Saturday, March 08, 2008

Can you believe it?

By now, most if not all Packers fans have either heard, read or seen Brett Favre's retirement speech. Very moving. But apparently, his emotions were too much for one of the right wing-nut radio jabberers (if you are also a right wing-nut, no offense intended). Laura somebody (sorry, folks, don't want to mention her name as that would be giving her the dignity which she obviously does not give to Brett). She spent a segment on her show the other day ridiculing Brett for the emotions he showed. She even has a "Soundbite of the Week" featuring one of Brett's comments interspersed with such words as "sniffle" and "snort." Curious though, that this "soundbite" doesn't actually provide sound, just text that they could play with. Hey, here's a tip, Laura: when you have something you deem to be a "Soundbite of the Week," maybe the point would be to actually have sound...ya think?

Not only that, she even has a poll on her site: "Did Brett Favre embarrass himself by crying at his retirement press conference?" So far, by a vote of 66% to 34% those responding (however many) are giving a resounding "No".

It's very odd that a crackpot such as this would even bother to comment about Brett. What's her point? Does she know what a football is? Does she know where Green Bay is? Had she ever heard of Brett Favre before? Does she understand the concept of human empathy? Would seem the answer to all those questions is no. Perhaps, then, her point was to drive traffic to her website where you can pay for the privilege of listening to this drivel? Sorry. No suckers here. And we certainly don't want to drive traffic there, so no links to it.

Let's get a modern cultural reference point on the relevance of Brett to Laura whomever. Let's use...Google hits and YouTube video posts! (Yes, very unscientific but still makes the point). A search on "Brett Favre" returns 3,520,000 Google hits and 1,390 YouTube videos. A search on the name of Laura who-cares returns 502,000 Google hits and 245 YouTube videos, some of which show her raving out at various targets. For comparison, there are 490,000 Google hits on the term "jock itch." So, by comparison, Laura whosits is closer to jock itch than Brett Favre in terms of her cultural relevance. And somehow, doesn't that seem very fitting in this context?

I guess when you need ratings the easiest thing to do is to latch onto a beloved icon and bash away. Fortunately, Brett is too big of a man to be sucked into such small-minded tactics that are the staple of such persons as this. And so are we. Just wanted to make our readers aware of this garbage so it can be avoided altogether.

The only question I have for Miss Laura: how the heck did you get so bitter about everything?