TV Barn: Bob Costas: “Buzz realizes that he did a disservice to his own points”

‘Bleep you, #########.’” That’s a hit!”...quickly contacts Blogagotchi.com to see if its free.

But the worst thing you’d find in talk radio the snarkiest thing you’d read in print ... even more virulent forms of it are found on the internet because in most cases there are no standards. Now, coming with it are there many important fresh new voices? Absolutely. Are there places where people like you, who were one of the first ones, and Joe Posnanski, not to name all Kansas City guys, but where you can go to get more expansive or quirkier versions of their thought? Yes. Are there nichier places ... baseball-centric sites filled with detailed statistical analysis or, say, everything you want to know about the Seattle Mariners? That’s great. Nothing wrong with that.

But I think the blogosphere, if you’re a critic of the blogosphere you’re somehow against its democratic virtues. Hey, I spent my whole career talking to cabdrivers, everyday people, I did sports talk radio in St. Louis in the 1970s. Some people are more knowledgeable about aspects of sports than I am. I absolutely respect that. ... But it also opens the door for every anonymous bully and lout to spout.

I was talking to King Kaufman about this. He said, “You know, a lot of this stuff, you can get on sports talk radio, except (on the Internet) you don’t have the bleep button.” And I agreed but added this: If you truly didn’t have a bleep button in talk radio ... you wouldn’t just have the occasional person spewing scurrilous things, you’d have it all the time, more and more ... to the point where it crowded out other voices and brought the whole enterprise down.

Truth be told, on any websites, not just confined to sports, that is what happens. It’s not that this kind of lowbrow stuff is tolerated, it is implictly encouraged because the more of those type posts you get the more it is validated. The popularity of sites is measured by it. Who is going to say, “I don’t want the person who says ‘Bleep you, #########.’” That’s a hit! That’s my single criticism of this. And anyone who interprets that as a rejection of all the upsides of the web is either rather dense or wilfully misinterpreting what I say.