Monday, March 10, 2008

Max Kellerman's Monday Musings Vol III - Yankees/D-Rays Made Up Controversy, Rock N' Roll Tournament & Fake News

Today's Max Kellerman show was very timely. Max led with a discussion of the "made up controversy" involving Joe Girardi, Don Zimmer and a collision between two ball player who between them may get half a cup of coffee in the big leagues. Max and Brian accurately portrayed this as a "made up controversy" that was only newsworthy in New York because there really is not any sports news of note going on right now.

Having observed the paucity of true sports news, the conversation digressed to a discussion about the Rock N' Roll Tournament that had been seeded by the show. Unfortunately, hearing about 64 bands and how they are seeded, without visual aids is a little difficult to follow. I actually had to stop working for a minute to pick up the phone and call Louie Gold to confirm that Rush was in and Boston was out. [By the way, as a follow up to last week Louie confirms that both he and Payton have fully recovered from their "Lundberg infection"]. You have to believe that Max's Yankee fanaticism was the only reason that a great band like Boston was not ranked among the top 64.

After a few segments on this issue, Max intuitively realized that he should get into Purim Torah and launched into a full fledged "Fake News" format. Max, Brian Kenny, Robin Lundberg and many callers and emailers filled the next hour with made up news flashes. Some were quite funny ("Roger Clemens had an ear removed from his forehead in 2000") some were a little more sophomoric. If I had the time to actually call in and stay on hold I would have suggested a News Bulletin of Knicks Trade 1st Round Pick (Unprotected) to the Nets for Keith Van Horn. Then again, you can never truly label a potential trade by Isaiah as a "Fake News" story since he may actually pull off another stinker.

But back to the first story of the show (the made up controversy between the Yanks and D-Rays), Max Kellerman again showed his Torah roots by leading with this story. People will tend to blow any little issue out of proportion if they think that its salacious enough to sell papers. Yes, its unfortunate that the player was injured and you can truly debate whether or not it was the right thing to do when a minor leaguer tried to run through another minor leaguer. But to try to portray it as a rift between two old friends (Girardi and Zimmer) is Loshon Harah at its apex. Too often, legitimate differences get blown out of proportion by third parties who either hear comments, or worse, invent comments in an effort to exploit the controversy for their own ends. It makes no difference whether the tale teller is doing it to break up a business relationship or sell papers. Bottom line - blowing up an issue for exploitation purposes is a significant form of Loshon Harah, and as usual, Max Kellerman was there to remind us that we should not give this any credence.

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