Karl Malone, Buzz Bissinger, Blogs

Fanhouse superblogger Michael David Smith has done an excellent job following the story regarding Karl Malone and the [non existent and cold] relationship with his son Demetrius Bell, a young man who has recently been drafted into the NFL. My personal thoughts mirror that presented by many a writers in the photosphere. I think it is right to criticize Karl Malone.

Honestly, think about it. Dude made over a 100 million over an illustrious, although incomplete, (no wonder why karma wasn’t on his side) career in which he accomplished everything short of winning an NBA title. However, to refuse to pay 200 dollars a week to support a woman whom you impregnated when she was only 13? I am simply dumbfounded as why he would contest his legal obligation to someone HE placed in a very precarious position. Such statutory rape, if it happened today, would make Roger Clemens look like a Saint.

How does this relate to Buzz Bissinger going off on blogs? Well, I would like to reply to that by posing a question to Mr. Bissinger. Where was your main stream media covering this story? All but the LA Times simply did not even acknowledge the Karl Malone story. Don’t get me wrong, the story about the Army safety was great, but after seeing the obsession with the Roger Clemens sage, would this not have been a better story? A famous dead beat dad who is rolling in hypocrisy, after attempting to champion family values, after his own dad committed suicide when he was young, had to be a better story. Yet, main stream media shies away from such controversy. Even ESPN, “the world wide leader in sports,” did not recognize this until Jemelle Hill finally become the first , today. I hope her column sets off main stream media into revealing this sickening story. However, had it not been for blogs and bloggers like Michael David Smith, I do not know if people would even know this story. Now that, Mr. Bissinger, would be quite a shame. [On a side note, a food for thought is whether it is the anonymity that enables bloggers to present possibly controversial items such as this whereas the MSM does not.]

Just like there are columns like Woody Paige’s Hakuna Matata column, there are some poorly written materials in the photosphere as well. However, if you take Woody’s column to be fully representative of all print media, then why would anyone respect such medium. That column showed about as much sense as anything written by any idiot anywhere. Yet, I still read print media. Why? Because there are some very good columnists out there. The same is true in the realm of blogs. It is unavoidable that there are bad blogs, but there are also many enlightening ones. Try reading Kelly Dwyers’s game recaps, Buzz. Those recaps are better than any league wide recaps presented by any print media. Now, if you look at the comments for his posts, you will see some idiotic items.

However, it is extremely ludicrous to group posts and comments. That would be if one were to hold the columnist responsible for everything audible uttered in response to a column in a print media. See how silly it is? Hopefully you can. In the end, it just seems like Bissinger is threatened. Even though, the threat maybe real, please, do not, accelerate and magnify the ‘threat’ with your off base statements.