Tuesday night's generational media dustup between Buzz Bissinger and Will Leitch on HBO continues to echo through cyberspace, if people still actually use that term.
Here is a take from Newsday's own Adam Abramson, who is younger than the baseball cap I currently am wearing, in which he gives Glauber and I props for not being cranky old guys, unlike, well, Buzz.
Look, people, I'm stuck in the middle on this one, given my age and background. Tuesday's discussion would have been more productive had Bissinger stayed out of it and let Costas ask the pointed questions of Leitch.
I thought Costas was most effective when he pointed out that because of their access, the likes of Woodward/Bernstein, Ernie Pyle and Jim Nantz were able to offer insights into Watergate, World War II and The Masters that those without access could not have.
But of course Leitch is not advocating the abolishment of reporting itself.
So it's all quite complicated.
Click below for a transcript of my conversation with Costas after the show Tuesday night, in which he discusses the show itself and also a recent controversy over some blogger comments he made, which is recounted by Leitch himself here.
(That "Friday Night Lights" actress on the right whose name I do not know was another person I declined an invitation to interview so I could get Ray Mancini last Friday. Alice Braga was the first.)
Costas on how Tuesday's show went: "It felt like it went very well. It felt like there was a good exchange of ideas and it was good television. The last segment [on race] was the one that was the most frustrating to me.
"I had said from the start that to be perfectly honest I was dubious about including race in this show simply because that subject is worthy of an entire program. I knew I’d be in a tough spot, as spacious as 90 minutes is without any commercials, and it’s incredible and wonderful that HBO devotes this kind of time, no one else would do it, no one else does this kind of adventurous stuff in sports that HBO does.
"The one I would have removed, not because it was less significant, it’s more significant, was race in sports. So this was the best compromise [to do a full show on it at a later date]."
On Buzz Bissinger: "I knew that Buzz was coming with his game face on. I had no idea he would sprint from the blocks the way he did. You know what, it’s OK. It’s all good. He did a lot of my lifting for me. That was something."
On his recent comments about bloggers: "What I really feel happened was that it was in somes quarters willfully misinterpreted to begin with. But once I went out of my way to clarify, which I did both with Leitch and with Barry Jackson [of the Miami Herald], the place where it originally ran, no one who read those comments and clarification and knows my work at all would doubt that was truthful.
"The idea I would back off from something I actually believe just because there was a little firestorm, no way. And in fact I reemphasized the part I do firmly believe, which is about the abuse of it. I think what a number of bloggers do, or did in this situation, is the clarification is inconvenient, because it disarms them.
"They want the straw man. The straw man is the man who makes the kind of sweeping statement I almost never make about anything. That straw man served their purposes better, so they clung to that even as I made it abundantly clear that that wasn’t where I was coming from to begin with."
More about the show: "You want something that not only has substance but also has some pace and some entertainment value to it and I think by and large that was achieved."
(By the way, HBO let the show run a little long, going off at 11:32:29 p.m.)
Comments (2)
Ya think Buzz is a tad bitter??
It's ironic that I hadn't heard of Buzz Bissenger until I read about all this garbage in a blog.