on the record with bob
I want to recommend to those of you with HBO that you keep an eye out for this week’s episode of On The Record with Bob Costas.
The first segment is an interview with Pierce Brosnan, which is fine, but the part I really want you to see is a round-table discussion on the decline of civility and the rise of coarseness in pop culture. Costas and his panel, including Leonard Pitts–to whom, I’d just like to point out, I was linking before he won the Pulitzer–rough up fired radio host “Bubba the Love Sponge” a bit. I happen to think that was deserved–the man’s a jackass–but I’d like to have seen a representative of the “coarse” side who was a bit better at speaking for himself. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, come to mind as a possibility.
I’ve often praised Costas to my friends and family as one who can do the unthinkable–he can talk about sports in such a way as makes me appreciate–more than that, understand–what he’s talking about. And to this day I miss his version of the Later program that used to run on NBC after Letterman, and is now in the…“capable” hands of Carson Daley. On The Record revives a bit of that, but it’s just not the same. Why doesn’t some cable channel–MSNBC, maybe, or Bravo, both owned by NBC–acquire the rights?
