QUOTE (dcmissle @ Feb 13 2010, 11:23 AM)
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When it comes to the RS and Pats, all of their criticism (some of which is inspired and firmly grounded) must, ultimately must, advance the following narrative --
1. The owners are cheap;
2. The brain trust arrogant;
3. All of them lie ("spin").
That's the dictate from the producer to drive the ratings.
It's black/white thang -- 'EEI is Pravda; we are Radio Free Europe; the truth will set you free.
It's too bad cause they are smarter than this.
I will say this, everything you say is true, except for the part about it being a "dictate from the producer" or even from the PD. Were you familiar with Mike Felger before this show? For the record, I like him, even though he's incredibly wrong a lot of the time when it comes to the Red Sox, but this has been his agenda forever. When he covered the Bruins he used to call their owners cheap. Then he moved on to the Patriots. Now he's trying to shoehorn his "cheap narrative" into the Red Sox discussion, mainly because he has a hard-on for Jason Bay, and because he's a Brewers fan and therefore knows more about Mike Cameron than Theo or anyone else does. The main problem is he thinks the whole focus on defense is spin, mainly because he doesn't follow sabremetric trends, not that any mainstream media member does, and thus this is the first he's hearing about zone ratings, etc. This is, to any informed fan, obviously 100% objectively wrong. Whether you agree with their philosophies or not, you can't deny that they believe in them.
That said, the Big Show makes it look like NPR by comparison. Except it's also more entertaining/funny than the Big Show because they're not completely playing characters. There's no phony "Hey I'm real mad at you for being late to the show!" type humor. I don't know, it's hard to explain, and I don't like Massorati at all and I predict he will be replaced eventually.