Monday, August 25, 2008

CHRIS COLLINGSWORTH HATES AMERICA

Why does Chris Collingsworth of NBC news hate America. He was a successful athlete. He earned a great deal of money. He’s on television as a commentator earning even more money.

The following is a paragraph from Paul Weyrich on NewsMax.

"Sportscaster Chris Collingsworth asked Bryant why he would give up his summer to play with the American Olympic team when he could be earning big bucks at home. Bryant said that when he got the Olympics uniform he spread it out on his bed and gazed at it for a long time. He said, “Our country, we believe, is the greatest county in the world, and it’s given us so many great opportunities and it’s just this sense of pride that you have, that you say, you know what? Our country is the best.”

Collingsworth was not expecting that sort of comment. Taken aback, he asked Bryant if such pride isn't a relic of a bygone era."


These are the kind of reporters on NBC generally both in the sports department and the news department. They hate America. They simply can’t understand why someone would be patriotic in America. So to Chris Collinsworth...why would anybody think you’re worthy to kiss the souls of the boots of the soldiers that keep you protecte.d. Cheers to the patriotic to America Kobe Bryant. Thank You Kobe...to Collingsworth, Go to Hell! And be quick about it. Hell is Iran...go there, you’ll love it with your attitude and we’ll be glad you’re gone.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The hippies are alive and well with all the freedoms and oportunities they have here they still can't break their bad habits of blaming America for everything.
At least we still have poeple i this country who don't give into the leftwing fringe:

http://electjeff.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/volleyball-team-thanks-president-bush/

tos

NewsGnome said...

Good comment...it's about time that someone said thanks to President Bush. He has kept the terrorists from killing any more us on our own streets...something, Obama won't do or Clinton couldn't do.

TheLonelyArtistClub said...

Do you have any idea where I can see the entire Collingsworth/Kobe interview? I'll I can find is a 39 second clip that shows the kobe answer everyone is applauding but doesn't continue to talk about what Collingsworth said in response or asked next. Since I regularly watch NBC"s Sunday Night Football program, I'm familiar with the extreme cynicism of Collingsworth, so I'm not doubting that he was being unpatriotic, and, as a side note, I will readily admit that NBC is the most liberal of the networks.

But let's consider a couple other things. Maybe Collingsworth was surprised at Bryant's answer because Kobe followed Lebron's example of suggesting that he would consider leaving America to play in the European League if offered enough money? Even if Collingsworth didn't have this in mind, does it change your opinion of Kobe's patriotism at all?

And what about your incessant references to the sexual immorality of Bill Clinton. Kobe committed statutory rape. Double standard?

And of course Bush has kept the terrorists out of our streets. When you start overrunning their countries, bombing their homes and families, then they stay at home and fight our soldiers there. I consider it a hypocritical wash. We either terrorize the terrorists and we are safe or we respect the sovereignty of other nations and give the terrorists the time and space they need to plan attacks on us. We can provide Americans with nearly unlimited freedoms and we open up the opportunity for attack, or we start striping rights to protect ourselves.

Personally I find both extremes nauseous.

NewsGnome said...

I saw the interview during the Olympics. I was shocked then and then printed this from NewsMax. You should be able to click on the blue paragraph and that should take you to the entire interview on NewsMax. But I also know that the links don’t last for ever. Regarding the money issue. That is a business decision. The issue of representing your country with the opportunity of redeeming the failure for the past two Olympics, is extremely refreshing.

I agree Collingsworth was cynical. I just have a hard time understanding the criticism of an athlete’s pride and excitement about his opportunity of representing his country and demean and belittle it. I totally agree that Kobe’s infidelity was inexcusable, but he wasn’t the president responsible to uphold the laws of the country. Clinton took an oath. That’s what was so unacceptable. The Clinton looked us right in the eye and denied he did what he did, and Hillary lied for him too. If you’re referring to Kobe’s “sexual assault” in Colorado, that was not Statutory rape...the girl was 19...he was 24...interestingly enough the ages of me and my wife, but it was still not excusable. Also, the apology of Kobe and Clinton were two different stories. In Clinton’s case he never really apologized and Monica, was one of many women and a subordinate . It just proves that Hillary and Bill were total political animals who could care less about honesty. I remember the 60-minutes interview where Hillary lied through her teeth. Bob Packwood was forced to resign from the senate for a lot less than what Clinton did.

Regarding Bush’s success keeping the terrorists from killing Americans on our streets, your problem is that you have no solution to attacking Americans here. We did attack the terrorists in their homes, they attacked the residents there killing them, using retarded children for homicide bombers. Do a search on what Lincoln, Wilson and FDR did in taking the rights of Americans under the sedition act. Once the war was over those rights were returned...in case you didn’t know...that is something with which the president is charged. Something that Clinton miserably failed to do.

I find your personal problems with doing what has to be done during a time of war, interesting. You may be nauseous, but you’d also be dead. What would you do if we were still having terrorists bombing American Streets? I think you would be nauseated at least watching the blood of American’s run on our soil.

PS: sorry I haven't been doing much blogging lately. Been really busy with my renters and family matters. NG

TheLonelyArtistClub said...

I like your response and I think your contrast of Kobe's personal infidelity vs. Clinton's public responsibility is very accurate. More than anything else, I have been slightly frustrated with some or your recent posts and that seemed like an easier point to attack the last few posts you've had.

I perhaps did not think through my Bush/no terrorist attack comment all the way. When I first started commenting that wasn't my intention, it was a thought of the moment, but if I can try to explain it a little more after some thought.

I feel like we either have to attack their countries and put them on the defense, or respect their nations and let them plan here. My argument that didn't name, but was meant to address the patriotic act was the weaker. I just have problems wrapping my mind around the idea. And I might be incorrect, but to me it seems that we have to go on the offense to keep the terrorists from attacking us. And while in a perfect world, I think I would rather their innocents die than our innocents, it does make me sick at my stomach to have that realization.

But this is the problem that I constantly struggle with. Ideally, I support the idea that we could be energy independent some day, remove western interests from the Middle East, and they would have no reason to feel the need to attack us anymore. Ideally, I believe that an appropriate welfare system could do us good (and as a side note, I'm 100% more concerned with the children who are born into poverty than their parents who have made choices to place themselves there), but I also realize that what we do now is a failure. Ideally, I have no problem giving a large chunk of my salary to the government if that money is spent helping those children, in financing education, in boosting the elements of our economy that struggle for various reasons, in providing health care to children, to people who honestly work but can't get a job that provides health care, and to the retired who watch inflation or a falling market destroy their savings.

But what I've come to realize in the last few months (when I've been thinking and not writing) is that even if I honestly believe these things, the Democratic Party, which claims to support these aims, can't establish a successful system for implementing them. I do blame the politicians for a lot of it, but I recognize that there are other elements that also get in the way.

At this point I'm very close to becoming Libertarian. If the government does not function efficiently or successfully, I'm tempted to say that I want as small of a government as possible. I do realize that in jumping from moderate Democrat to Libertarian I'd be bypassing a large spectrum of moderate and conservative opinions, but while I do tend to agree with some Republicans, my tendency in life has always been to go all or nothing.

I guess that is as close to a political manifesto as you will ever get from me. Have you ever heard of Richard Posner, or read anything by him? He's a right wing, basically Libertarian Federal Court of Appeals judge here in Chicago (and a part time professor at U Chicago Law School). I haven't finished the books I have by him yet, but early on, I think he's probably the most predominant enunciation of the political philosophy that I'm leaning toward.

Good luck with the busy business. I suppose that busy is better than no business.

Best wishes,
Lonely

TheLonelyArtistClub said...

I had a really long post planned on my site in reaction to an argument I witnessed between my extremely conservative liberal and likewise extreme conservative suite mates. It turned into yet another Lonely rambling and I realized that besides you and a couple of former teaching colleagues that don't care about politics, no one reads my new site, so I abandoned that post and decided to make a brief (as brief as I can be) comment on your site.

I still feel the need to defend my ideas of intellectual discussion. I've given an example in a previous comment where my views on global warming changed because I was willing to listen to what the other side had to say and I considered it and realized that my position should be adjusted somewhat.

I might not agree with an opposing side's post. We all have underlying assumptions about how the government should work. But even if I don't agree with the assumption I'm willing to applaud the other side if they can use real argumentation and evidence to back up their position. I might not switch sides, because I have a fundamentally different belief, but I will respect the person, and be more willing to listen to the person, that can back up his or her argument with solid information than the person who just recaps sound bytes and doesn't bother to actually show why the opposition is wrong.

I witnessed, and somewhat participated in, a sound byte argument tonight. I didn't realize it at the time, and I was mostly excluded from the argument because the other two were facing each other at the kitchen table on our only two kitchen chairs and I was several feet away on a couch, but the few comments I made, even thought I tried to formulate them in the same vein that I would have required of my comp students were rarely heard.

Imagine an argument between Keith Oberman and Bill O'Reiley and that's what I witnessed. With no comment made on either of their intelligence levels, I don't like either as "news" people. They're tv columnists and both have an agenda. When I watched my roommates argue they only listened to the other person to the extent that they could pick out an improper claim and call that person on it with yet another sound byte. Although my participation was limited, my frustration led me to start shouting my own sound bytes.

And what did we accomplish? We pissed each other off. None of us actually seriously listened to the claims of the other party. My two roommates were against each other and I was somewhere in the middle. I disagreed with most of what the conservative said, but I didn't agree with the extremes that the liberal took it too, but even the liberal and I couldn't come to a consensus. We were too busy trying to fight a "common enemy" and are arguments were obscene!

[As a side note I want to give you an idea of some of the things that the conservative guy said, because most of the time, when you're not being overly angry, I acknowledge that your opinions are well thought out and they very well could have something to do with my increasing bent toward the middle and distaste for Obama. Conservative roommate said things [until the end of the paragraph this is a paraphrase of his arguments] such as the Iraq war was more justified than the Afghanistan war because the Afghan State did not threaten us but the Iraqi state did. America has a job to police to the world. America is a waning super power, but the way to reinstate our status is to plow over countries to show that threaten us. If a country threatens us, regardless of how implausible the fulfillment of the threat, we should attack before they can act. We're not in Darfur right now because liberals are against it (to which I responded, didn't liberals bring that up?).] Those are the extreme cases that I think you might agree with me on. Of course he did say some things that were well thought out, but my problem is that I don't think he could the reasoning himself, I think they were sound bytes from FoxNews.

My final point is that this is why intellectual discussion is important. Dialogue might not always lead to a consensus, but isn't that attempt better than purely partisan (either side of the aisle--and I'll grant you the Democrat's energy policy here as a counter party example) sound bytes where neither party listens to the other.

And finally, on a more personal note, I realize I spend a lot more time and length responding to your posts than others. I'm not trying to prove a point, but i believe that my arguments become better when I can hear the objections to them. In all honesty I don't like most of your posts. I think they are excessively aggressive and if we hadn't already had our face off, I would ignore you. However, I see a completely different writer in your comments. I feel like I have learned a lot, not just about writing, but how to examine my opinions based on the things that you have said. On that note, I appreciate the criticism you can give me in a response, because not only will I enjoy reading it, but I anticipate that it will point out the flaws in my own logic.

Lonely

NewsGnome said...

Lonely,

I really wish I had the time to spend time giving you much more “thoughtful” responses. But this has been a particularly difficult time for me, medically and family issues which really don’t give me all the time your comments deserve.

But let me say a few things regarding the “sound byte” battle. That is a very frustrating thing in blogging. Most people spew a hackneyed version of some issue and then give you a “link” to some article that allegedly supports their position which I would guess occurred during the discussion you describe. I certainly have been guilty of the same thing. It is an issue I’ve railed about since I was in television news. Because of time constraints, a reporter, if he is unbiased, should make an effort to present both sides of any given story and keep his personal opinion out of it. But the problem is that by the nature of any issue, doing the “both sides” approach polarizes the issue when, in fact, there are many shades of gray which you frequently point out and which also has bearing on an issue but doesn’t get heard because of time.

Blogging does the same thing. Intellectual discussion and dialogue devolve into competing sound bytes. Unfortunately, I doubt that there will ever be a solution to that problem since we don’t have the time we used to. Consider the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They would go on for hours. In today’s communication the average sound byte in news programs is 9 seconds and some very smart people work really hard in creating the most cryptic use of those 9 seconds. Humans today who watch TV and computers frequently have attention time spans measured in seconds. Just consider the comments made on blogs. One or two second max usually. You say your comments are long which is true...but it is an illustration of the problem you describe. We select our own set of bytes and forge forth. Not an easy problem to overcome. I have been criticized many times for long comments...as you could have been. It takes a commitment to another blogger to discuss in a long format.

Re: my posts as you say are “excessively aggressive.” I don’t disagree with that. In a way it is the result of the problem you face with trying to establish intellectual dialogue. There’s an old joke about a man and a donkey. A friend is trying to get a donkey to do something and the donkey is totally ignoring him. A farmer walks up picks up a two-by-four and slams the donkey right between the eyes and says, first you have to get his attention. I’m guilty of that to a degree. You’ve correctly assessed that I’m picking up the two-by-four on my post, and you may disagree.

Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening in discussions today. We all know what everybody else is going to say and intellectual preparation consists of finding our own sound bytes to counter our opponent.

Now to an extremely important question you’ve raised in your next to last paragraph...My final point is....” Wish that it were so that dialogue would resolve issues. But age has taught me one thing. We all come to conclusions based not just on the intellectual desire to be correct and apply the most appropriate solution, but on seeing how past “alleged” solution have been applied and if they worked. So in my life time I saw LBJ commit American to pay 4 trillion in our tax dollars to “the War of Poverty,” only to see poverty stay just where it was even to this day. It hasn’t worked because it is the human mind-set that has to be changed, not the amount of change you can con out of the government. I don’t have Fox New Channel so I don’t get too much of their arguments. On the other hand, I do get CNN, and MSNBC and I can tell you that they make what I hear about Fox pale in comparison when it comes to bias. What irritates me is that too many people criticize Bill O’Reilly...but he’s a commentator not a news reporter. Just as Keith Olberman is just as biased...I don’t like Olberman but he has his rights to his opinion as idiotic as they frequently are.

I would disagree with your conservative roommate. Afghanistan was critical and I could logically argue either side of the Iraqi war issue. But to do so would assume that you can argue in a vacuum, and politicians don’t have that privilege. At the time, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Harry Reid, and others were demanding that we go get the alleged WMD’s that were believed to be there. Like making judgement in the heat of a gun battle and then trying to assessing it in the calm of a courtroom. Frequently, to make a judgement in the two different settings is flawed by the nature of the forum. The war in Iraq has been won. Not finished, but won. It took four years after declaring victory over Japan to clean out the diehards.

One of the problems you face in your effort to expand the concept of dialogue is that we do not live in an ideal world. Not everyone is logically motivated nor do they support allowing competing opinions. Russia just invaded Georgia, an independent democracy. They just announced that they intend to annex the two states within Georgia into the new “Soviet Union.” If you disagree with them how do you resolve the issue intellectually. Putin isn’t going to change...This is ultimately a world ruled by the violent use of force when all the intellectual dialogue has been exhausted...what do you do then?

I realize I’m going on for a while here but you asked a lot. There is no reason to get angry...just realize you’re not going to change 99% of others opinions. I believe you’re essentially maintaining your liberal focus. But we’ve been having some interesting discussions. Tom Cruise believes that humans were planted here by an alien spaceship. Now he has the right to that opinion, but I doubt I’d ever believe that theory. In other words, no amount of dialogue will ever resolve some issues.

NG

TheLonelyArtistClub said...

Thanks for the comments. I was all over the place with my response last night. You give me some interesting fodder for thought. I can't adequately explain what I want myself. The closest one sentence explanation I can come to is: I want people to have detailed reasons to believe what they believe, to not just take their beliefs at wholesale from another source.

As far as cable news goes, I agree that MSNBC is outrageously liberal. I can't watch it. CNN does a liberal bias, but I don't think it's any more liberal than FoxNews is conservative. I actually heard a report by a commentator on Fox last week explaining why the Obama/Biden bumper sticker looked stupid. Not a word about policy, just 3 minutes on why they're names didn't look good together side by side.

I had a friend who was getting a masters in broadcast journalism, but she abandoned the project because she got pregnant and her husband was an air force officer with apparently great prospects and she decided to stay at home, but her original research project was going to be a statistical comparison of how much time the three major cable news networks spent on various issues and parties, to try and determine statistically, what their levels of bias were. I'm not sure that she could have even completed that project, but it would be interesting to know.