A Bit of Personal Commentary

By Seth H. Bramson

This “column” will be a bit different from all of my previous columns here on Mr. Berkwitt’s wonderful blog or whatever it may be called these days. Some of you might agree, and some might not, but, and in either case, whether you do or don’t, please express your feelings as the ladies and gentlemen you are, with no rancorous or personally-directed antipethetical comments.

I don’t know how many of you saw, some weeks ago, the article in the Lying Herald about Jennifer Lopez with the headline having to do with something about celebrating her 50th birthday with A-rod like a queen and then, with a comma, the words, “which she is.” Hey! Seuss! crist and holy excrement, that pure, unadulterated nonsense made me want to hurl. More on that below, because it also has to do with the sportsholes who are the schmucky talking heads at the various Miami-area television stations

If you grew up here and you remember that, for a good few years, Time Magazine ranked America’s ten best newspapers and in that ten best, the once-great (as the tag line went from “The Daily Planet,” “a great metropolitan newspaper”) Herald has now been reduced not just to expecting the reporters to edit their own stuff, but to check out the accuracy of the historical material that they might be reporting on, neither of which they do.

Did you, dear readers, know that the Herald no longer has copy editors? Correct. NONE, not a single one and the mistakes are both shameful and hideous, in grammar, syntax, punctuation, spelling, use of person, use of pronoun, use of tense and sentence construction. It looks like the work of my students and that refers to those at St. Thomas University, that horror show, that hell hole, that poster child for faculty unions Johnny Whales, as well as at F I U and now Barry University.

But wait a minute, kids! Those fine young people are students, not graduates who have been hired by what once was one of America’s ten best newspapers. The year following the Herald’s removal from the list, the editors at Time stated (and I quote) “We have never seen a newspaper fall so far, so fast or so badly as the Miami Herald has in the past year.” Like the BS’er’s at Mt. Sinai Hospital, always trying to claim they are at the top of something or other, the hell they are, and the rankings and ratings just put out by U S News and World Report (or, possibly, Newsweek) last year prove that statement (mine, not theirs) to be absolutely true.

Folks, you might want to ask why I care or why I give a damn, and the answer is simple: first, I know the difference, second, being America’s single most-published Florida history book author, I do seem to have an ability to put words together (my late wife liked to say, “my husband has only two talents: he can speak and he can write,” but I can’t hammer a nail into a wall straight!) and third, why, in Neil’s name (NEIL, GOD!) are those nobodies, those would-be print or broadcast anything but journalists, shilling for entertainers or sports teams, doing either being nauseating, and, fourth, because I know the difference, and, obviously they either don’t know the difference or don’t care about doing it right or both.

You might be asking “What do you mean, Seth?” and the answer is very simple: few things are as sickening as listening to the talking head sports holes saying things such as “…your Miami Heat….” or “…your Miami Dolphins….” because, ladies and gentlemen, they ain’t OUR Miami Heat or OUR Miami Dolphins. They are Mickey Arison’s Miami Heat or Steve Ross’s Miami Dolphins and until either or both of them distributes stock to everybody in town, those two rat-ass crummy teams ain’t ours. In fact they are ONLY theirs (Arison’s and Ross’s) and the same for the baseball and hockey teams. They ain’t ours.

Of course, the sportshole fans love to say, “well, they’re just trying to get people to support them (the teams) but g-d it, that’s not their jobs. Stop shilling you idiots and just do what you are paid to do: report the sports, tell us how bad each team is and let us know how bad the losses are. And that’s it. Frankly I think that any time a sports caster pulls that “Your Miami Heat” CRAP he or she should be yanked off the air and beaten with a wet noodle, but that shilling garbage has to stop.

Remember, dear friends, that the ONLY team in pro sports in this country which can legitimately (note that word) be referred to through the use of the pronoun “our” is the Green Bay Packers, and “why,” you ask, “do dat be?” The answer to that question being marvelously simple: because the City of Green Bay, Wisconsin OWNS the team, and that fact alone gives the people of that marvelous city (home of the National Railroad Museum) the absolute right to refer to the Packers as “our Green Bay Packers” and the sports casters in Milwaukee (don’t know if G. B. has its own TV station) to refer to the team as “your Packers,” because, being owned by the city, they are that city’s team, pure and simple. And if you think I’m being too harsh, just remember that Arison or Ross or any of the other owners other than in Green Bay, can pick up and move any time he or she feels the community isn’t supporting what is not their team to any other place which they can screw and connive into building a stadium for them, the criminality of the destruction of our once beloved Orange Bowl being a perfect example of a horrible example of that.

Obviously, “I’m on a roll,” so, maybe next time, we’ll go after the anything but news casters on the various stations, starting with that nauseating female on Channel Seven who ends her news with “ciao, ciao, ciao” which really makes me want to puke every time she does it. (But Craig is a good guy).

Well, now that I’ve cheered up your evening or day, I will leave you in good spirits and let you know that, by Neil, I can write stuff other than history.

Lots of love and “may the force be with you.” “Live long and prosper” and we’ll see you next column.

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