surface tension |
i'm an english major at hartwick college studying to be or not to be (one of life's equally frustrating dilemmas). if you like what you see here and want to chat, belay your feelings, or generally just want to give me an immediate sense of purpose, feel free to contact me at murrays@hartwick.edu. cheers. |
Like any young, old, or pre-pubescent adult in this day and age, the media has my attention saturated and fed through an open feeder tube, constantly feeding me gift wrapped, tightly presented, sugary bullshit. When I watch T.V., (and when I do I tend to tarry long from the sports networks) all I am trying to do, as I sit down on my couch and watch re-caps and replays of the days various football games, is to forget, for the moment anyway, man’s infinite and incalculable follies. When I watch ESPN, it is to enjoy the celebration of our mental and physical prowess, pitting mind against mind or body vs. body. We would be ignorant, or ridiculous, or slightly high to think that the sports network has anything to do with something other than sports. Watching the sports channel, at least I used to think, was to accept the fact that emotional problems, because of their negative influence on performance, would be left at home, on the bus, in the locker room. Tiger’s performance does not need defending. So then why, for chrissakes, why, is every goddamn sports talk-show like Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, and Mike and Mike going into such deep speculation about Tiger Woods’ sex life? What needs speculating? What very well is a PR nightmare for the greatest golfer aside, what does analyzing character, charting the sincerity of apologies, and trying to guess and conjecture on the Woods’ family life have a-n-y thing to do with golf? Who are we to say such things? We press these people (and by ‘these people,’ I mean what had once just been actors but now athletes) so tightly into a lime-lighted, glass framed box on center stage, taking away humanity, taking away error, taking away mistakes; and yet we can hardly understand why they always seem to disappoint us in the end.
