Colin Cowherd isn’t calling you losers a name. He’s criticizing. Duh.

March 17th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

First, listen to the audio here. Go on, do it. It doesn’t hurt as much as you think. (Blog goodness starts around the 2:05 mark.)

Done? Good. Because you see, it’s so easy to draw dumb distinctions. Blogger = bad. Reporter = good. If you call someone a name, even if you are an accredited member of the media, that makes you a blogger, unless, of course, your name is Bob Costas, in which case you can say this:

But it’s one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they’re a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard’s column or Bernie Miklasz’ column in St. Louis. That, in most cases, grants a forum to somebody who has no particular insight or responsibility. Most of it is a combination of ignorance or invective.”

What bothers Costas — and he’s not alone — is Internet and talk radio commentary that “confuses simple mean-spiritedness and stupidity with edginess. Just because I can call someone a name doesn’t mean I’m insightful or tough and edgy. It means I’m an idiot.

“It’s just a high-tech place for idiots to do what they used to do on bar stools or in school yards, if they were school yard bullies, or on men’s room walls in gas stations. That doesn’t mean that anyone with half a brain should respect it.”

… and you’re not calling a name, you’re merely criticizing. When one is Colin Cowherd, one can draw these distinctions, even if one really has no clue what one is talking about.

Since Cowherd agrees that most bloggers are “wannabes” and “get-a-life losers” (that hyphenated adjective never fails to crack me up), I think it’s then fair that we agree that most talk radio hosts are not employed for their sports insight or their knowledge, but instead their ability to captivate listeners with rhetoric that borders on what Costas would surely call “invective.” But since we wouldn’t want to paint all radio hosts, or newspaper reporters, with the same brush, it’s fair to call Cowherd the sad Schrutebag douchetard got-worked-over-by-Ombudslady excuse for a radio host that he is without implicating his colleagues.

Whoops. Am I calling names now? Or merely criticizing?

Thanks to Big A for the audio.