You can please all of the people none of the time, some of the people none of the time, and none of the people none of the time.
Wait, I think I screwed that up. Let me check my email again.
Nope, that’s right.
In the short time I’ve been posting on The Bleacher Report (moment of silence in respect), my almost 4,000 reads have yielded surprisingly few comments. So when I received an email requesting that I delete a recent post, well… it surprised me like a pee shiver.
My article was, "Phillies-Padres: I Have A Good Joke For You,” and the reviewer let me know it was disrespectful and should be deleted because it was the top article on a Google News search about Chan Ho Park.
Well, you know what first crossed my mind. MY ARTICLE WAS FIRST ON A GOOGLE NEWS SEARCH!!! WOOO HOOO!! THANK YOU BLEACHER REPORT!! Then I put my childishness aside and considered his words with all seriousness. And if you’ve ever read my blogs, you’ll know how hard that is for me.
But first, I couldn’t help but go to Google News and confirm my euphoria at being a top list on the internet. I know, I’m so bad. Jayson Werth, please punish me.
After my Jayson fantasy ended, I did a regular Google search on myself.
Low and behold I found another fan.
This time it was on the NBC Philadelphia site and my admirer was a journalist named Karen Araiza. She seems so nice. At first, it looked like she wrote an entire article on my entire article: “Philadelphia Phils vs. Atlanta Braves Recap: Un-Happy Mother’s Day.”
But then I discovered she wrote her article only to call attention to a single, small paragraph. And you know what paragraph she posted? Yup, one that cast my intention in an unpleasant light.
Here's my misconstrued paragraph:
"But the most annoying thing about having so many women at the ball park is they don’t understand that it’s common courtesy to wait until the batter is through before you interrupt everyone in your row with your exit. Whether you need to empty your bladder, perk your girls, or fluff your do, remember there are other people than you."
Karen's was a typical piece of journalism—she extruded a paragraph intended to emphasize baseball stadium etiquette, and used it to create a forum that made me out a sexist. This proved only one thing—she’s an angry elf. It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve known a lot of those people who love shoes but love more to play the victim.
But there are intricacies about people that her article and the ensuing comments emphasized. First, no one can laugh at women, especially a woman. It’s as taboo as the cat shitting in the kids’ sandbox. It’s uncouth to think anything we do is funny or make fun of us, even in the mildest of respects.
Unless you’re Madonna.
The second foible she revealed is, once you've taken someone's message out of context, it’s okay to talk about them behind closed doors. Now I know how Denis Leary felt when the New York Times took a paragraph from his new book out of context and crucified him for it.
Karen, I hope you’re reading. I’d love to get together and chat about the whims of writing and womanhood. I quite enjoy them both. However, you wouldn’t know this because it felt better to create a piece of journalism that reported a misconstrued spot of sexism by one of your own then call attention to what this woman has really done: created a well-received humorous blog on The Bleacher Report without flaunting blond hair, big boobs, or youth.
I always said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, let me say it. Or just share it with me. Then let’s find a way to laugh about it.
If you don’t believe me, read one of my posts. Then send me an email right from the B/R site. Yours doesn’t allow me to contact you directly, otherwise I would.
This baseball babe’s door is always open. And I’ll leave the light on for you.
Peace.
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