What we read while turning down the Donald Trump debate…
- Tim Tebow keeps engineering miraculous comebacks (it’s almost making John S believe in God) and last week two of NPI’s favorite writers tried to figure out why so many hate him: Paul Shirley analyzed the racial aspect of the Tebow phenomenon, while Chuck Klosterman thinks it’s all about religion.
- Speaking of Klosterman, he ranked his favorite hair metal albums of the 1980s.
- You’re never going to guess who’s comedy album is ranked as the best of 2011 (unless you guessed Louis C.K., because it’s Louis C.K.). C.K. also released his new special at his website for $5. In other comedy news, Ron Swanson was named the best TV character of the year and David Wain returned with more episodes of Wainy Days!
- Perhaps the biggest sports story of last week was Albert Pujols signing with the Los Angeles Angels for $254 million. Friend of the blog Will Leitch was obviously distraught, though Pujols will always have a place in Cardinals history. As usual, Jonah Keri tried to break down the numbers.
- While Pujols was the biggest on-field story, John Branch’s three-part exploration of late Rangers’ enforcer Derek Boogaard may have been the most important off-field story done all year.
- This building may evoke images of 9/11 but still, doesn’t it look really cool?
- Oh potential of high-speed rail, we hardly knew ye.
- The Millions kicks off its always entertaining and enlightening “Year in Reading” series.
- Serious Eats’ on Bad Good and Good Bad pizza.
- So, um, this is pretty racist. And so is this.
- ESPN’s Tim Keown laments the ossification of the sports interview.
Posted by doc on December 12, 2011 at 11:17 AM
I don’t buy the racial or religious explanations for some football analysts’ disdain for TIm Tebow. It’s more about the perception that his traditional QB skills are lacking. His team’s improvement under his helm has confused people. However, his QB rating is average despite a terrible completion percentage (48.5). He rarely turns the ball over, which is unusual for a young QB. It helps that his team is very good defensively and has an outstanding kicker.
For those over age 45, he is reminiscent of Bobby Douglass, a QB for the Chicago Bears in the early ’70s. Remarkably, Tebow is left-handed like Douglass, almost the same size, and a great runner. Douglass was a failure in the NFL and part of his legacy is the belief that Tebow can’t make it. But, Tebow is much smarter and has that intangible quality of being a winner. He will only get better with the help of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5620431495593334003
Posted by joey on December 12, 2011 at 1:35 PM
i love the contrast between klosterman and shirley on tebow. klosterman tries to take his viewpoint out of things while shirley (in typical fashion) creates a narcissistic “airing of the grievances” about race issues. sorry, shirley, that jamaal crawford and those mean old black players were mean to you and were better players. what a douche.
Posted by Wilmer on December 12, 2011 at 3:36 PM
In case you guys didn’t already see it, Louis CK’s doing an AMA on reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_and_this_is_a_thing/