While I think the swine flu outbreak should be a concern, I the media is blowing the whole thing out of proportions. They love "fear journalism" because it gets ratings. The conspiracist in me wonders if Purell and Lysol are secretly paying the media to overstate things. As a result, people aren't thinking rationally. Countries such as China and Russia, for example, have banned pork imports from the US and Mexico. However, the flu is being spread from human-to-human contact and is a mutated form of "swine flu", which can not be contracted from eating pig meat. As a result, the CDC has started referring to it's technical name, "H1N1 Flu". Don't bet on seeing that name in the headlines anytime soon. I think this is a good reminder to use proper hygiene, but people need to not overreact. Remember how we were all going to die from bird flu??
In other swine news, now that the book on A-Rod* has come out, we now learn that he tipped pitches while playing for the Rangers. Ok, why the hell would he do that? Apparently, in blowout games, he would signal pitch types to opposing middle infielders so he could benefit from quid pro quo (yes, I stole that phrase from the article, but I love that phrase). He would allegedly do this to get himself out of a slump and improve his numbers. Everyone would agree that using steroids is much worse than this in a legal and historical sense and would have a much greater affect on the game of baseball. However, I think this makes him look much worse as a teammate than steroids. He is basically saying "I don't care about my pitcher, I just want to help myself".
*Note: I do not advocate hugging or being kind to A-Rod.
2 comments:
Swine Flu is definitely being overblown in the media, and some governments are definitely overreacting. And I agree that it's annoying.
But I would rather have too much coverage of emerging threats than too little. For all of the fear-mongering and hype, you have to admit that most people have heard about swine flu by now and can take steps to avoid contracting it. (however remote those chances of contracting it were in the first place)
And A-Rod is a selfish asshole. That's old news, I don't need any more evidence. I have no respect for A-Rod, but I have no respect for the author of that book either.
Personally, I find it a much bigger deal that A-Rod would fuck his own teammates (especially the pitcher) over like that than he did steroids. I think I'm at the point now where I just don't give a damn about steroid losers. They're just hurting themselves in the long run (right, Ken Camminitti?) and their reputations are tarnished. But to go against your team, perhaps costing them a chance to comeback in a game (I know they were all blowouts...but you never know...), for your own selfish gain? That's low...
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