Take a Bow , New York Times!

You Scored a Double Victory

Jubilation surely reigned today in the usually stuffy offices of The New York Times when the word came out, hard upon the announcement of the death of New Yorkers’ dreams of a gorgeous new stadium, that New York’s and all America’s hopes for an Olympiad to be staged here had been dashed.

Reaction to the Olympics bid’s failure, even in the pages of the Times, which campaigned ferociously against the Jets’ offer to build a stadium, directly connected the two events.

In a July 7 article from Singapore, the Times’s Jim Rutenberg reported: “New York’s failed plans for a West Side stadium severely hampered its quest to be host to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, several International Olympic Committee members gathered here said Wednesday night.”

Rutenberg went on to report that “in discussing the city’s fourth-place showing in the five-city competition, the scuttling of the stadium was a common thread.”

He quoted the International Olympic Committee member from Morocco who led the evaluation commission, and who had earlier this year agreed with Mayor Bloomberg that without a West Side stadium New York ’s hopes would be in jeopardy, as saying the killing of the stadium project “may have harmed the bid.”

He also quoted Jim Easton, a United States Olympic Committee member, on the subject of the last-minute substitute proposal by New York ’s bid officials to convert a new Mets stadium in Queens to accommodate the Games: “I think it confused people. They tried to correct it at the end – but the first impression is the one that people hang with.”

So with this twin killing the Times firmly establishes its anti-sports sports section as the citadel of journalistic negativism in New York . But hey, don’t be too hard on the Times. If you were 154 years old you’d be sour and cranky and out of step with the times too.

I don’t know where their sports-tv man Sandomir was coming from in his tirade (which my son reprinted on this website) against the dignified Olympic official who made the announcement from Singapore, complaining that the gentleman wasn’t showbizzy enough, like that monstrous embarrassment who howls “L-l-l-let’s get rrrready to rrrrumbulllll!” at events in the tatterdemalion remnants of the sport that used to be boxing.

And the Times doesn’t quit with the jeering at the Jets. In an article last Sunday about the history of Shea Stadium the writer, a free-lancer, incredibly said about the departure of the Jets for Jersey “good riddance.” My point here is not the totally gratuitous nature of this nasty remark. It is that his editor at the Times did not say, “This is irrelevant to his subject and will alienate every one of our readers who is a fan of the New York Jets. Take it out.” But no. He .left it in (possibly with a snicker?)

Talk about coincidences. You can take my word that this is true because we are not allowed to lie on Westsidestadium.org. I wrote a letter of protest to the Times, and just now the phone rang to tell me they’re going to print my letter. And I’ll give them this: They showed me the editing (minor) that they proposed to do on it and asked me if it was OK to print it that way. Most papers would just put in the paper that letters are subject to editing. Hey, I didn’t say they were all bad.

It’s not as nasty as I’d like it to be, but at least it’ll be published in the City section on Sunday.

 

And speaking of Stadia

 

Stadia is what the intellectual chap I’m about to tell you about would call them, in the original Greek. The Times, tasting blood after the murder of Jets Stadium, came out recently with what amounts to an attack on stadia in general, written by one Nicolai Ouroussoff, judging by that name possibly a big wheel in architecture in Omsk or Irkutsk.

He goes right after the mother of them all, the Colosseum in Rome , calling this structure of breathtaking grace and beauty “a terrifying expression of imperial grandeur, political conformity and mass hysteria.”

Ooh, poor Mr.Ouroussoff, he’s terrified!

He is also an over-educated idiot. I don’t care it he’s the head of the Moscow school of architecture, or the one in Podunc, but to call that awesome reminder of the glory of ancient Rome “terrifying,” and an expression of “political conformity and mass hysteria” indicates that this oh-so-sensitive chap would be better qualified to comment on architecture suitable to the Ballet Russe de Monto Carlo than to giant structures where men meet in sometimes brutal contests of strength and skill which in their extreme extension once included the horrific thumbs-down to the gladiator, meaning “Kill him!”

I’m certainly no architect, but I’ve been there, and every line of the Colosseum is curved as it presents a series of gracefully rounded portals, no harsh right angles, every one of them saying to you, “Come in” – what’s “terrifying” about that?

As for his “political conformity,” whom is he charging with conforming politically, the spectators? the gladiators? the Christians? the lions?

But you did get one right, Mr.Ourossoff, when you expressed dismay over the prospect of mass hysteria. That’s exactly what we confidently expect to see when the Jets win the Super Bowl.

– Tom McMorrow, Sr.