På djupfryst Blog

Vi vet att något ansade culturally viktigt transpired i townjumbonatt, därför att mer än 45.000 folk visade upp på RFK, bland dem Michael Wilbon. I morse ovanför-och-nedanför--viker hans pappers- skryt färgar fotoet av fenomen. Detta som vi vet för ett faktum: det fanns inte en viktig fotbolllek som lektes i townjumbonatt. Varför så den flämtande tryckpacken och deras ”Dewey taktTruman” reaktion? Också i morse, ifrågasätter I-förmiddagen som frågar denna: why, när Beckham krökningar det är postaatwitteren och när herrnen Sidney ankommer, gör bloggers outnumber tryckpressen i den Verizon pressläktaren?

Förmiddag I som ingen fotboll fläktar, men riktigt, vad området MSM gjorde till den sport, demeaning denna vecka positivt. ”Behöver fotboll 25 mer Beckhams” här i Amerika, mig hörde den sist natten. Nr.en lik hockey, behöver det mer 25.000 utbytesredaktörer av sportsidor och newsrooms.

Jag har skriftligt för att jämförelsen av fotboll och hockey och deras jämförbara massmediatäckning här (i stort som ignoreras) är benägna, som båda sportar bor avlägset utanför den sportsliga huvudströmmen för amerikanen. Båda tycker om betydligt mer stor popularitet i Europa (och i hockey fall, självfallet, Kanada). Så gjorde vad den sist romanen för natten så?

Svaret är enkelt: Beckham servar som en kulturell marköraffischtavla för vår närvarande kult av kändisen. Utforma (och looks) över vikt. Den bättre stillbilden, lite dåligapojke utformar, för. What made last night supreme burlesque for me was listening to Wilbon squeezed in among authentic soccer broadcasters and analysts in the booth and pontificating on what soccer needs to do, at long last, to “make it in America.” Wilbon knows that soccer can’t ever dislodge any of America’s Big Four (actually, like hockey, it’s certainly hopelessly behind NASCAR as well); he doesn’t care that it never will, but he and his editors are grateful in any August for a Paris Hilton-on-the-pitch-like-buzz to arrive for one night. Not surprisingly, with respect to last night’s atmosphere in RFK, Wilbon referenced Barry Bonds in his column this morning.

David Beckham is a terrific soccer player. Occasionally, he evens wins a game by scoring a goal. But he most assuredly is not the Tiger Woods or Roger Federer of his sport. Or even its Sidney Crosby. He is the aura that he is partly because he has terrific skill but moreso because he’s extremely good looking and he’s presently attached to his physical equal off the field. In fact, yesterday’s WaPost reminded Washingtonians of this underpinning effect of Beckham Buzz, feature analyzing the beauties who congregate around the cleated.

It’s likely that Beckham’s lasting contribution to western culture is his being the peripheral inspiration for a film that introduced us to Keira Knightley. (No small accomplishment, that.)

Hockey has a fair number of superstars — many of them under the age of 25 — who dominate their game more than Beckham does his. And yet when Crosby and the Pens play at Verizon Center, there’s only a modest uptick in MSM mentioning of the matchup, virtually all of it pegged on the now hackneyed storyline of “Sidney vs. AO.”

Hockey is plagued by a long-standing dilemma as it relates to contemporary sports marketing and media coverage: its stars most often are little different from its lunchpailers in comportment. Many of them are soft-spoken, humble, deferential, at pains to take individual credit in their team sports. They’re really nice fellas. To put it crassly: neither Sidney nor Alex are likely soon to hang puppies in nooses from trees, or be located near drive-by shootings at discotheques.

Hockey’s roots truly would need a dastardly DNA transfusion to catch the lasting hyperventilating of contemporary MSM, a free-fall of character into the sewer.

May it forever remain marvelously lodged in its current irrelevancy.