the Disinformationist-in-Chief doesn’t just make honest mistakes. Not where Jay Mariotti is concerned. Instead he lies about Jay Mariotti. Deliberately. And with malice aforethought.
Thus, according to Patrick Dahl and the many Dittoheads who have flocked to the party line at Jay The Joke, Mariotti’s mistaken rendering of this single quote from Rex Grossman—"Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that"—is nothing short of scandalous. And yet as I showed at the outset, the phrase “we’re a lot better than that” was reported by Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman, whose version of Grossman’s comment was picked up by many newspapers and in all likelihood became Mariotti’s source.
Thus on Wednesday, October 4, the Chicago Tribune’s David Haugh reported (“Looking for pitfalls? Schedule doesn't offer too many”):
"We're off to a great start, [but] that's all I'm going to say right now," Grossman said. "Thirty-seven-6 just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that."
I’ll bet that the Trib’s David Haugh also took his version of the Grossman quote from Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman. But what strikes me is that in Jay Mariotti’s hands, the same misquote became fodder for a column in which the Bears were praised not for how cocky they are, but for how measured, focused, and calm. While in David Haugh’s hands, it became fodder for a column warning the Bears about being too distracted by the allure of their own success.
And who did the Disinformationist-in-Chief at Jay The Joke lambaste for unfairly ripping a Bears' player off of a quote he obviously didn’t hear in person?
Wake up, sports fans.
On October 1, making their first-ever appearance on NBC TV’s new Sunday Night Football broadcast—free-TV’s heir-apparent to the legendary but now defunct Monday Night Football, after the Disney Company unceremoniously moved it from its ancestral home on ABC TV to the ESPN cable channel—the Chicago Bears defeated the Seattle Seahawks at Soldier Field. The final score: 37 to 6. By all accounts, it was a mauling.
During the post-game interviews, the victorious Bears’ quarterback Rex Grossman said something very close to the following:
"Thirty seven-six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that. They're a lot better than they played tonight and we realize that….We realize we may face them down the road at some point, and we're glad we got the win."
Here I happen to be quoting the version of the Grossman quote as it was reported by Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman (“Bears 37, Seahawks 6,” Oct. 2). Of course the ellipses (….) belong to Seligman’s transcription, and were not part of Grossman’s original utterance. More important, the eleventh word in the quote, we're, was in fact misquoted. Although I've left Seligman's mistake in the quote, what Grossman really said was something like "but they're a lot better than that."
The misquote included, Seligman’s AP report was picked up by newspapers around the country. (At a minimum, I’ve been able to find copies of it on the pages of the Albany Times Union, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star, the San Jose Mercury News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Petersburg Times, the Vancouver Columbian, and the Ventura County Star.)
The very same day, Mike Dodd of USA Today reported Grossman’s post-game comments as follows (“Grossman, Bears roll 37-6 past Seahawks,” Oct. 2):
"I think 37-6 just shows what we're capable of, but they're a lot better…than they played tonight. We realize that," said Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, who completed 17 of 31 passes for 232 yards, two TD and no interceptions. "We realize we may face them down the road [in the playoffs] at some point."
Bob Hurst of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer handled Grossman’s comments this way (“Trash you very much. Bears respectfully say all the right things after dominating Seahawks,” Oct. 2)
"We're off to a good start at 4-0," Grossman said. "I think 37-6 just shows what we're capable of. They're [Seahawks] a lot better than that."
While according to Reed Schreck of the Rockford Register Star, Grossman’s comments went like this (“Clark passes pregame, game tests,” Oct. 2):
"We're 4-0. We're off to a good start. That's all I'm going to say now," he said. As for the convincing victory, he added: "It shows what we're capable of. They [Seahawks] are a lot better team than coming in here and getting beat 37-6. I'm just glad we got the win. Things snowballed in our favor."
I’ve taken the trouble of reproducing these four different versions of Rex Grossman’s comments following the Bears’ victory over the Seahawks on October 1 for one reason only. Over at the serial disinformation dispenser known as Jay The Joke, the Disinformationist-in-Chief Patrick Dahl has posted no less than four different blogs in which he pretend that the following two sentences in a recent column by the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti are scandalous ("In Which Jay States the Obvious," Oct. 5):
Take Grossman, who said this after the Seattle romp: ''Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that.'' Mere days later, Rexstraint prevails.
According to Patrick Dahl ("In Which Jay Kinda Sorta Admits He Made a Mistake," Oct. 10), Mariotti’s column was guilty of “lambasting Rex Grossman for being too cocky,” with Mariotti having “based an article, not to mention one that unfairly ripped a player, off of a quote he obviously didn’t hear in person.”
The Grossman quote, of course, is the one with which I began, and which was rendered in different manners by different reporters beginning the next day after the game, Monday, October 2.
Patrick Dahl continues ("In Which Jay Kinda Sorta Admits He Made a Mistake," Oct. 10):
For those of you keeping score at home, this doesn’t qualify as an admission of fault. Jay spins this sentence to make it seem as if he wrote a column about how great the Bears were last week, when really it was about how cocky they were. He actually thinks this city is stupid enough to forget that he was criticizing the team, not praising it.
That’s pretty much Mariotti in a nutshell. He makes a huge mistake, basing criticism of somebody off of misinformation, and never really apologizes or admits he was wrong. He just makes a pathetic attempt at being “wacky” by spinning it into a future column.
I’ve already dealt at length with Jay Mariotti’s October 5 column, "Thankfully, Lovie not type for hype." (Check out my "Jay The Joke I," Oct. 9.) Contrary to what the Disinformationist-in-Chief contends, rather than lambasting any of the Bears' players over how cocky they are, Mariotti's October 5 column praised the Bears' head coach for how much calm, stability, and focus he has brought to the organization, its players especially. But inverting what Mariotti actually wrote in his October 5 column happens to be the kind of gig that the serial disinformation dispensers at Jay The Joke are all about. Unlike Jay Mariotti, that is, the Disinformationist-in-Chief doesn’t just make honest mistakes. Not where Jay Mariotti is concerned. Instead he lies about Jay Mariotti. Deliberately. And with malice aforethought.
Thus, according to Patrick Dahl and the many Dittoheads who have flocked to the party line at Jay The Joke, Mariotti’s mistaken rendering of this single quote from Rex Grossman—"Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that"—is nothing short of scandalous. And yet as I showed at the outset, the phrase “we’re a lot better than that” was reported by Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman, whose version of Grossman’s comment was picked up by many newspapers and in all likelihood became Mariotti’s source.
Thus on Wednesday, October 4, the Chicago Tribune’s David Haugh reported (“Looking for pitfalls? Schedule doesn't offer too many”):
"We're off to a great start, [but] that's all I'm going to say right now," Grossman said. "Thirty-seven-6 just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that."
I’ll bet that the Trib’s David Haugh also took his version of the Grossman quote from Associated Press’s Andrew Seligman. But what strikes me is that in Jay Mariotti’s hands, the same misquote became fodder for a column in which the Bears were praised not for how cocky they are, but for how measured, focused, and calm. While in David Haugh’s hands, it became fodder for a column warning the Bears about being too distracted by the allure of their own success.
And who did the Disinformationist-in-Chief at Jay The Joke lambaste for unfairly ripping a Bears' player off of a quote he obviously didn’t hear in person?
Wake up, sports fans.
posted by Robert Bonner at 5:02 PM
<< Home