Miklasz leaving Post-Dispatch

[DCH]

I'm sad to see Bernie leave the PD. He was the sanest thing in their forums, and I always enjoyed his columns... he may have been occasionally inconsistent with his opinions, but he's passionate. And frankly, the psychotic fucktards of Rams Talk - whom many of us came to this forum to get away from - are a regular occurrence in his life... at least on a call-in show he can tell them "You're a moron" and hang up.

Can you blame him for being short-tempered and sometimes mean? I mean... there's no filter between him and the idiot brigade, and if you read some of his posts on BPB recently, the idiot brigade has tried to attack him physically, has verbally abused his family, has sent death threats... I wouldn't want his job. I certainly wouldn't want it in a world where everybody is anonymous except for him.

 

[Prime Time]

Jeez. Whatever happened to brushing crap off?

Try and keep up. As Bob Dylan so accurately put it, "the times they are a changin'." Time in American history is now divided into BCO(Brushing Crap Off) and BNSACOE(Better Not Say Any Crap Or Else). We have crossed over and are now firmly in the latter time period. When that happened exactly is unknown to me. Is there a rule book we can memorize lest we offend anyone?

 

[Faceplant]

I'm sad to see Bernie leave the PD. He was the sanest thing in their forums, and I always enjoyed his columns... he may have been occasionally inconsistent with his opinions, but he's passionate. And frankly, the psychotic fucktards of Rams Talk - whom many of us came to this forum to get away from - are a regular occurrence in his life... at least on a call-in show he can tell them "You're a moron" and hang up.

Can you blame him for being short-tempered and sometimes mean? I mean... there's no filter between him and the idiot brigade, and if you read some of his posts on BPB recently, the idiot brigade has tried to attack him physically, has verbally abused his family, has sent death threats... I wouldn't want his job. I certainly wouldn't want it in a world where everybody is anonymous except for him.

So, is this an example of offensive commentary? Should DCH be banned from this board or lose his job for making those statements? He has "attacked" a group of people in a far stronger language than Cowherd used. Where do those of you screaming foul at Cowherd draw the line??

P.S. @DCH , this is in now way an attack on you, and I do not disagree with your statements at all, haha. I was just using the post as an example.

 

[Faceplant]

Yes, he did say that. It's not a fallacy. You don't have to expressly use the word "stupid" to get that point across. And it means the exact same thing.

No, he did NOT say that. You know what he said....and he never said that. That is fact.

 

[RamFan503]

No, there is no comparison IMO. To me, that's like saying there's no difference between the word ignorant and the word stupid. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge that would result from a lack of education while stupidity is the inability to use that knowledge even if you had it. Completely different. The word "complex" implies (correctly) that it requires a certain amount of intelligence to unravel the complexity. The fact that someone can't find France on a world map says nothing about their intelligence and everything about their ignorance (lack of education).

You see no difference between making a general statement that includes people of all stripes who disagree with him and saying EVEN Dominicans are smart enough to understand something? One of those statements is ridiculous and the other one is racist AND ridiculous. Nobody is giving a pass to Bernie for saying something racist because he never has.

We'll just have to disagree about this.

Alan:

Cowherd was a sports caster here in Oregon for years before he went national. I have personally been out on the town with my wife and saw him partying with Jerome Kersey, Mychal Thompson and a bunch of their friends. I have seen him at Blazer games with his buddies and minor league baseball games just being himself.

Just because people are wringing their hands waiting for someone to say something they can jump on as racist, doesn't mean this guy's inner thoughts were of racism or that he thinks Dominicans are inferior life forms. If he didn't word it perfectly for the PC crowd out there, oh well. But calling this guy a racist is pretty far off base unless for some reason he has pegged Dominicans as the only inferior race.

I don't particularly like his whiny style and I rarely listen to him. He can be funny at times but not my thing really. So I'm not defending him because I like him. But to call him a racist goes against what I have personally witnessed.

 

[Alan]

-X- reading my mind:
I'm just curious as to why someone would get worked up over something so relatively benign. He said the area as a whole is not really known for its academic abilities.

So?

Why would anyone need to rush to their defense over that? If the tables were turned and some radio dude from another Country took a shot at our crime rate or literacy, should we rush out and file a class action suit against him in response?

Jeez. Whatever happened to brushing crap off?

I was wondering the exact same thing about why anyone would rush to Cowherd's defense. I thought that was very strange. It reminded me of what Fox News does all the time when a racist incident happens. The first thing out of all their collective thoughts is "why is fill in the blank bringing up the race card." The reason Fox does it is easy to comprehend. It's so much easier to advocate against policies that help the poor and minorities get a more level playing field if you can pretend like much of their problems aren't a product of the constant racism, verbal and systemic that have to try and overcome every day of their lives. So I see long posts by those defending Cowherd and I have to ask myself why.

Add to that the comments so glibly delivered like "meh, big deal. Nothing to see here. Walk it off. No big deal. Can't we all just learn to get along. , Jeez. Whatever happened to brushing crap off?" Comments said by individuals who have no fucking clue what it's like to be subjected to constant racism. Every. Single. Day. Of. Their. Lives. I can only conclude those posters must have spent the night in a Holiday Inn Express. Or, even worse, they've been the victims of possibly the biggest social problem in our lives today, REVERSE RACISM. The horror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Alan]

RamFan503 with this:
Just because people are wringing their hands waiting for someone to say something they can jump on as racist

Yeah, no doubt that's true because everyone is always sitting around wringing their hands and waiting for that and not just reacting to it.

 

[MrMotes]

So, is this an example of offensive commentary? Should DCH be banned from this board or lose his job for making those statements?

This is a private board. Members do get banned for saying things the owners don't want said here.

Disney/ESPN has the same right, whether we think it's stupid or not...

 

[RamFan503]

happy, joy, joy

Found this behind the scenes clip from the new show. Looks like Bernie is turning over a new leaf.

View: https://youtu.be/OZpgnYhzdkI

 

[Mojo Ram]

If a foreign sports writer referred to successful American athletes as "a marvel of modern science because they lived in a country full of fatties"...should he be vilified or reprimanded by the New Moral Order police?

We are by far the most obese nation in the world(32.8% according to US News World Health). His comments would be somewhat distasteful, but ultimately, not untrue.

 

[RamFan503]

A contention that even Cowherd doesn't agree with and he said so.

Are you talking about his "clunky" statement?

What he said wasn't accurate. Alan has explained it well. He didn't say, "It's a shame DR players didn't have educational opportunities." He said, "Baseball isn't a complex game..."

The implication here is that baseball can't be complex if all these "stupid" people from the DR can pick it up. It had nothing to do with education and everything to do with implying that people from the DR are not intelligent.

It was an idiotic comment from an idiot. And it gave ESPN an excuse to pull him off the network when he's already leaving. I'm the last person to defend ESPN but they're in the right here. I don't want to hear any bullcrap about politically correct. It's called tact and decency.

I actually think this part of his commentary said what he was referring to:
"A lot of those kids come from rough backgrounds and have not had opportunities academically that other kids from other countries have."

To me that doesn't say that he thinks people from the DR are "stupid". What it says is I think exactly what he meant - that people from the DR have little access to even decent education. That lack of education would not mean stupid but a lack of education that would teach things like critical thinking and really how to use the brain to figure out complex relationships. If anything, I think it is highly critical of the Dominican government and the importance that has been put on lifting their citizens up with education.

I agree that Collin is an idiot. I always thought that even when he was that dweeby scrawny smart ass on local TV. But racist? Never saw that in him.

 

[Faceplant]

This is a private board. Members do get banned for saying things the owners don't want said here.

Disney/ESPN has the same right, whether we think it's stupid or not...

The question wasn't whether or not he could be banned, but rather should he be.

 

[FrankenRam]

Possibly.

But I recall him calling people idiots who said Spags was the reason the team was losing in 2011. He cited (with Balzer) the overwhelming amount of injuries as the main culprit, and enumerated all of them. Even went as far as to 'imitate' people who weren't objective in his eyes (i.e., making "Duhhh" sounds). Then no more than 2 weeks later he called people idiots for giving Spags a pass, citing (by himself) the record over a 2.5 year span. I recorded both radio broadcasts and married them into one soundbyte and played it for him on Twitter.

He blocked me.

Well obviously, w/o the context in which he said those things, I have no way to know if he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. Very well may have been, 'but'......Who hasn't done same.

Look, I'm not particularly a BM fan(well ok, first thing I wake up in the am it's always good to have an effortless one). He's a writer w/ an opinion. One of a couple thousand we could follow if we chose. I listen to his if I happen to run across it with the same ??'s I would have about any other writer. And sometimes they make sense, and sometimes they don't....just like every other donkey's hindquarters w/ an 'opinion'.

I just don't get all the derision on this forum. Clearly, he must have been doing a good job of doing what he gets paid to do. Why else would we have a 9 pg thread about him on this forum.(?)

 

[-X-]

If a foreign sports writer referred to successful American athletes as "a marvel of modern science because they lived in a country full of fatties"...should he be vilified or reprimanded by the New Moral Order police?

We are by far the most obese nation in the world(32.8% according to US News World Health). His comments would be somewhat distasteful, but ultimately, not untrue.

It's catchin' on, eh?
Guess we gotta give 'em a logo.

 

[ram007]

Bernie, Good luck and Adios

 

[-X-]

I just don't get all the derision on this forum. Clearly, he must have been doing a good job of doing what he gets paid to do. Why else would we have a 9 pg thread about him on this forum.(?)

You answered your own question.
He earned that derision due to his propensity to insult those whose opinions don't align with his.

That's what he gets paid to do. Insult people and cause riffs. He did it in his column, and he does it on the radio.
Now what sense would it make if everyone was his biggest fan? That would mean he's NOT doing his job.

 

[kurtfaulk]

I just don't get all the derision on this forum. Clearly, he must have been doing a good job of doing what he gets paid to do. Why else would we have a 9 pg thread about him on this forum.(?)

7 pages of it was about the other bozo.

.

 

[Mojo Ram]

It's catchin' on, eh?
Guess we gotta give 'em a logo.

We should have a contest. Yours gave me an idea, but i bet we can do better.

 

[OldSchool]

Wait thread title about Bernie I was shocked to see it was at 9 pages, but then most of this isn't about Bernie.

 

[FrankenRam]

You answered your own question.
He earned that derision due to his propensity to insult those whose opinions don't align with his.

That's what he gets paid to do. Insult people and cause riffs. He did it in his column, and he does it on the radio.
Now what sense would it make if everyone was his biggest fan? That would mean he's NOT doing his job.

The real question for me is what he did to you to tick you off so bad that you recorded 2 of his broadcasts to piece them together and present to him.