How to Be a Successful Pundit: Seriously

When I started at Barstool Sports several years ago, my only goal was to have an outlet for writing sports columns in a way that would be entertaining (as well as promote my pro-Lyndon Larouche political views.  You might remember my first ever Stool column “Three Jewish Businessmen Control the Drug Trade & the Way Francona Handles the Bullpen”).  But over the years, the Stool has grown from a subversive little gambling rag to an international conglomerate, and my goals and aspirations have changed with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t give up my job here for anything.  Not with my palatial corner office, key to the executive washroom and squadron of hot administrative assistants.  But I want more as well.  Now I want to be a ubiquitous media giant.  To do TV and radio.  Everywhere.  I want to work for every major media outlet like a slightly taller but way, way more heterosexual Ryan Seacrest.    And to that end, I’ve been studying up on all the successful media figures of our time so I can learn to do what they do.  And as well as I can figure it out, what I need to do to become a nationally recognized pundit on all matters great and small, is I need to be pissed off.

Not mad.  Not irked or upset or perturbed.  But pissed off.  Really pissed.  Like Josey Wales, “plum mad dog mean.”  All the big-time pundits do it that way.  With tubthumping, podium-pounding, “the world has many problems which I will solve by listing them all in a very loud voice” -type anger.  That’s how you make it.  Like the Dominican players always say about walks, wry sarcasm doesn’t get you off the island.  To make it in the media today, you’ve got to get good and outraged.  Remember how serious sportswriter Buzz Bissinger did that interview with non-serious blogger Will Leitch of Deadspin and started chewing on Leitch’s leg until they tasered him?  Yeah, THAT outraged.

And not your garden variety outrage either.  Successful punditry right now requires you get deeply, morally outraged about the issues of our day.  This lesson really hit home with me last week with the great hue & cry across the nation over the Donte Stallworth matter.  If you don’t know, Stallworth is a former Patriot player, now with Cleveland, who drove drunk, hit and killed a pedestrian and got sentenced to a month in jail, years of probation, a lifetime loss of his driver’s license for it and indefinite suspension from the NFL for it.  The whole story is horrible and tragic, but Stallworth did all he could, manned up, took responsibility for what happened, and is facing the music rather than fight it in court, as is his right.

But Stallworth’s stand up guyishness is this case wasn’t enough to prevent a massive outpouring of sanctimonious caterwauling from the Simon-pure wing of the national sports press.  It’s a slap on the wrist.  Another celebrity using his fame and money to escape justice.  If this were you or me we’d go to jail forever. Never mind that this is was an accident and could’ve happened to any of us.  Or that the deal Stallworth got is the kind that’s given out in every courthouse in America every day.  This was a chance to bloviate and no one was going to pass it up.  Professional asshat Jay Marriotti was among the biggest grandstanders, calling it “despicable” and saying it made him want to “vomit “ because the judge in the case didn’t tie Stallworth to a chair and cut his body parts off “Reservoir Dogs” style.  And since Marriotti is one of the biggest media whores in the known world... I’m sure right now Jay is talking about the Buzkashi championships on ESPN Afghanistan... then the lesson to learn here is self-righteous indignation is the way you make it to the top in journalism.

And not just with sports.  Believe it or not, even crappy, bottom-feeding reality TV has become the place for pissed off piousness.   Consider Spencer and Heidi.  I’ll be honest with you, if it wasn’t for my involvement with Barstool, I would probably still have no idea who these two are.  And I’m still not entirely sure what their actual talent is supposed to be.  But I know that they’re two vapid, insipid, empty-headed twits who are famous for being famous.  And that got them on “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” where they threw a giant hissy fit and got themselves taken off the show.  Which landed them on the “Today Show” where a very serious Al Roker glowered as ripped them a new one for their behavior and asked them if they’re ashamed of what they are.  Because apparently being a guy who reads weather reports on TV then interviews vapid, insipid, empty-headed twits make you intellectually superior to vapid, insipid, empty-headed twits everywhere.  Spencer wasn’t ready for Roker’s attack, so he didn’t say what I would have: “Um, I was on a show called ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ and told them I’m a celebrity and I wanted to get out of there.  Where’s the problem exactly?”  Instead Spencer waited a day then mentioned Jesus and then ripped Al for being an even phonier douchebag than he and Heidi, which was a classic example of douche-on-douche crime.

So excessive outrage is the recurring theme of our times.  It’s everywhere, in all facets of our lives.  And there’s no place where it’s more the part of the fabric of our existence than in the sports world.  Sports talk in particular couldn’t survive without it.  What would you guess is the most commonly discussed topic on WEEI for example.  If I had to put a figure on it, I’d say 90% of their calls are from someone seething with anger that someone on the Red Sox is in struggling.  Right now it’s Dice-K.  Prior to him it was Julio Lugo.  Six home runs ago it was Papi.  But the whole format of sports talk radio is a game of “Pin the Blame on the Slumping Red Sox.”  Never mind that they have the best record in the American League and have a 3-game lead in the toughest division in baseball.  If you want to get on the air or make it onto the Whiner Line, you better be able to bring the angry bombast.  The rule is ABP.  Always.  Be.  Panicking.

There’s been no subject more perfect for the piously self-righteous than performance enhancers in baseball.  Steroids are low hanging fruit for the self-appointed guardians of the sport who to this day continue to scream from the pulpit about how PEDs have tainted the game and dishonors the memory of true greats like Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. What you won’t hear in all this serious discussion is the fact that in Aaron’s day they were all taking greenies and the Babe took booze which was banned by the US Constitution.  Regardless, chicks still dig the long ball more than they dig guys who write impassioned editorials about the integrity of the baseball record book. 

Another recent example was the David Letterman-Sarah Palin affair.  Letterman told a joke about Palin’s 14 year old daughter getting knocked up by A Rod.  Now I love tasteless jokes, so long as their funny.  And I appreciate that humorless dickheads have been using comedy as an excuse to get offended since Cro Magnon Man wrote the first Cave Dweller joke.  But even by my low standards, telling a joke on TV about an underage girl banging someone is weak cheese.  So Palin supporters got morally outraged.  Letterman back pedaled with one of those “if you were offended” non-apology apologies.  So people picketed his studio, demanded he be fired and called his 6 year old son a bastard.  And now the two sides are locked in an Indignation Arms Race and the rest of us are caught in the crossfire.  Over one failed joke in a comedy monologue on a late night talk show no one watches. 

Again, I’m not a fan of telling statutory rape jokes about real life girls.  i.e. not of the “So this girl walks into a bar” variety.  But any time you tell a joke, someone is being made fun of by the nature of comedy.  And there are people among us who are desperate for the chance to show how serious and sincere they are, and comedy offers them a shortcut.  One of the least offensive comics I know once told me he had a crowd that was so determined to get offended by every topic he broached that he started doing a bit about those mini Ritz Bitz crackers to which a woman in the audience shouted out “But I LOVE those!!!” with hurt in her voice.  When you can’t laugh at mini crackers, you might not belong in a comedy club, but a career in TV punditry awaits you.

Believe me, I’m working on it.  For too long I and my co-workers here at the Stool have been laboring under the impression that this is all supposed to be fun.  That there’s no place in sports or pop culture or whatever else we care about for pontificating windbaggery.  That that stuff was best left to CSPAN or the Globe Op/Ed page.  But now I know better.  From now on I’m writing nothing but earnest, high minded pieces expressing my outrage and moral indignation about... stuff.  World changing “we’re all going to hell and I’m coming to you live from the handbasket” type of reports.  Because I’m tired of having fun all the time.  It’s time to get serious.