It feels strange to me that so many pro teams decided to hold a moment of silence in recognition of The Podcaster ahead of their games this past week.
I did not think The Podcaster was an especially well-known figure outside of terminally online politico junkies like me.
My first question to someone was “Do you know who The Podcaster is?” followed by “Did you know who The Podcaster was before he got shot 20 minutes ago?”
For unrelated reasons, I find it difficult to organize any of my thoughts this week. This is fine because my stress response is to become Kurt Vonnegut and use a paragraph break after every punchline.
The NFL mandated the moment of silence before the Thursday night game in Green Bay. The league then let home teams of the Sunday and Monday games decide whether or not to hold a moment of silence. Those who did went 1-6. Those who did not went 4-4.
I will now show my work.
Held a Moment of Silence (1-6)
Miami Dolphins (loss)
New Orleans Saints (loss)
Dallas Cowboys (hilarious loss)
New York Jets (loss)
Tennessee Titans (loss)
Kansas City Chiefs (especially hilarious loss)
Arizona Cardinals (win against a very bad team)
Did Not Hold a Moment of Silence (4-4)
Baltimore Ravens (win)
Cincinnati Bengals (win)
Detroit Lions (win)
Indianapolis Colts (win)
Pittsburgh Steelers (loss)
Minnesota Vikings (loss)
Houston Texans (loss)
Las Vegas Raiders (loss)
A survey of sports media indicates that college teams generally did not observe a moment of silence for The Podcaster. A notable exception was The University of South Carolina, who went on to lose in embarrassing fashion to Vanderbilt.
Theo Von, one of the Roganite podcasters, made a bet with Vanderbilt’s quarterback that if Vanderbilt won, Von would go on a date with the quarterback’s mom. I will actively work to never find out if the date happened or how it went. I leave that to the NCAA, who will surely investigate on gambling-related charges.
Here’s why the moment of silence doesn’t sit well with me: The Podcaster’s whole schtick was going to college campuses and arguing in bad faith with liberal college kids not yet old enough to drink, let alone understand that life is too short to spend arguing with master debaters. Respecting The Podcaster’s legacy calls not for a moment of silent reflection, but a moment of incessant arguing. Give me the PA mic. Let me introduce an appropriate tribute: “Gentlemen, we ask that you take off your hats, turn to the person to your right, and scream your worst opinion in their face for 30 seconds. Get in there. Get right in their face about it. Where’s my stopwatch? Oh, here it is. Okay. One, two, three—scream!”
I’d call it a joke, but I’ve realized I do not tell jokes. I tell the truth and people either start laughing at me or get very mad at me. I should try lying more.
Some of The Podcaster’s fans seem very intent on saying the shooter was trying to impress a trans girlfriend. The implication seems to be that The Podcaster’s death is the trans persons’s fault somehow. This is like blaming Jodie Foster for the Reagan assassination attempt.
Actually, the shooter is staying mum on his motive. Maybe he really was trying to impress Jodie Foster. It’s always Jodie Foster. How could Jodie Foster do this?
Every time there’s a high-profile political assassination, I have to imagine there’s a little part of Jodie Foster that goes, “Oh no, not again.”
I would like to know what the shooter thought about The Catcher in the Rye. Mark David Chapman read it and it supposedly made him want to kill John Lennon.
When I was in high school it was required reading for my friends. They were stoners and burnouts enrolled in what the elitists would condescendingly describe as “remedial lit,” but the school used a different term. I forget what it was but am quite confident it was something infinitely worse by virtue of its euphemism.
I was not in remedial lit, as evidenced by my usage of the words “virtue,” “euphemism,” and “evidenced.” Someone recently described this friend group dynamic to me as “a Freaks and Geeks situation,” and I suppose in hindsight that’s broadly true.
The point is I did not have to read The Catcher in the Rye. I read it on my own. Everyone in my extended family thought I ought to, and eventually, my grandmother gifted me a copy. I remember reading it in her living room and instantly loving it. My friends, on the other hand, hated it. I was baffled. We argued and debated. The Podcaster would have been proud.
The only thing we could agree on was that it did not make us want to kill John Lennon.
Here’s the real reason the moment of silence doesn’t sit well with me: We don’t do quiet anymore. We lost music to the loudness war. Our movies and TV shows are overwrought, concept-fixated spectacles being rapidly displaced by “social media content” that is also overwrought, concept-fixated spectacles. The written word is dead; no one reads. Fiction is only made by creative writing professors writing for other writing professors. Journalism exists not for its own sake but so that there is something to podcast about. Words aren’t the currency anymore. Opinions aren’t even the currency. Confidence is the currency.
I don’t like Marshall McLuhan much. The only thing McLuhan’s famous aphorism, “the medium is the message,” reveals is that McLuhan was an academic and not an artist.
Mediums can do whatever you want them to do. Some might be better at some things than others, but ascribing limitations only reveals a lack of imagination and of faith in audiences to pick up what you are putting down.
I like Neil Postman even less. He was very worried we were amusing ourselves to death in 1985, so he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. The one thing he and I agree on is that television is bad because of commercials, though he never seems to interrogate why TV needs commercials. Alternative funding models are not considered. The business transaction is simply a natural part of the medium.
Neil Postman died in 2003. Marshall McLuhan died much earlier than that. I don’t know how they died, so I can’t be sure Jodie Foster wasn’t involved somehow. The tragedy of it is that they didn’t live long enough to see the Fansville Dr. Pepper ads or the invention of the spread offense.