Posts Tagged Idiots
Something about televised baseball doesn’t add up
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 15th, 2010
We’ve earned TV treating us like idiots. This is the nation that gets emotionally invested enough to call a hotline to determine whether Pamela Anderson or Evan Lysacek is the better dancer.
So I’m not surprised, as we start the 2010 baseball season, that broadcasts still feature outdated statistics. You know what I mean. A guy steps up to the plate and up pop “batting average” and “RBI.” Serious baseball analysts prefer new-age baseball stats, called “sabermetrics” because that sounds more official than “tenth-grade algebra.” Read the rest of this entry »
A really, really large SCAM
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on March 2nd, 2010
Good journalists use sharp, precise language to convey ideas clearly. Pfft. What I’m trying to do here is write a column about largeness and smallness issues affecting the private portions of our anatomies without using words that get this column filtered for content.
What does that mean for me, your Sex Column Answer Man? I’ll employ the standard practice of talking around the issue of hand with vague allusions, as in: “Bob asked the urologist to examine his euphemism.” But you’ll know what I’m talking about, because every time I make such a reference, I’ll wink at my computer screen.
Question: Why are men obsessed about size? Read the rest of this entry »
…But the firearms are so delightful
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on December 22nd, 2009
To stay safe this holiday season you’ll want to follow standard winter protocol, such as not coming to a snowball fight without a gun.
This was the error made by hundreds of residents of Washington, D.C., who went to a little-used intersection in the city during last weekend’s blizzard. The event was hastily arranged on Twitter because, even with two feet of snow, people needed the Internet to tell them to go outside and throw snowballs. Read the rest of this entry »
This Chief Illiniwek column is extremely controversial
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on November 20th, 2008
This whole “Chief Illiniwek returns to campus” thing really got me upset. I mean, my column about Obama last week got zero responses on the DI website, whereas anything about the Chief has people firing half-baked comment-board opinions like so many monkeys flinging poop.
People have very strong opinions about this Illiniwek fellow, and if stoking that fire is the way to make people read what I write, fine by me. This tactic served me well in the past, like in last year’s column, “Gay Nazi abortionists should be allowed to marry, according to the Koran.” Read the rest of this entry »
Never trust a dead, talking British fish
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on September 30th, 2008
As the old William Shakespeare quote goes, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” This is a lie. There are way more than three kinds of lies. White lies, for instance and my mother’s hair color.
Also Shakespeare never said it. It was Benjamin Disraeli, who, according to Wikipedia, is “some kind of fish.”
That’s a lie, too. Wikipedia never identified Disraeli, a former British Prime Minster, as “some kind of fish.” (It specified that he was a mackerel.) But for the internet generation, it’s easier to trust Wikipedia than go to a more reliable source, such as guessing. Read the rest of this entry »
Your trusty Sex Column Answer Man goes political
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on September 11th, 2008
Your average politician has the sex appeal of a jack-o-lantern, and yet these guys have romantic encounters all the time. Take Eliot Spitzer, for example. The guy looks like Kermit the Frog, but still was able to have sex for less than $5,000.
Think about the recent headlines. John Edwards admitted to an affair with a former staffer. Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Political sex is in the news again, so you need me, your faithful Sex Column Answer Man, more than ever. Because of the sensitive nature of these topics, I will use my maturity and wisdom to handle these topics with all the delicacy of an NFL linebacker. I’m a sex columnist, not a nun.
Question: Why is it surprising that former North Carolina senator and two-time Presidential candidate John Edwards recently admitted to an extramarital affair? Read the rest of this entry »
Hey, Fox News Channel! Come on, do your worst
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on July 9th, 2008
There’s a code of ethics in the news media which, as far as I can tell, serves no practical purpose. You’d sell a lot more papers if you could make up headlines like “McCain grows to colossal size; uses laser-vision to slash budget.” That’s why working at Fox News is such a plum job – they don’t worry about things like “journalistic ethics.”
Here’s what Fox did last week. After New York Times media reporter Jacques Steinberg wrote accurately about “ominous” ratings trends for Fox News, which is losing ground to CNN and MSNBC, anchors on the “Fox & Friends” morning show called Steinberg’s work a “hit piece.” They also referred to Steinberg and his editor, Steven Reddicliffe, as “attack dogs.” So far, the network was still within the bounds of standard journalistic practices – you see this stuff all the time from respected media, like NPR’s recent report, “Peggy Noonan: Stupid Tramp Or What?” Read the rest of this entry »
Scott’s mailbag: cats vs. babies
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on March 27th, 2008
My job as a columnist is to intellectually challenge readers. Just like William Safire or Robert Novak, I do this by taking on controversial topics including abortion, the role of religion in politics and cat poop. I didn’t realize the last one was contentious until a few weeks ago, when I wrote a column suggesting, in a deliberately cautious tone so as not to offend anybody, that cat owners are idiots.
The cat people were not happy about this. They mainly aired their grievances on The Daily Illini’s comment boards (“I think I’ll keep the cat and get rid of you” was a typical response), but there was even a letter to the editor published the following Monday pointing out that my column included a logical fallacy. This upset me because, in the process of writing a serious and dignified piece about cat poop, I’d never intended to dishonor the legacies of Plato and Aristotle. Read the rest of this entry »
SNN: The Scott News Network
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on February 7th, 2008
I’m going to found my own cable news network, and we’re going to have award-winning election coverage. I spent Tuesday evening in the Daily Illini newsroom watching election results on CNN and MSNBC, networks I usually pay little mind. We had these channels on because we are a top-tier bastion of journalism, and also because “The Simpsons” had ended at 5:30.
I shrewdly observed some key ingredients to proper election-night coverage. For example, you need to have a serious and responsible anchor named something like “Wolf Blitzer.” This is a name that connotes the important message: “My parents did not understand English.” Read the rest of this entry »
Car noises? Probably the gromulet frinster
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on January 17th, 2008
The first sign that a school break has ended and the majestic pursuit of knowledge is set to resume is that my car needs repairs. If my car ever broke down in the middle of July, the University’s Board of Trustees would have to convene an emergency semester.
So last week, right on schedule, I had a problem with my brakes. Car experts consider brakes very important because they make cars slow down and stop, though if you want to be an average campus motorist, they are not essential. What happened was, my brakes began making a high-pitched squeaking noise whenever I started my car, such that they could have replaced Fran Drescher in any of her acting roles and nobody would have noticed the difference. Read the rest of this entry »
WHAT’S NEW- Shark weak August 5, 2010
- Our newest justice, after these messages May 3, 2010
- Roger Ebert one-ups the Internet April 26, 2010
- Something about televised baseball doesn’t add up April 15, 2010
- Showering with 40 or 50 women April 8, 2010