Context and Comparison

(Or: Two Things You Don’t Need To Understand to Work for the Washington Post or blog Auburn Football)

I’m starting to wonder if maybe there is no liberal media and, rather, that the media that we have is just completely incompetent. Take, for example, this piece of tripe about how horrible Nick Saban is for, uh, talking about 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. That asshole!

A few days after the ULM loss Saban, who can’t stand the media, spoke to the media. In talking about the losses to Mississippi State and ULM he brought up 9-11. And Pearl Harbor.

That’s right, in talking about two lost football games he brought up 9-11 and Pearl Harbor. In Saban-world, those were “catastrophes.” So too were the back-to-back losses in football games. Saban went on to say that catastrophes could be turning points in history and this “catastrophe,” would be, he hoped, a turning point in the history of Alabama football.

Of course, the point that Feinstein conveniently forgets to mention is that Saban never said or implied that the two losses were “catastrophes”, and he most certainly never said that he hoped “this ‘catastrophe,’ would be . . . a turning point in the history of Alabama football.”

Have a look at the actual quote from the press conference:

Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event. It may be 9/11, which sorta changed the spirit of America relative to a catastrophic event. Pearl Harbor got us ready for World War II, or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event.

That’s it. In a 20+ minute press conference, he spent 20 seconds on a reference to catastrophes and what they do to people. He didn’t compare them and he most certainly didn’t “liken” them (as I’ve seen several media reports claim). In fact, I’m not sure how anyone would argue that a team which went from controlling its own destiny in the toughest conference in college football to losing to two nobodies wasn’t a catastrophe.

The AHD tells us that a “catastrophe” is (irrelevant definitions excluded):

1. A great, often sudden calamity.
2. A complete failure; a fiasco

Alabama’s loss to ULM was most certainly both of those things… but I’d still have been offended if he had likened this catastrophe with those that cost the lives of hundreds or thousands of American citizens. Why?

Context.

In almost any practical context, 9/11 and Pearl Harbor were catastrophes. Leaving out things like “Well, in the grand scheme of the universe over billions of years, 9/11 was pretty insignificant”, you really can’t come up with a way to make those two events look like no big deal. In the context of a college football season, Alabama’s loss to ULM was a catastrophe as well.

Arguing that the loss wasn’t a catastrophe just because there’s something bigger that was a catastrophe is like saying that I don’t own a TV because mine is only 46″ and doesn’t do 1080p… it’s utter nonsense.

The next paragraph of Feinstein’s column says this:

Okay, let’s just say this: NO ONE should be allowed to mention catastrophes in which thousands of people died when talking about football — or any sport. Not ever.

If Feinstein got the Saban treatment for this piece, there’d be headlines today which read: “Washington Post Calls for Elimination of First Amendment,” but there aren’t. First, because people care more about what a college football coach has for breakfast than what Feinstein writes. Second, because the media don’t tend to eat their own. But also because he didn’t really say that… although the implication was much stronger than those Saban is accused of making.

But more troubling to me than the quibble over what is and isn’t a catastrophe, is folks like the AP writers, Feinstein, and others who are fabricating statements and meaning either out of laziness or to try to advance some sort of agenda.

I mean, even before he got cut from FanHouse and picked up with SBNation, this Auburn Blogger was never really much for facts or reality, so when he says that Saban “compared” losing to ULM with 9/11… well… it’s just another propaganda piece. He has yet to actually quote Saban, which he’d have done if it suited him: i.e., if Saban had actually compared the two.

MGoBlog’s Brian Cook, who is always on top of Michigan football, and usually decent with the rest of the CFB landscape even fell into the trap while posting at FanHouse, quoting the media reports instead of quoting Saban himself.

I’d really like to sit some of these people down and find out if that actually even know what was said or if they just remember hearing from someone, somewhere that Saban did this awful thing and they believed it because, well, Saban is a jerk to the media. (Gee, I can’t think of any reason he wouldn’t be real fond of them) This all to say nothing of the issue with mainstream media snarking about blogs every chance they get, which is another issue for another day.