by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Democrazy

Tonight is Super Tuesday—don’t worry, Coldplay is not performing the halftime show—and Donald Trump will win. Why? Because there is a large segment of the population whose voice is not being expressed in the newspapers, and on the cable news talk shows, or even in universities. Yes, I’m talking about the (wait for it) disenfranchised white middle- and/or lower-class voter.

And then there are even more people, although some of them belong to the class above, who just think that the presidential race is one more reality show, that there is no difference between Trump sending Jeb Bush home and Ben sending Olivia home. Those folks, too, like Trump because, let’s face it, he’s the most entertaining candidate.

Mike Lupica, on CBS This Morning: “Donald Trump has mastered the show. He has figured out that this is one great, big reality show.” Exactly.

Here’s John Oliver’s incredible, brilliant, thoroughly researched 21 minute and 53-second takedown of “Donald Drumpf” the other night. If you are a discerning voter and like Trump, this should seriously make you wonder why you’d vote for the man. But I imagine it will have a negligible effect on your opinion. Because voting for Trump isn’t about what you know, it’s about how you feel.

2. “Whatever Happened to Showmanship?”

First of all, let’s credit Vince Gilligan for slipping in a wonderful pun. As the elder lady descends the staircase on that motorized chair, the camera holds on her as she says, “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. McGill.” It’s a call back to a classic film line from another dowager, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, who intones, “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.”

Beautiful. Also, just realizing that “McGill” itself may be an homage to Mr. Gilligan.

Anyway, another solid episode of Better Call Saul. The tectonic plates are shifting, rubbing against one another, and soon the pressure will release. Jimmy has a terrific and respectable job, one that allows him to cuddle and watch submarine films with Kim Wexler, who is one of the good guys and a true soul mate, but we all know this can’t last. He’s Slippin’ Jimmy. His mind is too fertile, his love of the con, be it innocent or illegal, is too sincere (and he’s just too darn good at it) for him to ever be satisfied by playing by the rules of the bar association.

Jimmy’s a free spirit. He has to fly. Start his own blog, perhaps. Who knows? But his days at Davis & Main are numbered. Ironic, this, that a lawyer practicing in Santa Fe, the town that hails itself as “The City Different,” is soon to be banished because he cannot conform.

Sepinwall’s review is here….

3. Clay and Erin

We’ll go at the Erin Andrews civil trial in deeper detail tomorrow ( I appear to have kicked a hornet’s nest last night with my suggestion that just because a female is a victim of sexual harassment, which is of course, heinous, does not mean that I have to unequivocally buy and endorse everything she does and says; I was waiting for one of my antagonists on Twitter to shout, “We need some muscle over here!”).

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that a lurid trial involving an uber babe, college football, sports, nudity and Nashville is taking place in the very hometown of highly oustpoken, anything-goes pundit Clay Travis this week, and yet he has not had one word to say about it.

Erin Andrews works for FOX Sports. Clay Travis works for FOX Sports. I admire, honestly, Clay’s willingness to be outspoken on a plethora of third-rail topics, and I agree with him sometimes, but for the record: Even he has to bow down to the corporate gig sometimes. No way he’s going to trash EA on his Periscope show or on Outclick The Coverage. We all have to serve a massuh sometimes.

4 Oral History: AOL FanHouse

I don’t want to tell my fellow colleagues how to do their jobs—wait, of course I do. I’m the condescending, pedantic jerk who revels in that type of thing.

Okay, so yesterday a sports site called The Comeback, which was spun off from Awful Announcing, posted an exhaustive, thoroughly researched, five-part “Oral History of AOL FanHouse Sports,” and while it had many informative aspects, as your Journalism 101 prof, allow me to offer a few suggestions:

A) Don’t just go to the people who are your friends. There are far too many quotes in here from Will Leitch and Spencer Hall, one of whom never toiled at the site and the other who left midway through. Yes, both were important figures in the early days of sports blogging (pardon the juxtaposition of the terms “important figures” and “sports blogging”), but they merited no more than one outsider’s perspective quote apiece.

B) Don’t just go to “the winners.” The best part of the piece were Jay Mariotti’s quotes, because he’s a guy (one of many) who saw a few worms in that apple. In short, to wrap up A and B, as a writer/reporter, don’t just go to what’s comfortable. Seek out sources whom you don’t know and seek out people who were either pariahs or lower-rung staffers.

C) Now, I worked at AOL FanHouse and my impression, to use a sports analogy, was that we had a fantastic team and an absolutely horrible and malevolent front office. AOL is a very shady company, human resources-wise. Very. Shady. On the other hand, I think of all the fantastic people I worked with, none of whom were quoted once: Editors Mike Harris (now at SI.com) and Barry Werner (one of my all-time favorite people in the biz, now at FOX Sports), both of whom fall on more grenades for writers weekly than many editors do their entire careers; writers Brett McMurphy, David Whitley, Clay Travis and Lisa Olson. I like them all and better yet, they’re great people to have on your team. Maybe The Comeback tried and was unable to reach all of them, or maybe (wisely) they chose not to speak. I don’t know. But that piece was too heavy on corporate muckety-mucks talking (I admire Scott Ridge; get me off the record on Jeff Price and I can tell you a hair-raising tale or two).

D) Before you publish a piece, actively look for people within your own site who have critiques (this is one of the aspects of Barry’s personality that makes him an invaluable co-worker, although one that can piss off a corporate tool, like the ones who worked above he and I at NBCSports.com) with the piece. There’s nothing factually wrong with this piece, but I think it could have been a less corporate, more “Loose Balls” kind of read. You need to find people within who won’t just cheerlead a story. Maybe if SB Nation had done that two weeks ago, or had or listened to a guy like Barry on its staff, it wouldn’t have made such a monumental, colossal long-form error.

Finally, as a reader (and this goes for all of you feeling the vapors after reading Deadspin’s Erin Andrews’ item, too), please, please, PLEASE, think for yourselves. Think about the potential motives behind every person’s actions, including both the person who is the subject of the story and the person writing/telling it. Keep in mind that the chances are great that the person coming closest to  telling the truth is the one who has the least to gain by his or her version being accepted as the truth. Be a discerning consumer of journalism and information. Please. Or go vote for Trump, you know?

5. “You say ‘Pitino’, I Say ‘Lurid Sex Scandal'”

Remember that little sex scandal that motivated Louisville to declare its own basketball team ineligible for the 2016 postseason (Dickie V., ESPN’s ever-objective arbiter of virtue, thought that the Cardinals should just pay a fine–To whom, exactly?–and be allowed to be a part of March Madness)? The latest straw on the camel’s back that is Rick Pitino’s after-hours career in the Bluegrass State?

Well, now his son, Richard, is dealing with a sex scandal of his own at the University of Minnesota. Seems that two of his Golden Gophers double-teamed someone, the problem being that it was not an opposing Big Ten player and that no one was wearing undergarments. And then he allegedly posted a photo of the act on social media. College students these days. Pitino suspended the three players involved—Nate Mason, Kevin Dorsey and Dupree McBrayer—for Sunday’s game at Illinois, but they will be back for tomorrow night’s home game against Wisconsin.

Minnesota lost at Wisconsin, 84-71, while suiting up just six scholarship players.

Reserves

Between his deskalogue and now skits such as “Melisandre at a Baby Shower” and the one below, “Reasonable Max,” Seth Meyers, former head writer at Saturday Night Live, has turned Late Show into a a weeknight SNL. Only better. Nothing wrong with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p04QUDzBEaQ

Music 101

I Confess

In 1982 The English Beat came along and demonstrated that you could play New Wave without a synchronizer. I loved their mild ska beat (or whatever you call it). This song got turned up in the powder-blue Granada with the cigarette burns in the seat (because we bought it used from Hertz or Avis). Anyway, it was a bigger deal on MTV in the early Eighties than it was on the charts, but all the cool kids were watching the MTV and the tail was was wagging the dog back then.

Remote Patrol

Super Tuesday

Multiple Networks 8 p.m.

Come witness a preview of the apocalypse with the rest of your fellow citizens.