Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Radio Apologies
Monday
April 9, 2007
If you haven't heard of Amy Winehouse, you should. She's a British singer that my friend Mickie (who I've known since my freshman year of college) told me about awhile back who is starting to get some mainstream exposure. Winehouse's song "Rehab" (you can watch and hear it via this link, at least as of this writing) is stuck in my head right now. Think 60s pop/soul mixed with Portishead and a sensual, authentic, heartfelt stage presence.
It's been an interesting day for radio apologies today.
There were two: first, in a follow-up to my 4/6/2007 column, Colin Cowherd gave a terse apology for directing his audience on a Denial of Service attack to TheBigLead.com, thrown in at the end of his show like a quick legal ID. Props to new ESPN Ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber for writing this fair assessment of the situation. Well done, Le Anne.
Also, the potential criminal angle was handled quite well in this post on the Sports Law Blog, which looks at the legal ramifications with what happened. This was written by Howard Wasserman, who knows much more than I do about the law, and he answered questions that I wanted to see answered. Much thanks for that, Mr. Wasserman.
The lesson to be learned here: don't mess with the blogosphere, especially the sports blogosphere. The results can be brutal.
Meanwhile, Don Imus is in trouble for making a racially-motivated, senseless criticism of Rutgers' women's basketball team. Imus is now on the Michael Richards apology tour; he took his lumps on Al Sharpton's radio show today, and now MSNBC and CBS Radio have decided to suspend Imus for two weeks (beginning, strangely enough, not until next Monday.) Imus bores me, but I enjoy seeing two camps that I don't care for (Imus vs. Al Sharpton and the usual suspects on his side) clash.
I'm not sure whose "apology" was less convincing: Cowherd's (giving in a choppy, rapid-fire pace, like he was doing a legal ID) or Imus' rambling, self-absorbed rant about his cancer ranch work. Both were interesting to hear, if nothing else.
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