The Best Blog Posting Ever!

There is a problem with today's media - well, there are LOTS of problems with today's media, but I'm going to focus on one: instant history. Instant history can be briefly defined, by me, as an overuse of superlatives. Everything today is the biggest, fastest, or best. Plain old 'good' is no longer good enough. Along with 90% of the other material on this blog, this one of course also relates to college football, specifically the 2005 USC team that the media was proclaiming the best ever. ESPN went so far as to run a 12 day poll that pitted the 2005 USC team against their "greatest" teams of all-time. The fans voted for USC in every game but one. The only problem - this scientific survey took place over the last 3 weeks and USC lost to Texas last night. Bravo, ESPN, you are retarded. Here's a fork with a cork on the end so you don't hurt yourself.

I get the fascination - everyone wants to bear witness to or be a part of the greatest events of all-time. So the media instantly plays them up. They'll try to offset them with lead-ins like, "... that some are calling the biggest/worst/most devastating...", but then never define who those "some" are. So in essence they are proclaiming it the biggest/worst/most devastating. It's a complete lack of journalistic integrity. It's creating hysteria for the sake of creating hysteria just so that people can say, "I remember that!".

Case in point: Only 13 short months ago a tidal wave struck in the Indian Ocean that killed almost 300,000 people. 300,000 fucking people. Truly, that has to be one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history - and it was duly reported as such. Then this summer the Gulf Coast was struck by hurricane Katrina. The unofficial death toll is just shy of 2000, yet journalists and reporters instantly forgot the horrific tsunami that struck not 9 months prior and began calling Katrina one of the worst catastrophes ever. Now, I'm not belittling the damage of Katrina - my brother and his family live in New Orleans - but to equate Katrina with the Indian tsunami is a joke. It got the news because, yes, it was closer to home, but more realistically because it happened more recently.

Another example: The NFL. Last year at this time people were calling the New England Patriots a dynasty. Easily one of the greatest teams in NFL history, they said. Hey, they won the Super Bowl 3 out of 4 years. Fast forward 12 months - the Indianapolis Colts are the greatest team in the history of the NFL. Never mind that this team hasn't won anything yet. They're the best.

It's irresponsible at best and it's annoying at all times. Things, be it events, teams, persons, etc..., for the most part do not become "history" after 12 hours. Those are current events, friend. Only time will which items we remember and which we don't. And that is when you can break out your superlatives - when you look back five years later after things have settled in and you can still say, "You know what band was awesome? Led Zeppelin." not when you say, "You know what band was awesome? That one, that had that song that was in that Gap, or maybe it was an iPod, commercial, like, 2 years ago. Man, they were good! What was their name again?"