Thursday, October 12, 2006

Pilot error

CiF piece on the recent pitcher/building interface in NYC.

15 comments:

Spinsterella said...

Wooo Tim, are you taking over at the Grauniad or what?

Anyhow.

I woke up at 6am to the following on the Today programme:

"Top US sports man...Whatever his name is...has died ...plane crash..."

all the while I was thinking - eh? Who? It was ages before they got around to mentioning that he'd actually driven straight into a skyscraper.

Billy said...

Are you going to be in the print edition as well?

epikles said...

Quote of the day, from a former teammate: "he was an ok guy"

Tim F said...

Think I'll give it a rest for a while. But that story was just too good to miss. I suppose the best analogy would be if someone like Shaun Wright-Phillips crashed his Porsche into a bus in Tavistock Square. I do not think, somehow, that Fox News would have led with it.

Spinsterella said...

PS - "pitcher/building interface" made me laugh nearly as much as "up to a point", which is my favourite bit-from-a-book EVER.

But nothing could possibly be as funny as that Telegraph article. I really thought it was a spoof when I first clicked.

patroclus said...

Who's Shaun Wright-Phillips?

Geoff said...

A footballer who's too good for England but not good enough for Chelsea.

God, are we supposed to know the names of US baseball stars? I know Babe Ruth and Joe Di Maggio. That's a start.

Unknown said...

yup, that pitcher/building interface did it. i even had to think for two minutes before i laugh, which made it a lot better since i compensate for the extra two minutes.

good stuff, tim.

Unknown said...

actually, that's a brilliant piece.

FirstNations said...

nothing could have been worse than the pop american coverage of same...the focus was on the degree of panic and rumor and damage and plane parts and casualties.

but worldwide headlines? that creeps me out on several diffferent levels. fucking a; it's like a tidal wave building.

Tim F said...

Geoff: I could probably reel off 50, but not this Lidle chap.

Tree: Thank you.

FN: I can understand the level of US coverage, especially NYC. But it's the way everywhere else falls into line. And half the comments accused me of anti-Americanism. America was the only country I wasn't attacking.

FirstNations said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
FirstNations said...

...oh jesus christ.
now that I've read the comments, i am reminded why i DON'T read the comments appended to online news articles; because they're invariably full of the kind of moron slobbering which makes bathroom graffiti seem pithy by comparison. it's the written equivalent of the low norms one sees gurning like chimpanzees in the background of a live tv broadcast.

as your own elizabeth regina once said to me (as we stove to maintain our pace on the treadmill,) 'you know, darling, fuck 'em. just fuck them right in the heart.'

Anonymous said...

Excellent article Tim, I agree with your sentiments completely. A very sad incident indeed but certainly no more news worthy than any other tragedy that day. Or so you would think.

I really should keep away from CIF though, the comments invariably leave me feeling extremely angry. I had to stop reading after some idiot was accusing the BBC of being more biased than Fox. I was afraid that I might burst a blood vessel.

Geoff - I can reel off the names of the 2004 world series winning Boston Red Sox squad (my team), but thats about it.

Tim F said...

But the comments are the whole point of the thing - they're what distinguishes CiF from the rest of the paper. I know other broadsheets have introduced a comment function on some articles in their online versions, but they're moderated, and they take hours to go up.

And so what if 85% of the commenters are entirely barking? The only flaw in the whole set up is that the typeface should really be green...