Justin Peters’ Intelligent Vignette about Bode Miller and NBCs Inane Coverage of Him — at the 2014 Sochi Olympics — Stands as a Summary Example of How Stupefyingly Useless American Media often Are

© 2014 Peter Free

 

19 February 2014

 

 

Citation

 

Justin Peters, What NBC Missed about Bode Miller by Focusing on His Dead Brother, Slate (17 February 2014)

 

 

One of the things that I regularly notice about American news reporting is that it almost always stops short of both insight and competently articulated relevance

 

Slate columnist Justin Peters came up with a thoughtful example of media silliness, during Christin Cooper’s NBC interview of American alpine skier, Bode Miller.

 

The interview took place just after Miller’s bronze medal placement in the 2014 Sochi Olympics men’s Super G race.

 

Rather than focus on the event and Miller’s skiing mind, reporter Cooper elected to get the celebrity to cry on camera, so that America’s large supply of vicariously living emotion-vampires could get their fill of heart-gore:

 

 

Before Miller’s bronze-medal-winning super-G run, NBC aired a segment focusing on the recent death of his brother, Chelone, an Olympic-caliber snowboarder who had a fatal seizure in October.

 

And in a controversial post-race interview, reporter Christin Cooper kept on pushing and pushing and pushing Miller to talk about his dead brother.

 

Lost in all this was Miller’s excellent super-G run, not to mention the run of his teammate Andrew Weibrecht, who won silver and then stood there awkwardly while NBC’s Cooper zeroed in on Miller’s family tragedy.

 

No other stories mattered.

 

© 2014 Justin Peters, What NBC Missed about Bode Miller by Focusing on His Dead Brother, Slate (17 February 2014) (extracts)

 

 

I suppose this tear-jerking approach might have been valid, were the competitor in question less intelligent and less gifted than Bode Miller.

 

But Miller always struck me as the kind of smart and thoughtful person that it is worth listening to.  A capable media would have focused on what he has to offer, and on what makes him unique, rather than on the sad commonalities that most of us equally share.

 

Justin Peters explained his critiquing perspective by harking back to an interview Miller had done with Vanessa Grigoriadis. (See: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Bode Miller Speed Freak, VanessaGrigoriadis.com (27 January 2006))

 

Peters said of this:

 

 

In 2006, Miller discussed his style with Rolling Stone’s Grigoriadis:

 

“I've been crashing forever, and coaches are like, ‘What are you doing? If you just backed off for a bit you'd be fine.’ I'm like, ‘What, you think I didn't know that?’ But am I going to back off? No. Because I like to do it this way, and I don't give a fuck if I crash.”

 

His brother, Chelone Miller, apparently felt the same way; his seizures began after he crashed a motorcycle in 2006 while he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

 

Grigoriadis asked Miller about his brother’s accident, and his answer was revealing:

 

But is the whole goal of life preserving your life as long as you can? No. The goal is to enjoy your life, to challenge yourself, to sometimes make stupid decisions, which are sometimes fun and sometimes idiotic and sometimes just a big, fat mistake that you regret.

 

 

But the reason for it all is enjoyment; that's the reason for life.

 

 

It is not that I don't recognize the danger in ski racing but that I don't fear the consequences. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? You die, I guess. You're all alone and you don't know anything. You're all done.

 

That’s a complicated, unsentimental answer. And, to me, it explains why NBC’s coverage of Miller was so wrongheaded and offensive.

 

The network is incredibly well-positioned to explain to us why Miller is so great at what he does, and even how personal tragedy might inform his approach on the slopes.

 

What NBC shouldn’t do is reduce him to a guy with a simplistic, maudlin backstory.

 

© 2014 Justin Peters, What NBC Missed about Bode Miller by Focusing on His Dead Brother, Slate (17 February 2014) (paragraphs split)

 

 

Significance of Peters’ NBC example

 

Determined stupidity describes most of today’s public America.

NBC and its companion networks are fervent contributors to that unenviable trait.  Why be smart, when it is so much easier and titillating to act like a low-life?

 

 

Writer Charles P. Pierce takes the same dim view of our brain-smiting news outlets

 

Regarding NBC’s (not solitary) example of consistently pap-spewing mush, Dick Gregory (Meet the Press) — Pierce wrote:

 

Centuries from now, when the several remaining humans are huddled around a dwindling fire and pondering how each of them will kill the others and eat their still-warm flesh, the most boring among the remnant will pose the question, "Who is to blame for all of this?"

 

Someone will mention the Koch Brothers. Someone else will bring up BP, and maybe our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline will get a moan-out while the silent one in the corner sizes up the available rocks and studies the heads of his companions.

 

If I'm not around, I hope at least one of them will summon up his last remaining breath and say, "The noodlebrained bag of useless flesh named David Gregory," before collapsing in a heap in the corner . . . .

 

Let us stipulate from the outset -- among the people who actually know what they're talking about, there is no debate about climate change.

 

© 2014 Charles P. Pierce, What Are the Gobshites Saying these Days?, Esquire (17 February 2014)

 

 

The moral? — By parading armored stupidity in places of Popular Culture’s worship, we lose uplifting examples defined by complex uniqueness and multi-layered genius

 

It is difficult to emulate deserving icons, when we insist on either (a) ignoring them or (b) tearing them down to our own level of baseness.