Wrapping up unfinished Super Bowl business
Friday, February 17, 2006
By Peter Leo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It seems we have some unfinished Super Bowl business to attend to.
Seattle still in denial
From the minute Super Bowl XL was history, Seahawks fans, led by coach and whine steward Mike Holmgren, began crying that the refs beat them. The Morning File was willing to allow them a day or so to work through their grief and rage, but almost two weeks later, they're still at it! At least, the T-Man is. He is a KUBE-FM jock, and he seems beyond help. So incensed is T-Man that he spent $6,000 on a billboard that carries his cri de coeur with some unprintable sexual innuendo. (You'd think he'd be more incensed with Mom and Dad for sticking him with "T-Man." But he has only himself to blame, because he was born Rob Tepper.)
"I feel bad for the Seahawks, the people of the city, and I almost feel bad for Steeler fans because their Super Bowl win was tainted," he told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "The people in Pittsburgh must know they didn't win this game. I hope they feel hollow about this victory."
Speaking for all of us, we don't, Mr. T-Man. Parade video available on request.
'Butt-ugly' columnist nailed
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Remember our pal from Denver, the columnist of "Pittsburgh is one butt-ugly town" infamy? I refer, of course, to the unforgettable Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News. Steeler Nation showed the man no mercy. But he gets a going-over at home in the current issue of Westword, the Denver alternative weekly (westword.com). Press critic Michael Roberts says colorfully what we already know: There were so many things wrong with the offending column "that counting them all would require a calculator with the power of a nuclear reactor."
Roberts cites two previous incidents where the columnist blurred fact and fantasy. One came last July, when Johnson wrote of an abortion protester who'd threatened his life for two years after he'd written about her in the Orange County Register, his employer at the time. A reader claimed the story was made up, and the California newspaper had no evidence of it in its files. Johnson "apologized, sort of," in a column six weeks later, Roberts says.
But he had nothing to say to Westword of his Pittsburgh atrocities. His boss, John Temple, characterized Johnson's inaccuracies as "sloppy" rather than devious. But Roberts wonders why the man is still employed. "With journalism's reputation reaching subterranean depths, it's likely that many news organizations would have disappeared Johnson by now. But at the Rocky, three strikes doesn't always mean you're out."
Friday, February 17, 2006
By Peter Leo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It seems we have some unfinished Super Bowl business to attend to.
Seattle still in denial
From the minute Super Bowl XL was history, Seahawks fans, led by coach and whine steward Mike Holmgren, began crying that the refs beat them. The Morning File was willing to allow them a day or so to work through their grief and rage, but almost two weeks later, they're still at it! At least, the T-Man is. He is a KUBE-FM jock, and he seems beyond help. So incensed is T-Man that he spent $6,000 on a billboard that carries his cri de coeur with some unprintable sexual innuendo. (You'd think he'd be more incensed with Mom and Dad for sticking him with "T-Man." But he has only himself to blame, because he was born Rob Tepper.)
"I feel bad for the Seahawks, the people of the city, and I almost feel bad for Steeler fans because their Super Bowl win was tainted," he told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "The people in Pittsburgh must know they didn't win this game. I hope they feel hollow about this victory."
Speaking for all of us, we don't, Mr. T-Man. Parade video available on request.
'Butt-ugly' columnist nailed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember our pal from Denver, the columnist of "Pittsburgh is one butt-ugly town" infamy? I refer, of course, to the unforgettable Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News. Steeler Nation showed the man no mercy. But he gets a going-over at home in the current issue of Westword, the Denver alternative weekly (westword.com). Press critic Michael Roberts says colorfully what we already know: There were so many things wrong with the offending column "that counting them all would require a calculator with the power of a nuclear reactor."
Roberts cites two previous incidents where the columnist blurred fact and fantasy. One came last July, when Johnson wrote of an abortion protester who'd threatened his life for two years after he'd written about her in the Orange County Register, his employer at the time. A reader claimed the story was made up, and the California newspaper had no evidence of it in its files. Johnson "apologized, sort of," in a column six weeks later, Roberts says.
But he had nothing to say to Westword of his Pittsburgh atrocities. His boss, John Temple, characterized Johnson's inaccuracies as "sloppy" rather than devious. But Roberts wonders why the man is still employed. "With journalism's reputation reaching subterranean depths, it's likely that many news organizations would have disappeared Johnson by now. But at the Rocky, three strikes doesn't always mean you're out."
