While I'm flailing working on the larger media piece, I'll note that there's a lot of blogosphere reaction to NBC's effort to entrap (there's no other word for it) NASCAR fans with decoy Arabs (there's no other word for using Sikhs).
Michael Gartner resigned as president of NBC News six days after NBC had made its second on-the-air apology in 15 days for having used fakery in its news shows. On February 9, it confessed to having rigged crash tests of GM C/K pickup trucks to support the claim on Dateline NBC that these trucks are "rolling fire bombs waiting to explode."You'd think they'd realize that staged action + pickup trucks / NASCAR will inevitably end badly for them...
And as a gratuitous editorial, can I invite the Dateline crew to join me at Hal's for dinner, where I'll stand up and loudly announce that I hunt, own guns, and support the war in Iraq? The reactions there will be priceless as well, I can assure you (note that I love the food at Hal's and eat there often).
[Update: TG went and read the linked article and pointed this out:"We deeply regret we included the inappropriate demonstration in our Dateline report. We apologize to our viewers and to General Motors. We have also concluded that unscientific demonstrations should have no place in hard news stories at NBC. That's our new policy."A short-lived one, it appears...]
NBC is, of course, a component of the General Electric Company. I am quite confident that among GE's employees and executives, there are a fair number who are NASCAR fans (even if there are very few such at NBC itself). So, by implying that NASCAR fans have a tendency toward bigotry, this network has insulted their fellow employees.
"NBC is, of course, a component of the General Electric Company. I am quite confident that among GE's employees and executives, there are a fair number who are NASCAR fans (even if there are very few such at NBC itself). So, by implying that NASCAR fans have a tendency toward bigotry, this network has insulted their fellow employees."
Let me let people not in the know in on a secret here. NASCAR is popular. Really popular. And its base of support is much broader than you think, cutting across lines of economic class, region, gender, and race. Anyone that thinks NASCAR is just a support of poor, uneducated, southern white males, a) doesn't know alot of southern white males and b) doesn't know alot of NASCAR fans.
As a case in point, I'm sitting next to a Chinese national, who is shall we say a Chinese patriot to here him talk. He has told me in the past that when he arrived in America to be a student, one of his two fondest dreams was to meet Bill Clinton and go to see a NASCAR race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The media simply doesn't understand NASCAR. The biggest NASCAR fan I ever met was a woman. The real revelation for me as a non-fan was when I was working at a scientific firm, and all these Ph.D. holders at lunch started talking about Daytona in a fashion that was equal parts tech nerd and fanboy. NASCAR is mainstream, and the sort of people that love NASCAR are Americans (and apparantly a few non-Americans) from all walks of life. I mean for crying out loud, all you have to be to love NASCAR is someone who likes cars, or clean cut handsome men, or noise, or crashes, or beer.
One other note. Europeans tend to be rather dismissive of NASCAR, being rather enamored with grand prix, F1, supermoto, rally, and a bunch of other things Americans don't have and don't pay attention to. I'm not a fan either way, and I find both the road race and the oval track equally boring and I don't want to start up that fight mainly because I don't really have a bone in it.
But after several years of trying to get get Europeans to understand the attraction of NASCAR and failing, and of trying to get Europeans to accept that NASCAR is a civilized sport and failing I have finally come up with a method which works. And, like most explanations that work, its very simple.
In fact, it involves only three words.
You show the European as picture of Bristol Motor Speedway, and then you say, "American Circus Maximus."
Then the light goes on.
NBC has a contract with NASCAR to broadcast the latter's races.
It looks like NBC is interfering with its own contract with NASCAR, giving the latter grounds for immediate termination of the contract (which expires at the end of the year anyway). NASCAR can bring in Fox (which won NBC's contract for 2007) in early.
celebrim - One other note. Europeans tend to be rather dismissive of NASCAR, being rather enamored with grand prix ...
It's a class issue. Grand Prix, traditionally, is one of the things that kept the European aristocracy busy in between World Wars.
NASCAR is about poor boys from North Carolina who drive their way to fame and glory. The social difference between the wannabes and the Gods of Velocity is effectively zero. Petty and Earnhardt were the same kind of people as their fans, not the preposterous caricatures of human beings that other "celebrities" are.
It helps that NASCAR drivers can't sleepwalk through college on athletic scholarships and graduate to zillion-dollar contracts. You still have to work for it, but in theory anybody could do it, which makes it the ideal working class dream.
Reminds me of when that California boy switched over from driving Formula One to Nascar and got Robert Duvall to come out of retirement and build him a car. Then the Dread Pirate Roberts tried to put him into the wall. Then he married his Australian doctor, got divorced, married an 18 year old, got her preggers, and finally went nuts L Ron H style.
Thats whats great about NASCAR.
I don't get NASCAR. I have family that do, and I live very close to a few major speedways, but I don't get it. Cars going around in circles. Watching somebody else drive?
But Celebrim's right: it's big. Really big. Whatever it is that hooks you on NASCAR must be contagious. I was working in the middle of nowhere Canada a few years ago and was introduced to a new teammate.
As usual, we chatted a bit to determine if we had any common interests. I told the guy I was from Virginia, which I don't think even rang a bell. It was when I saw a NASCAR model in his cube that I hit on it:
"I live near the Martinsville Motor Speedway"
Oh. Wow! His eyes lit up and he spent the next twenty minutes telling me about racing cars on frozen rivers.
#3 from celebrim: "You show the European as picture of Bristol Motor Speedway, and then you say, "American Circus Maximus."
Then the light goes on."
For this Australian, the light went on.
My theory is if there is enough drinking involved, anything is interesting. Hence racing, fishing, golf, and baseball. Also the advent of yard games that involve lobbing one peice of hardware at another.
Personally, I am not greedy. I dont need an excuse to enjoy beer and sunshine. I get enough entertainment out of watching my idiot friends agonizing over whos chunk of metal landed closest to the pvc.
You're a wise man, Mark.
When I was up in Canada, they explained they had some kind of sport called "curling."
Sounded like weight-lifting to me, but when I asked a Canadian what curling was, he responded "It's a way to drink lots of beer and get a groin injury."
Watching it live, he had a point.
What's interesting is driving on the freeway after one of these local races. I think everybody who drives home secretly thinks they have a number painted on the side of their car. It gets very chaotic.
Look at Extreme and Action sports. Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, blading, BMX, Motocross etc.
Stars are accessible, all-American guys who come from middle class backgrounds mostly, and found traditional team sports too confining and other sports dominated by genetic lottery winners (think Kobe or TO).
Europeans go nuts over bicycle racing and Skiing, whereas except for a few guys like Lance Armstrong Americans don't do very well. Nascar and stuff like the X-Games are like that.
Rest assured every middle class boy in America knows who Tony Hawk, Laird Hamilton, Tara Dakides, and Corey Maye are.