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Many Miami Herald message boarders
think fans should tear apart the Orange Bowl themselves
next Saturday — and keep the pieces for souvenirs. Photo
by JR Perez |
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the comments readers
post on the Miami Herald Web site are more interesting
than the actual stories? I recently was informed by my daily
newspaper that last month, readers generated some 500,000
on-site comments. That’s actually hard to believe, but if they
say so. Maybe that’s a grand total from the last few months.
The comment
boards have become a forum for all the frustrations Miamians
have about each other. They are ferocious, sometimes funny,
often offensive. It’s the unadulterated id of this town, arrayed
like drunken relatives at a carnie wedding.
A couple of
months ago, Herald columnist Leonard Pitts decried the
comments. “For some people, freedom and anonymity are always an
invitation to sink like an anchor to the lowest common
denominator,” he wrote. Local NAACP chapter President Victor
Curry recently complained as well, specifically about racist
comments posted about the teenager killed by boot camp guards in
northern
Florida.
Oddly enough,
comments could not be posted for the story about the NAACP
complaints. I agree with Pitts and many others that far too many
of the comments are clearly posted by jackasses. But, dammit,
they’re our jackasses! And I love it. If anything, it speaks to
the great unwashed masses out there who may not be renewing
their Herald subscriptions but still want to connect to
something.
There are a few
patterns. By far, the sports stories and blogs get the most and
often the best comments. Greg Cote’s droll blog, for instance,
regularly gets anywhere from 20 to 200 comments, depending on
what he’s saying about the Dolphins. Dave Barry can get more,
but despite not being funny for much of the last decade, he’s
got that nationally syndicated audience working for him.
The news side
of the blog stable doesn’t fare as well. Naked Politics, which
despite the provocative title offers very little to get worked
up about regarding state politics, gets maybe a handful of
comments on a very good day. The same thing with the Crime Scene
blog, which advertises itself as “a peek behind the police lines
from Herald crime reporters” but is actually just a
random collection of reporting detritus with no zing whatsoever.
Besides the
huge appeal of sports in general, the reason nobody cares about
most of the other blogs is that they are (with occasional
exceptions) boring and lifeless. There’s no point in asking
reporters to blog when they are supposed to pretend not to have
any opinions about anything. At the least, the
entertainment-type blogs should be crackling with energy and
attitude, not the dumping grounds for all the press releases
that would normally go in the round file on the floor. Without
having something to add to old news or bland info-morsels, the
whole exercise of blogging comes across as Old Man Newspaper
trying to be hip. And not getting it.
But the regular
stories from the print side do bring out the passions of readers
because there’s actually something to chew on. Columnist Ana
Menendez gets plenty of reaction, as does Pitts, Carl Hiaasen and
Joan Fleischman. Other than that, corruption and crime stories
are favorite targets of reader rants. Sometimes the mind-blowing
stupidity of the comments wears you out quickly.
Other times,
it’s like performing a sociological field study on the back of a
cocktail napkin while pleasantly buzzed.
This week, for
instance, the Herald posted a story about the doomed
Orange Bowl. The story notified readers that University of Miami
football coach Randy Shannon and university president Donna
Shalala were gonna bring the heavy foot down on any unruly UM
fans (is there any other kind?) who tried to steal a piece of
history after the Hurricanes’ last game this Saturday night.
Next year, the team moves to Dolphin Stadium, so the 70-year-old
Orange Bowl can be torn down and replaced with either a) a
Marlins stadium, or b) a huge tunnel to the Port of Miami that
also doubles as stash pit for all our lost property taxes.
“In case some
fans disregard their plea, Shalala and Shannon warned that there
will be 300 Miami police officers on the field at the end of the
game to ensure that no one tries to snatch a memento,” the story
warned.
Now this is a
story that cries out for community reaction. Readers did not
disappoint. “It's been a while since we had a riot,” wrote a
wistful Mike D. “R.I.P. Orange Bowl.”
“We are taking
the ORANGE BOWL with us on Saturday,” threatened gleeful WEST
END ZONE FANS.
“I'm taking a
toilet seat!” Benjammin' quipped.
“I was going to
steal Donna Shalala,” joked The Ibis.
“Sta[y off] of
the Grass or I will mow you down in my LEXUS!” wrote “Chief
Timoney,” clearly a fan of Miami’s police chief.
“Y’all remember
how they left Bobby Maduro Stadium rotting back in the 80s?”
queried Remember Bobby Maduro. “I say to the fans who will be
there on Saturday ... GO FOR YOURS!!! Take home the memories. We
all know the idiots [who] run this city will probably let her go
to waste like they did that old baseball stadium.”
“If people were
to take the seats or storm the field to take fistfuls of sod …
they'd actually be showing more heart and motivation than the
current Hurricanes have shown us on the field this year,” agreed
Da Truth.
“Of course — if
unruly fans tear it apart, there will be nothing for the city or
the university to sell off piece by piece, as other cities have
done with their historic stadiums,” scoffed Carlos R.
Adolfo Herrera,
in a departure for the message board, made a reasoned argument
to the effect that the OB should be torn down by fans as part of
a large-scale performance art piece “depicting how the rich and
spoiled have destroyed all the good things this city was, and it
would also cut the demolition costs when they tear it down for
the proposed but never to be built Marlins Stadium.”
“Warning to all
Hurricane Fans!” teased Erik. “Don't even think of taking a
blade of grass or a splinter from the Orange Bowl. Anyone found
with contraband will be forced to purchase season tickets for
2008.”
God bless the
bastards. |
