If You Can't Say Something Nice About Someone, Instead Say Something That Doesn't Make Any Sense
Apparently that's one figure of speech ESPN's new resident dumb guy, Rick Reilly, lives by. From his first chat for the WWL:
Martin Bell (NYC): There's no way to put this gently, so I'll be blunt: Are you and Bill Simmons going to get along?
Rick Reilly: (Blah blah blah, says some nice stuff about Bill and insists they're already pals.) And you combine that with one of the purest writers in the country, Gene Wojciechowski, plus all the other writers, and I think this is a helluva staff.
What exactly is a "pure" writer? I hope Rick isn't trying to pass that term off as a compliment. Based on that description, I'm having a hard time not thinking that in this context "purest" must be synonymous with "worst." I've got the documentation to back that up right here. If Gene's a pure writer, Darin Erstad is a pure hitter, the Detroit Lions are a pure franchise, and Washington DC has some of the purest summer weather in the country.
6 comments:
Maybe he meant pure like Hitler meant pure.
...Too soon?
I saw that in the chat and had the same though. 1 - Gene W. is terrible and 2 - Pure doesn't mean anything.
To me a pure writer would be someone who just types - stream of consciousness style - and lets the words flow - then it gets published without any proofreading at all - not even one read. Actually, if that's the case then Reilly was right! oooooh snap!
I am already tired of Rick Reilly.
Larry that was one of the best, pure posts you have put up in a while. Overall, just a great job. Just real pure.
Under Jeff's definition, I think I must be a pure writer.
Ah, obviously a simple transcription error. Not "purest", he must have said "poorest". "One of the poorest writers in the country" makes perfect sense.
Two sentences less than a paragraph apart, from B.S. today:
an unspeakable 38-10 free-throw disparity that I won't even attempt to defend.
Yeah, the calls were one-sided, but you can't expect to get calls when you're reaching in from behind, trying to strip guys after they beat you and trying to block shots after your guy already grabbed an offensive rebound and he's standing between you and the basket.
I don't even have to say anything.
Oh, Bill. Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill. I'll take a look at that article in its entirety tonight.
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