Costas made his name and money as a sports journalist but he’s done other stuff - guest hosting for Larry King, hosting a nightly interview show, and things like that. Perhaps people remember the Costas’ unexpected interview with Jerry Sandusky?
You don’t suppose, do you, that my post that has turned your panties into a tourniquet was aimed primarily at RTFirefly to whom it was a direct response? Is that a possibility? Maybe? Hmmm?
Don’t let me ruin your little one-man orgy of righteous indignation, though.
Cite for the last time people got this upset about something off-topic Costas said in the sportscaster booth?
Sez you. And if that’s how you feel, you can watch the (hypothetical) PBS coverage. I’m sure there would be a market for Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh calling games on the Fox NFL channel.
Of course, it’s directly related to the topic. You don’t like politics mixed with football. But, surely, there are people who disagree with you. Why not give all TV channels the opportunity to offer sports broadcasts with or without political flavor as they choose?
But the NFL doesn’t create “programs.” They put on a game. They can’t stop any newspaper from covering their games. Why should they be able to stop a TV channel from covering their games? Why not set up a public tariff system whereby any TV channel can access camera feeds at a game and put on its own show with its own commentators by paying the tariffed fees?
The NFL is a monopoly and we regulate monopolies in all kinds of ways. Land-line telephone companies, electric and gas utilities, taxi services, etc., are not allowed to deny service to anyone within their coverage area. The NFL could be regulated in the same way. Require them to give access to their camera fees to any TV channel who pays the tariffed price.
I watched the game on my computer, where I watch most of the games. Missed Costas…guess I didn’t miss much, he’s pretty much of an ass. I think NBC will lose more people over this than they lost having Olbermann on.
It’s not a gun issue it’s the fact that Costas used his position to present a sound bite on something he doesn’t know much about. There was a murder and a suicide and an ongoing investigation. Costas decided, in his self-importance, to add to a situation he wasn’t connected to other than being a talking head to talk about…football.
OMG! That’s terrible! A guy on TV said something about a topic he doesn’t know much about?!?!?!
We need to have a long drawn out discussion about this travesty, this sham, this mockery, it’s a travishamockery!
Is there somewhere I can call to express my outrage? Seriously, what is the President’s position on TV hosts going off script? I demand action!
[sub]Too much?
Yes, it is too much, but I’m not the one who made a mountain of this particular molehill.[/sub]
I think it was brave of Costas to express that opinion on TV. Its pathetic that the conversation has moved so far right that to even begin a conversation causes controversy.
There is no equivalency from the other side. If someone expressed their view that if the girlfriend had a gun and everything would be ok, they’d be objectively wrong, because plenty of people have guns and still get shot, they are not magically bulletproof by having a gun. Its a tool like any other, and it is most often misused. Even if 2 people both have a gun, as long as one can surprise the other, then what Whitlock and Costas said will come to pass.
There’s no equivalency from the other side? Remember when Tim Tebow’s abortion commercial came on during the Super Bowl? WHAT AN OUTRAGE! And that wasn’t even from a guy who had a captive audience who expected to see a football game and was blindsided with politics, it wasn’t a network endorsed commentary, it was a commercial.
The selective memories of people never fail to amaze me.
Wrong. Laughably, idiotically, wrong.
Wiki puts gun ownership at 88.8 guns/100 residents. Other rates have put ownership rates amongst the general populace at 47%, but that may have gone up in the last few years.
The current U.S. Population is just shy of 315,000,000. With a rate of 88.8 guns/100 residents puts ~277,000,000 guns in the U.S., in the hands of approx.148,000,000 gun owners.
With the firearm homicide rate hovering in the range of 10,000, that’s something like 0.0000675 homicides per gun owning person in the U.S. While I admit it’s higher than other countries, saying “it is most often misused” is (and I’m being nice here, for values of “nice”) at best outrageous hyperbole.
No, I’m talking about the line between expressing an opinion and advocacy. For instance, saying, “the earth’s atmosphere is warming, and human actions are driving it” is, well, it’s pretty much a statement of fact, but let’s call it an opinion for purposes of this discussion.
But it’s not advocacy. The next line might be, “but we aren’t going to do anything about it, so we might as well lie back and enjoy it.” However, if the next line were, “so we ought to impose a carbon tax,” that would be advocacy.
But just to get back to your point, how can it be anything but a statement of the obvious that it’s easier to kill people with guns than with knives, blunt instruments, one’s bare hands, or whatever? How can it be anything but a statement of the obvious that even the best of us occasionally lose our tempers, but the consequences are more likely to be nonlethal if we don’t have a gun when we get upset? Goddamn, it’s just plain denial of the obvious to say otherwise.
Feel free to come up with a conservative “statement of the obvious” that’s actually true, but that we libruls would contest. Seriously, good luck with that.
First, why are you dragging the liberal/conservative bullshit into this? I guess you are assuming that since I am pro-gun I must be a conservative. Ha ha, it is, as they say, to laugh. I am a registered Democrat, Obama supporter, an officer in a union, pro-choice, and pro-SSM. You name the “liberal” position, except pro-gun control, and I can just about guarantee that I hold it. So let’s just put that whole, inadequate, outdated idea of a dichotomous political spectrum aside, shall we, and stick to what we are discussing here.
“The best of us,” and almost all the rest of us, don’t kill anybody no matter what is in our hands when we are angry. Or when we are drunk. Or high. Or anything else. See ExTank’s figures in his post. What that tiny percentage does is not a reason I will accept as to why everybody else has to be limited in what they may do or own.
Because Tebow’s commercial was played while other ones were denied. I don’t care if Tebow has a commercial, but I do care if other companies try to buy time but were blocked because either they were deemed too atheist or even just too sexy. So no, there’s no equivalent side on the liberal, or pro-gun control side. That is if you want to simply ignore the fact that many Democrats are pro-gun too
Its not misused relative to the total number of people, its misused relative to gun related violence. How many people actually use a gun to stop a crime vs. committing one?
Depending upon methodology, Defensive Gun Uses (the last time someone tried one of those studies) number anywhere from 108,000 to 3.5 million.
So even on just homicides, defensive uses outnumber criminal uses just short of 10:1.
Hmmm… couod there be any problems with asking gun owners to self-report on how many times they were scared?
Oh no, I’m sure they are always brutally honest and never exaggerate. Why, self-reports are the best kind of empirical evidence, don’t you know?
Suggest a better methodology. I’m reaching back a few years memory-wise, but the 108,000 number was collected by a (self-confessed gun control advocate) researcher who scoffed at the 2.5 - 3.5 million number for exactly the reason you suggest, and conducted his own study, funded, IIRC, by the Clinton Justice Dept.
In any case, it’s durned difficult to prove a negative, and linking causation has its own issues. Frex: was it the armed homeowner appearing suddenly on the porch that scared away the serial killer? Or the barking dogs and the porch light that suddenly came on? Did the intruder, who ran away and wasn’t identified/caught, fear that the homwowner of the home he was about to break into might be armed? Was there even an intruder in the first place? Or were the dogs barking at the friggin’ moon?
The study I mentioned above (I seem to recall the guy’s name was Davis) tried to cancel out some of the “self-reporting” issues (it was still a self-reporting telephone survey) and go with data collected where the homeowner or defendent actually apprehended and held someoneat gunpoint for collection by the authorities, or where there was evidence that a firearm had been discharged (in self/home defense) and actually hit someone (even if they then ran away).
The study has been linked to (several times) in previous (and numerous) gun-control threads over the last decade+. I’m not digging it back up again.
Hm. The one I can find is from David McDowall in 1994. It concluded an annual mean of 64,615 firearm defense between 1987 and 1990.
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.84.12.1982
The real question is why high gun-ownership societies like Switzerland and Canada have such lower gun homicide rates.
Do you think the incessant near-deification of the U.S. military during NFL games, especially during opening ceremonies, is equally inappropriate?
I mean, an NFL game or a NASCAR event) sometimes look like a Red Square parade circa 1978, with the uniforms and the jets and parades and flags and saluting and on and on. It’s getting pretty heavy on the “Troops Troops Troops” stuff. Should that be a part of the presentation?
Yes.