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Media Meltdowns

Fox Sports Finds Perfect Billboard At Ground Zero

9:15 AM EDT on July 17, 2022

Fox Sports

You're sitting there, minding your own business, watching the Fox Sports Saturday night game of the week, and you are, like any proud American, enjoying the beating the Yankees are laying on the Red Sox. And then out of nowhere you are suddenly and rudely reminded of another group of villains who once flew from Boston to New York:

Good lord. That is, seen clearly as the helicopter crosses over 1 World Trade Center, the September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan. And it is not merely a random dark patch of land some graphics team thought would make a nice canvas; it is two reflecting pools representing the footprints of the Twin Towers, upon which the Red Sox and Yankees logos have been perfectly superimposed.

People are real mad about this! Keith Olbermann is very mad, but Keith Olbermann is often very mad. I personally am less mad (if you want my "9/11 cred," you can juuuust about see in Fox's overhead shot where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001; not a fun day) than I am awed by how bad an idea this was. It pains me that we'll probably never know how it came to be (here's one reimagining). But while some people will tell you they wish they could sit in on the production meeting that led to this graphic, I would rather witness the debriefing: The all-time record for saying "oh shit oh fuck" the most times in a row must surely be in jeopardy.

As bad an idea as it was, here are some worse ones (these are free if anyone wants them):

    • Dollar Molasses Night at Fenway.
    • Shirtwaist giveaway in the Bronx, sponsored by Triangle.
    • Scheduling first pitch in a Red Sox–Yankees game for 8 p.m. when you know damn well it's going to take four hours.
    • Scratching out some guy's name on the Vietnam Memorial wall and replacing it with Bradley Beal's, as viral advertising for Wizards season ticket packages.
    • Saints introduce cuddly new mascot, "Katrina."
    • Putting the Cardinals logo all over the USS Arizona Memorial to advertise the Pro Bowl.
    • The Pro Bowl.
    • Dodgers hire new head of security Daryl Gates.
    • Naming an MLS team the Chicago Fire.

Never forget 14-1.

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