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Jun. 12th, 2011 10:36 pmThis article On Stanley Cup Final Coverage and Bias by Harrison Mooney does an excellent job of articulating why Pass it to Bulis (the Canucks blog which he writes with two other guys) is the only sports media I read.
It's bad enough when fans are being douchebags and making snap judgments which prove they have the attention span of goldfish. When they only pay attention to a player's mistakes and ignore all of the good things he's done on the ice. When they apply a double standard between one game and the next or between different teams. Or make comments about sissy European players because it's not racist if they're white too.
But when the professional media does it too? It makes me wonder why they're allowed to keep their jobs.
An excerpt from Harrison's (very well written) article (emphasis mine):
I’m more than willing to deny a bias that doesn’t exist, and the East Coast bias is a myth.
That said, the journalistic bias against the Canucks has been clear as day. Consider, for example, the writing about the Sedins, whose manhood has been questioned for their lack of production in the Final. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that their best series came against a team that didn’t have a dedicated shutdown pairing (San Jose), and they’ve had a tougher time against teams with Norris-Calibre defensemen that aggressively focus on shutting them down (Chicago, Nashville, Boston).
However, instead of telling this story, we’ve been subjected to a “limp-wristed Euros” narrative that smacks of embarrassing prejudice.
When was the last time someone suggested that Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews was less of a man for their relative lack of production in their respective Finals? In 2009, Crosby went minus-3 with a goal and two assists. In 2010, despite going minus-5 with no goals and three assists, Toews won the Conn Smythe. I’m sure their Canadian citizenship had nothing to do with their generous coverage.
In these cases, credit was given to the opposing defenders who shut down elite scoring threats. The Sedins, meanwhile, simply aren’t man enough. They’re hacked, slashed and impeded constantly, but any time they go down, they’re sissy divers, a narrative that stinks of xenophobia over an ethnocentric worry that Europeans have come to ruin the Canadian game. Chris Nilan claimed their “balls shrivel up when they’re on the road”, Joe Haggerty called them “Hansel and Gretel”, Mike Milbury called them “Thelma and Louise,” and a bevy of other sportswriters and fans have stuck with the much less innovative Sedin “sisters”.
Why, exactly, is it considered acceptable — professionally acceptable, even — to mock two men by comparing them to a minority group in hockey, anyway? What’s next? The Sedins play like blacks, jews, or gays?
This line of criticism is, in and of itself, childish and sexist. It’s 2011 and there are women in the Hockey Hall of Fame. If the Sedins actually were women, people might be a little more impressed with their point per game pace over the last five years, their back-to-back Art Ross trophies, their potentially back-to-back Hart trophies, or the fact that they’ve led their hockey team to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year as team leaders. As it stands, however, these accomplishments aren’t enough to escape the criticism that they’re actually women on skates — and that there’s something inherently wrong with that.
This whole thing makes me furious. Most of the time I don't bother reading because it's just awful, the comments are not intelligent and I disagree with what they've said about the game. But every now and again the media actually goes and says something like this that is SO completely offensive that it almost makes me ashamed to be a hockey fan. This is how people who don't watch hockey see the sport. How could this possibly be considered a good thing?
I used to think that the NHL would be the first of the major sports leagues in North America to have an openly gay player. It's a sport that's dominated by Canadians and Europeans who (especially in my generation which is the same age bracket as all the rising stars) increasingly don't give a damn about other people's sexuality. The NHL itself has tacitly endorsed gayness by allowing their names and logos to be used in a movie about a gay hockey player (admittedly it wasn't a big blockbuster - but still!). But if this is what they're saying about the Sedins because they're Swedish I'd hate to see what they'd do if they were gay. Sometimes staying in the closet is the safer choice.
And the Sedins? Their responses were very classy. Because they are cool like that: ( cut for length )
But whatever. Screw you Don Cherry and your xenophobic comments about Europeans. It doesn't matter whether your favourite team wins or the Canucks do, it'll still be a European captain raising the Stanley Cup.
It's bad enough when fans are being douchebags and making snap judgments which prove they have the attention span of goldfish. When they only pay attention to a player's mistakes and ignore all of the good things he's done on the ice. When they apply a double standard between one game and the next or between different teams. Or make comments about sissy European players because it's not racist if they're white too.
But when the professional media does it too? It makes me wonder why they're allowed to keep their jobs.
An excerpt from Harrison's (very well written) article (emphasis mine):
I’m more than willing to deny a bias that doesn’t exist, and the East Coast bias is a myth.
That said, the journalistic bias against the Canucks has been clear as day. Consider, for example, the writing about the Sedins, whose manhood has been questioned for their lack of production in the Final. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that their best series came against a team that didn’t have a dedicated shutdown pairing (San Jose), and they’ve had a tougher time against teams with Norris-Calibre defensemen that aggressively focus on shutting them down (Chicago, Nashville, Boston).
However, instead of telling this story, we’ve been subjected to a “limp-wristed Euros” narrative that smacks of embarrassing prejudice.
When was the last time someone suggested that Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews was less of a man for their relative lack of production in their respective Finals? In 2009, Crosby went minus-3 with a goal and two assists. In 2010, despite going minus-5 with no goals and three assists, Toews won the Conn Smythe. I’m sure their Canadian citizenship had nothing to do with their generous coverage.
In these cases, credit was given to the opposing defenders who shut down elite scoring threats. The Sedins, meanwhile, simply aren’t man enough. They’re hacked, slashed and impeded constantly, but any time they go down, they’re sissy divers, a narrative that stinks of xenophobia over an ethnocentric worry that Europeans have come to ruin the Canadian game. Chris Nilan claimed their “balls shrivel up when they’re on the road”, Joe Haggerty called them “Hansel and Gretel”, Mike Milbury called them “Thelma and Louise,” and a bevy of other sportswriters and fans have stuck with the much less innovative Sedin “sisters”.
Why, exactly, is it considered acceptable — professionally acceptable, even — to mock two men by comparing them to a minority group in hockey, anyway? What’s next? The Sedins play like blacks, jews, or gays?
This line of criticism is, in and of itself, childish and sexist. It’s 2011 and there are women in the Hockey Hall of Fame. If the Sedins actually were women, people might be a little more impressed with their point per game pace over the last five years, their back-to-back Art Ross trophies, their potentially back-to-back Hart trophies, or the fact that they’ve led their hockey team to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year as team leaders. As it stands, however, these accomplishments aren’t enough to escape the criticism that they’re actually women on skates — and that there’s something inherently wrong with that.
This whole thing makes me furious. Most of the time I don't bother reading because it's just awful, the comments are not intelligent and I disagree with what they've said about the game. But every now and again the media actually goes and says something like this that is SO completely offensive that it almost makes me ashamed to be a hockey fan. This is how people who don't watch hockey see the sport. How could this possibly be considered a good thing?
I used to think that the NHL would be the first of the major sports leagues in North America to have an openly gay player. It's a sport that's dominated by Canadians and Europeans who (especially in my generation which is the same age bracket as all the rising stars) increasingly don't give a damn about other people's sexuality. The NHL itself has tacitly endorsed gayness by allowing their names and logos to be used in a movie about a gay hockey player (admittedly it wasn't a big blockbuster - but still!). But if this is what they're saying about the Sedins because they're Swedish I'd hate to see what they'd do if they were gay. Sometimes staying in the closet is the safer choice.
And the Sedins? Their responses were very classy. Because they are cool like that: ( cut for length )
But whatever. Screw you Don Cherry and your xenophobic comments about Europeans. It doesn't matter whether your favourite team wins or the Canucks do, it'll still be a European captain raising the Stanley Cup.
