Earlier yours truly watched some of the Minnesota @ San Fran NFL exhibition game. Likely to the surprise of few, the 49ers were giving the Vikes a bit of a beatdown. Then something else happened not once, but twice.
That was a fan running on to the field. Hard telling what provokes certain fans to do such a thing on rare occasions. Maybe too much alcohol, maybe a dare or a bet, or maybe their lover just jilted them in the stands a few minutes earlier and they snapped resulting in them running amok. Who knows?
But the TV people are the ultimate hypocrites when such things happen. In their, ahem, infinite wisdom a while back, the TV folks, likely with the approval of the NFL, decided when such things happened they would not show the person or persons running on the field. Evidently, they came to the conclusion that giving an "idiot" air time would only encourage more copycats to do the same. After all, EVERYBODY wants to be on TV, right?
Not so fast.
Nobody knows for sure what goes through the minds of people that decide to run on the field. It could be a lot of different things, and being on TV might have nothing whatsoever to do with it. Certainly, everybody knows you're not supposed to do that, but who knows what might prompt an individual to do such a thing?
Enter the hypocrisy.
During the Minn--San Fran game, when the "infidels" ran amok on the field -- the TV people pulled back their video coverage to a shot from the blimp hovering overhead. The TV viewing audience was not allowed to see such a "travesty".
However, the audio feed was alive and well. The crowd in attendance was roaring, obviously getting a big kick out of what was going on. They loved it.
At the same time, the TV announcers were giving a blow-by-blow analysis like an old Joe Louis fight only carried on the radio of what was going on. Yet some genius producer in charge of such things decided the TV viewing audience at large around the globe shouldn't be privy to what was really happening. We got a far-away blimp shot showing the entire stadium, parking lots, and some of the surrounding neighborhood. All while the TV announcers continued to blather away about what they could see -- and what we were denied seeing.
They want to tell us all about it, but we aren't allowed to view it? Obviously, they think we are all frail children. We CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH. I beg to differ, and I dare say others would agree with me.
We've seen other things are TV that are much more graphic. War zones. Bodies lying in the streets after explosions.
But evidently, if they allow us to see a person running on a football field -- much to to the delight of the fans in attendance, while the TV announcers themselves chuckle and describe the action -- we're all going to want to do such a thing. This could get out of control. Puh-leeze. We're adults here. We can handle it. Trust us. If our team is bad enough, we might put bags on our heads and wave silly signs in the bleachers, but few of us are going to run amok on the field of play.
And even if we do -- that's a good thing in a way. It gives all those lazy cops that drew "football duty" a chance to burn off a few calories chasing us down. Surely, they'll replenish them later while in various doughnut shops scarfing up the freebies they think they're entitled to.
In the meantime, if the TV people still want to treat us like children by taking away the picture -- then the least they could do is turn off the microphones of their own announcers.
Maybe they could even cut to a re-run of the movie "Heidi". That worked out well. Right.
No comments:
Post a Comment