Salon.com > David Roth

Chris Broussard doesn’t matter

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:55:00 +0000

Earlier today, Jim Cavan made the case that Chris Broussard's (very unpopular) opinion on Jason Collins' decision to come out as gay does, in fact, matter. This is a mostly ad hominem (towards Broussard, not Cavan) counterpoint to that.

Brendan Flynn: Everyone's all mad at Chris Broussard. Evidently unwilling to Embrace Debate.

David Roth: And Tim Brando! No one wants to hear his truth because he's white and old and successful, and that's not worth a damn thing these days. I've always thought the big issue with regard to how gay athletes was how it made random television guys feel. Are they proud? Are they angry? We need to know about this, it's the most important thing.

Brendan: Really interesting to hear Broussard's thoughts on adultery and children out of wedlock as it relates to gays. Really looking forward to his #TruthToPower moment on all the other sinners he's covered.

Linsanity revisited

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:00:00 +0000

It takes a fairly long time to write a book, for obvious reasons having to do with conceptualizing and writing and editing and the ambient neuroses that come with all that. For less obvious reasons having to do with things I'm not anywhere near as familiar with, it also takes a very long time to publish a book. When Jeremy Lin was off on his giddy and sudden ascent around this time in the 2011-12 NBA season, publishers were clamoring for a book on Jeremy Lin, any book on Jeremy Lin that they could sell immediately to the many people who were suddenly very interested in Jeremy Lin. But, for all the reasons mentioned above, and because Linsanity's bright bloom was so brief, no proper Jeremy Lin book ever came. There was a glossy Collector's Edition magazine-y thing with many photos of Lin on sale at the drugstore, next to assorted other Linsanity-related detritus—I remember a lot of pull-out plastic banners—but as it was all marked down and marked down again and finally gone, there was no Jeremy Lin book.

Requiem for a dopey sports logo

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

It's something to guard against, the urge towards reflexive nostalgia. What we remember about sports we remember in context, and that has a tendency to confer a richness or significance on those memories that might not necessarily be there. This is how we wind up with Buzzfeed-y "277 Things About The 1990s You Guys" listicles, and with the attendant sense that there is somehow something that matters to us about, like, Hanson or Melissa Joan Hart, when really our only relationship to them is that we remember them from when we were younger, simpler people. All worth keeping in mind. None of that, though, in any way diminishes the outrage that is the Miami Dolphins redesigning their logo so that it no longer features a smiling dolphin wearing a football helmet.

The new Dolphins logo, or more precisely what might be the new Dolphins logo (if UniWatch's Paul Lukas is more or less convinced, I'm convinced) isn't necessarily good or bad. It's a dolphin, if kind of sleeked-out and tuffed-up as befits the fact that it's a NFL logo, and thus is supposed to be sleek and tuff.