Posted on 03/29/2005 3:55:37 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
In the midst of a Sports Illustrated/CNN Sports blog entry about the NCAA men's basketball tournament, Boston Globe Magazine writer Charles Pierce, who in a 2003 article touted how if Mary Jo Kopechne had lived, "Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age," denounced columnist and CNN commentator Robert Novak. Pierce castigated Novak as "a mendacious lycanthrope" and warned CBS, which is carrying the tournament: "If you use him as a talking-head anywhere on your network, you've sacrificed credibility for celebrity in a big way."
Novak is a big college basketball fan.
Mendacious means untruthful and the Oxford dictionary defines lycanthrope as "a werewolf." It defines "lycanthropy" as "the mythical transformation of a person into a wolf. Archaic, a form of madness involving the delusion of being an animal, usually a wolf."
Clay Waters, Editor of the MRC's TimesWatch.org site (www.TimesWatch.org ), caught the remark in a Monday "e-mail conversation about the NCAA tournament" with back-to-back entries from Pierce, identified as a Boston Globe Magazine writer who also "appears regularly on National Public Radio," and Sports Illustrated senior writer Alex Wolff, "author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure."
The entry in question was headed:
From: Charles Pierce
To: Alexander Wolff
Subject: Memory lapses Sunday, March 28, 2005" [yes, Sunday was the 27th and Monday the 28th]
An excerpt from the second half of Pierce's entry:
....Sometimes, I think CBS's memory hole must be the size of Mauna Kea.
Which reminds me. You probably missed it, but CBS ran a pre-game special about the arc of the Maryland program from the death of Len Bias in 1986 to the national championship back in 2002. It was a mixed bag, even if you grant the fact that it's Easter, and that television sports just loves redemption stories even at less appropriate moments on the liturgical calendar. Anyway, it was nice to see Gary Williams get some props, and there was the expected revisionism concerning Lefty Driesell, who still has his fans in our biz, apparently.
But what was missing was a larger context. As author Dan Baum has pointed out, through the efforts of (among others) Celtics fan Tip O'Neill, Bias's death set off the anti-drug frenzy of the mid-1980s, which generally used the Bill of Rights for a bathmat, prompted a series of Draconian new laws, and spawned some godawful Pinochet Lite rhetoric that's been dusted off recently by our hysterical Steroid Apocalyptics. We learn nothing from our own mistakes except to make them all over again.
And, also, CBS? I don't care if he once wore the Terrapin costume and danced through the upper deck. Bob Novak is at all times a mendacious lycanthrope and, if you use him as a talking-head anywhere on your network, you've sacrificed credibility for celebrity in a big way.
Pierce, who has yet to Get Over It.
END of Excerpt
For the blog entry(An e-mail conversation about the NCAA tournament) in full: sportsillustrated.cnn.com
At the MRC's "DisHonors Awards for the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporting of 2003," Pierce won the "Ozzy Osbourne Award (for the Wackiest Comment)" for this assertion in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine profile of Senator Ted Kennedy:
"If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."
Kopechne drowned in Kennedy's submerged car off Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969, an accident Kennedy did not report for several hours.
Pierce's personal home page: www.charlespierce.net
Novack is a lying werewolf? The libs have all gone mad I tell you.
Is Novak the one who is being charged with wearing a Terrapin costume? I thought he was strictly a University of Illinois alum.
Is that worse than being called an "old arab"? I can't really say...
Teddys' kneepadder is a talentless hack, who can only be a momentary blip on the radar screen because of breathtaking stupidity.
"Where wolf?"
I don't know where the wolf is. The only shape-shifter in politics lately is Hillary.
Isn't that the scientific name for some type of fern?
Whatever, huh?
But listening to Novak on basketball is like listening to Ron Reagan on. . . anything. Novak is one of the last remaining reporters on the political scene who actually researches what's going on and reports it. But on basketball?
It's a Marty Feldman line in "Young Frankenstein". At least I think it is. Maybe I just made it up.
Has to do with the originary power of the sovereign State as mentioned in Plato's Republic 525d.
Ooh Kaay......
Whatever you say.
I thought it was something that looked like Ted Kennedy
I suspect the person may have meant to say "misanthrope" instead of "lycanthrope".
They've got Novak all wrong. Let me be blunt: The sad truth is that he's a conspibular plecticite of the most flengritudinous order. I don't know how I can make it any plainer...
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