Stevey Boy
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. - (KRT) - There's a certain irony to the l'affaire Bob Ryan, the respected Boston Globe columnist who has been suspended for a month for saying on a Boston television show that "I'd like to smack her," regarding Joumana Kidd, the wife of New Jersey Nets star Jason Kidd.
Ryan never would have written this. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Somewhere in the process that requires typing words on a computer screen, he would quickly have realized that that wasn't what he wanted to say. There would have been some built-in censor, something that would have prevented all of this.
Instead, he got caught up in the heat of the moment, an impassioned conversation in which Ryan used an unfortunate choice of words, ones he's since apologized for. I'm sure Ryan didn't mean to be taken literally. He was trying to make a point about Joumana Kidd using her presence at games to boost her career and got carried away in hyperbole, using figurative language.
Justified?
Of course not.
Understandable?
Certainly.
Who among us hasn't said something they've regretted, something we wish we had back?
The difference is most of us don't say it on a television show.
There's a certain irony in that, too.
One of the reasons why Ryan is such a sought-after radio and TV guest is he's so impassioned. He's bright, informed, and he's got an opinion on everything, all presented with a certain, unmistakable energy. And sometimes that can be a fine line, where what is provocative and what is offensive is often in the eye of the beholder. Or what you think is funny, someone else thinks is over the line. Especially now, in a sensitized society where words are loaded and skins are thin.
Not that Ryan has tried to defend himself. He knows that in a society where domestic violence is such a problem that you just can't say you'd like to smack a woman.
"Driving home (after the show), I'm thinking: `That was bad. That was a mistake," he told the New York Post. "I'd like to have that back."
But isn't this the inevitable result of sports talk shows?
Isn't the inevitable result of giving opinion after opinion the fact that eventually you're going to say something stupid, something that comes back to haunt you after the show is over?
Isn't this the danger of live television, where there is no editor to protect you from yourself?
This is the monster that talk radio has created, a beast that always wants more. More entertainment. More controversy. More buzz. More.
It's also a phenomenon that's grown exponentially in the past decade, a new cottage industry. Talk shows are all over the radio, all over the television. And let's not kid ourselves here. Those are not news shows that are all over cable television every night. They are opinion shows. They sell attitude.
Sports talk is the same thing. It's meant to be entertaining, constantly mining the blurring the lines between information and the outrageous. Welcome to the locker room. For isn't that really the heart and soul of sports talk, this place where boys can be boys, and if the humor gets a little sophomoric at times, a little over the edge, so what? If you don't like it, change the channel, right?
Ryan called his remarks "stupid guy talk," but rest assured there are things said on talk shows all over this country every day that are equally as offensive. The difference is, no one complains because, for whatever reason, they don't transcend the particular show.
And where do you draw the line?
Because the line is always moving.
Howard Stern routinely says things on the radio that would have been unheard of a decade ago. Your average sports talk show now routinely uses language that was considered inappropriate a decade ago. In fact, sports talk shows are very different than they were just a decade ago, to the point that on certain shows, callers now take on a certain sliver of celebrity for being outrageous.
In the end, though, it's talk run amok. The babbling of America. The endless barrage of voices and opinions, each one more shrill than the other. The new culture of sports. In your face, all the time.
But I suspect that, ultimately, this will be only a minor little blip on the arc of Ryan's career. He's too talented, too well-respected, for this to have much lasting value. He's been in the Boston market for 35 years now, has become one of the giants of the business, has built up a reservoir of good will.
Besides, he's apologized. He's been taken to the woodshed. And by the time he comes back this no longer will have any shelf life. There will be a new story du jour, something else that catches our attention. Some new mini-scandal, something else that will have the buzz. This will become the very definition of yesterday's news.
That's the good news.
The only good news in a sad little story where nobody won.
---
© 2003, The Providence Journal.
Visit projo.com, the online service of The Providence Journal at http://www.projo.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/5818047.htm
Ryan never would have written this. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Somewhere in the process that requires typing words on a computer screen, he would quickly have realized that that wasn't what he wanted to say. There would have been some built-in censor, something that would have prevented all of this.
Instead, he got caught up in the heat of the moment, an impassioned conversation in which Ryan used an unfortunate choice of words, ones he's since apologized for. I'm sure Ryan didn't mean to be taken literally. He was trying to make a point about Joumana Kidd using her presence at games to boost her career and got carried away in hyperbole, using figurative language.
Justified?
Of course not.
Understandable?
Certainly.
Who among us hasn't said something they've regretted, something we wish we had back?
The difference is most of us don't say it on a television show.
There's a certain irony in that, too.
One of the reasons why Ryan is such a sought-after radio and TV guest is he's so impassioned. He's bright, informed, and he's got an opinion on everything, all presented with a certain, unmistakable energy. And sometimes that can be a fine line, where what is provocative and what is offensive is often in the eye of the beholder. Or what you think is funny, someone else thinks is over the line. Especially now, in a sensitized society where words are loaded and skins are thin.
Not that Ryan has tried to defend himself. He knows that in a society where domestic violence is such a problem that you just can't say you'd like to smack a woman.
"Driving home (after the show), I'm thinking: `That was bad. That was a mistake," he told the New York Post. "I'd like to have that back."
But isn't this the inevitable result of sports talk shows?
Isn't the inevitable result of giving opinion after opinion the fact that eventually you're going to say something stupid, something that comes back to haunt you after the show is over?
Isn't this the danger of live television, where there is no editor to protect you from yourself?
This is the monster that talk radio has created, a beast that always wants more. More entertainment. More controversy. More buzz. More.
It's also a phenomenon that's grown exponentially in the past decade, a new cottage industry. Talk shows are all over the radio, all over the television. And let's not kid ourselves here. Those are not news shows that are all over cable television every night. They are opinion shows. They sell attitude.
Sports talk is the same thing. It's meant to be entertaining, constantly mining the blurring the lines between information and the outrageous. Welcome to the locker room. For isn't that really the heart and soul of sports talk, this place where boys can be boys, and if the humor gets a little sophomoric at times, a little over the edge, so what? If you don't like it, change the channel, right?
Ryan called his remarks "stupid guy talk," but rest assured there are things said on talk shows all over this country every day that are equally as offensive. The difference is, no one complains because, for whatever reason, they don't transcend the particular show.
And where do you draw the line?
Because the line is always moving.
Howard Stern routinely says things on the radio that would have been unheard of a decade ago. Your average sports talk show now routinely uses language that was considered inappropriate a decade ago. In fact, sports talk shows are very different than they were just a decade ago, to the point that on certain shows, callers now take on a certain sliver of celebrity for being outrageous.
In the end, though, it's talk run amok. The babbling of America. The endless barrage of voices and opinions, each one more shrill than the other. The new culture of sports. In your face, all the time.
But I suspect that, ultimately, this will be only a minor little blip on the arc of Ryan's career. He's too talented, too well-respected, for this to have much lasting value. He's been in the Boston market for 35 years now, has become one of the giants of the business, has built up a reservoir of good will.
Besides, he's apologized. He's been taken to the woodshed. And by the time he comes back this no longer will have any shelf life. There will be a new story du jour, something else that catches our attention. Some new mini-scandal, something else that will have the buzz. This will become the very definition of yesterday's news.
That's the good news.
The only good news in a sad little story where nobody won.
---
© 2003, The Providence Journal.
Visit projo.com, the online service of The Providence Journal at http://www.projo.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/5818047.htm
