Slow States

This is Wilco, likely singing from the heart, a very good Nick Lowe cover.

And no, that post tile is not drunken nonsense — here’s a Stiff Records Tribute Band called I Love My Label playing “I Love My Label” at a San Francisco bar, apparently one that hasn’t yet installed lights. It’s really not that bad:

P.S. I swear this isn’t turning into a Wilco blog. Blame XM Radio — it’s Wilco Weekend on their The Spectrum channel.

What the hell is that? Pretty simply formula, actually: The unreliable but incredibly well performing Mustachio plugin for Chrome plus NPR’s album review and free stream of Wilco’s ‘The Whole Love’.

And this space? Patrick was telling the truth. We’ll get back to Mornin’ Joes next week, along with some album reviews (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! returns from the dead, and AA Bondy is back), the Wilco project ramps with songs we actually like, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t Octoberfest season, of which I’m consuming with great delight.

So, we’re sorry.

We’re sorry for taking a month off, but other obligations just sort of came up. Chris and Kevin took over Black Shoe Diaries, which is the Blogfrica equivalent of what would have happened if Wyclef Jean had won the election in Haiti. And, while they were getting the party started over there, I was staging a hunger strike until Wilco announced a return to Des Moines. Now that things are in place at BSD and Wilco has announced their tour (12/4, Val Air Ballroom BOOM), we can get back to work.

And we start with this. Yes, it’s Jeff Tweedy, but he’s covering one of Graham Filler’s favorite bands, so I’m sure our resident Wilco curmudgeon won’t mind.

Welcome back to Slow States.

73. My Darling (Summer)
PV – 63 | CG – 39 | KP – 86

High – CG (39) – Much to like here. A beautiful, reassuring song from father to child, complete with a Beatles-like transition into dreamland toward the end. Kevin hates it because he hates babies, and probably puppies and unicorns, too.

Low – KP (86) – The sound on this one throws me off. It’s too clangy at the beginning, too muddy at the end, and a total momentum buster right after a pretty traditional sounding rock song in “ELT”. I guess I should be thankful they didn’t go full-on noise machine at the end, so there’s that, but then again he probably realized there would be babies listening and he didn’t want to ruin their ear drums during a phase of important development. Oh, and unicorns suck.

72. In a Future Age (Summer)
PV – 42 | CG – 59 | KP – 87

High – PV (42) – I have no explanation. It’s nothing in particular that they did here, and it’s nothing in the words, but this just feels spacey and open and…yeah, a bit futuristic, and it’s done with just a piano and a little guitar. It floats over suburbia like it was written for The Postal Service, and it does it without bleeps and bloops. It’s impressive, really.

Low – KP (87) – I can see myself, in certain situations, actually really liking this song. But you know, when I’m listening to 93 of these things rating effort and art, the chugging-along train and random, probably drunk piano rambling doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts. Patrick will hate this, but it’s not far off from the same uninterrupted approach to lyrical structure as “I’ll Fight”.

71. Was I in Your Dreams (Being)
PV – 79 | CG – 66 | KP – 41

No embed available. Probably exists only in your dreams.

High – KP (41) – This is the second best intro of any Wilco song on our list, which is both undebatable fact and awesome. That alone is good enough for the ranking, but the lyrical tone of this one is extra points. The lyrics, though, are admiralty kind of weak, and that’s why this one sinks a little. But as far as “grab a girl and drunkenly sway with her” songs go, this one is right up there, and you know what, the world needs that kind of tune.

Low – PV (79) – The plodding rhythm of this one is my only real strike against this one. Well, that and the throwaway lyric “When a dreamer dies does his dreams die too?/Do you really mind if I dream about you?/I can’t say what any of that means”. Jeff Tweedy, he don’t know nothin’ ’bout my dreaming. “Was I in Your Dreams” is as forgettable as anything in the Wilco catalog.

70. War on War (YHF)
PV – 66 | CG – 41 | KP – 77

High – CG (41) – Pretty sure I hated this song for a few years, but it must have grown on me slightly. Honestly surprised to see it at #41. “You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive” is so painfully trite, but I’ve always had a thing for the piano in this one.

Low – KP (77) – There was a time during my many non-stop music indulgences during college when I be came all-consumed by the protest song, in which the songwriter is able to use art and usually their folksiness to compellingly talk about current events. The lyrics are usually simple and often straightforward but it’s also probably one of the hardest things to do in popular music. A lot of the best songwriters we’ve seen in recent times, even ones with dozens of well-known tracks, are resigned to committing to an honest cover because it’s hard to readdress the same handful of topics that have been getting recycled for the past 300 or so years — war, abuse of power, social injustice, class warfare and all the rest.

To me this whole thing always felt like a wanabe protest song that Tweedy didn’t have the guts to commit to. Instead, he does the 8x repeat of the “chorus” and then cops out with a bunch of abstract or, as Chris mentioned, trite lyrics. It’s not even that bad, musically, but I actually wish I would have dropped this one a little lower than 77.

69. Walken (SBS)
PV – 88 | CG – 78 | KP – 12

High – KP (12) – It’s not the same kind of song, but it pulls the same strings for me as “Was I In Your Dreams”. There’s a subtle reverb-type thing on the main vocal here I always really liked, kind of an ode to the low-fi age of everyone just kickin’ it in a big room, and it jives perfectly with the dirty guitar and fantastic steel. The middle break of this thing is something I could see myself really getting down to at a blues festival and that makes me feel very good inside.

Low – PV (88) – He’s walkin’ all by himself and talkin’ to himself and singin’ a song and thinkin’ about singin’ a song for you and then there’s some falsetto, and while all of that is really stupid, I don’t think that’s my problem with this song. My problem with this song is there are no transitions. There’s this bouncey part, and then there’s a jam session, and then there’s another bouncey part, and then there’s a bigger jam session (one that kicks ass, to be fair). It’s like Tweedy wrote a 20 second lyric and stretched it to four-and-a-half minutes by telling his band, “I’m going to repeat this a few times, and in between, give me the Trey Anastasio.”

68. What’s the World Got in Store (Being)
PV – 55 | CG – 49 | KP – 74

No embed available. Youtube remains incompatable with banjocore.

High – CG (49) – Hey, it’s only #49, I don’t need a full-throated defense here. The banjo-only intro and subsequent soaring vocal harmonies are rather perfect, as is the slight delay between the harmonies and Tweedy’s first verse vocals. The interloping organ sweetens the mood rather nicely, as well. Better than solid, less than spectacular.

Low – KP (74) – I don’t really feel like blasting this one, mostly because it doesn’t deserve it. It’s pretty easy to take most song lyrics and embarrass them — hell Patrick is making a living out of it on some of what I think are Wilco’s best efforts at upbeatness — but that’s kind of the nature of poetry. This one doesn’t particularly speak to me and I don’t find anything except the banjo very interesting.

67. Wishful Thinking (AGIB)
PV – 37 | CG – 89 | KP – 47

High – PV (37) – This isn’t fair, because Chris is right: On the album, it’s a brooding, rumbly Tweedy personality apology for like the 19th time. It’s just that this song kicks total ass live, and it kicks total ass on Kicking Television, and that clouds my judgment. Plus, I’m a sucker for that “Take off your dress/An embarrassing poem/Was written when I was alone/In love with you” line for some reason.

Mid – KP (47) – Another top five lyrics, the title line here in “Cause what would love be without wishful thinking”. I don’t take Chris’s interpretation, to me it’s more a realization about a only half-worthwhile relationship and all the nostalgia that goes along with evaluating those in hindsight. Tweedy will occasionally boil loaded situations like that down into a line or two and that’s part of what makes him often very good at his job.

Low – CG (89) – Seriously, guys? This is an automatic skip, every single time. Variation #38 of the “you’re so wonderful for loving a troubled man” song, and the melodies don’t save it. Blech. Pass.

66. On and On and On (SBS)
PV – 50 | CG – 74 | KP – 49

High – KP (49) – The song so great they named it twice (and a half)! There’s a desperation in this one that is compelling for whatever reason. I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to take all the lyrics in at once, so thanks, Chris, for the downer.

Low – CG (74) – I could be going a bit rough on this one. It’s not a bad song, it’s just unpleasant. “Please don’t cry, we’re designed to die” is a knife to the heart every time I hear it. That doesn’t make it bad, but it gives some insight to my criteria for ranking these songs.

65. I Got You (at the End of the Century) (Being)
PV – 75 | CG – 25 | KP – 70

In lieu of the audio, I am including this live clip of “I Got You” from a ski lodge, which is either the most ironic Wilco show of all time or Ashton Kutcher’s greatest work to date.

High – CG (25) – Okay, lyrically, it’s nothing. I’m guessing that’ll be the main complaint below, and it’s totally valid. But I’m a music and melody guy, not a poet, and as straightforward concert rockers go, this is a very good one. It has all the elements, droned-out harmonies, a funky bridge, and a false finish.

Low – PV (75) – Lyrically, it’s nothing. Also, I’m a total hypocrite, because this song also kicks ass live and yet I have it way down the list when I gave “Wishful Thinking” the benefit of the doubt.

64. Should’ve Been in Love (AM)
PV – 83 | CG – 54 | KP – 31

Live clip on the audio, but as good as it gets for 1995.

High – KP (31) – So the high/low on these AMs is getting a little predictable, isn’t it? For me, this is the theme song of all the good looking girls in college you never go up and talk to. Because I never did that. And Tweedy avoids the emo approach to this and takes a more classically romanic one, and the song is a worthwhile mp3 to have in your first generation iPod when life seems like it could shoot in 1,000 different directions with every minor decision you make (this is also known as “college”).

Low – PV (83) – I think this comes from the fact that I’m not nearly the A.M. fan that my comrades are, but I have this way underrated…wait, did he just rhyme “stinking” three times in the course of one song? Does the music really never get out of second gear? Nevermind, I was right. This song is crap.

An ode to the 27 Club, which is all the rage right now. I even got sucked into three hours on the Bio Channel last night because of this whole mess.

For those of you who didn’t listen to the podcast, there was a brief discussion of how each of us first found Wilco. My first encounter with Wilco was through the demos to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which is certainly an odd way to first find a band.

Then again, there was little that wasn’t odd about YHF. After the countryfied rock of A.M. and Being There, Wilco made a sharp right turn toward noisy pop music with 1999′s Summerteeth. It was the band’s first sustained foray away from their alt-country beginnings, not to mention their first album on a major label (Warner Bros. had picked the band up following Being There). It was also, at least by Wilco’s standards, immensely popular. The band entered their Chicago loft to record the follow-up in late 2000 with little instruction or oversight from the label.

The result were the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos, now available for download at Captain’s Dead. I’ll leave the discussion of song disintegration and Radiohead comparisons for later posts, but the YHF demos are in many ways the bridge between Summerteeth‘s pop and the proper Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘s experimentation. Only seven of the fourteen new tracks from the demos — there are seven instrumental tracks and alternate versions of prior songs at the end — made the final album, and while some of those songs are very high on our list of Wilco’s best, it’s the tracks that didn’t make it that are the gems here. “Alone” acts as a natural sequel to “How to Fight Loneliness” with its bouncey pop juxtaposed against lyrics like “Take a shower/Take another nap/Watch some television/Taking a bath”. “Nothing Up My Sleeve” is as close to a blow-off track as Wilco’s ever done. “Venus Stop the Train” floats so slowly and laments so openly to fall right in my wheelhouse. I still have no idea how “Magazine Called Sunset” and “Not for the Season” (which now makes frequent concert cameos as “Laminated Cat”) were left on the cutting room floor a year later. And the sad, drunken dirge of “Rhythm/Cars Can’t Escape” (“There were reasons for you to love me/But I gave you none/So I tap my glass and nod my chin and wonder who you’ve been in rhythm with”) is unquestionably my favorite Tweedy lyric, from this album or any other.

This isn’t to say that the familiar YHF tracks aren’t worth a listen. Some, like “Ashes of American Flags” and “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” survived largely unscathed. Most were completely reimagined before making the proper album. “I’m the Man Who Loves You” chugs along like a jalopy this time, “Kamera” replaces Glenn Kotche’s smooth backing snare from the formal album with drums that break like waves (I don’t know if Kotche or Ken Coomer was on drums during the demo, though I believe it’s the former), and “Poor Places” went from a little piano-driven diddy on the demos to some sort of spacy mind trip with half the words missing on YHF proper.

The story of what happened after the demos, of course, is legend: Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, who had written virtually all of Wilco’s material through the album, clashed frequently over basically all of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Eventually, the demos were remixed and sent to Warner Bros. Tweedy, assuming the album was done, fired Bennett. Warner Bros., which had just merged with AOL and was in the process of reducing its music division, hated the album and refused to release it. The band took their album and left, and eventually began streaming the album for free on its web site (the initial planned release date was September 11, 2001, though I have no idea what that coincidence would have done for “Ashes of American Flags”). The web traffic and buzz surrounding the album started a bidding war between smaller labels, eventually won in the most ironic of fashions by Warner Bros.-controlled Nonesuch Records. Yes, Tweedy had made WB pay to make the album, taken the album from them for free, and then sold it back.

The mythology eventually completely outstripped the album itself, which is a bit of a shame as the album is a masterpiece. The demos, with none of the fanfare and all of the rawness of, well, a demo album, is its equal in many ways. More importantly, it’s a snapshot of Wilco at a time of great transition, and an insight into what we eventually heard. It’s interesting, and it’s beautiful, and it’s free, so go get it.

83. Sunny Feeling (Wilco The Album)
PV – 86 | CG – 70 | KP – 60

No embed code for the song off WTA that Kevin has rated higher than anyone else.

High – KP (60) – I’m pretty upset with myself to be honest; I have no business being the defender of anything on this waste of perfectly good polycarbonate. But here goes nothing: I like the breakdown about two minutes in, it gets me slow stomping and then quickly toe tapping through the rest of the song. It’s a nice enough tune, although I wonder if it’s artificially high for hanging out with the mostly forgettable songs on this album.

Low – PV (86) – Remember how I mentioned I never get past the ninth song on Wilco The Album? This is track eleven, and there’s nothing in it that changes my future listening habits.

82. Bull Black Nova (Wilco The Album)
PV – 47 | CG – 73 | KP – 90

High – PV (47) – Ah, “Bull Black Nova,” a “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” for the dad rock phase of Wilco. It’s also Wilco’s first foray into that genre mined by luminaries like Springsteen and Dylan in the past: The murderer on the run. Tweedy’s lyrics stay away from the themes of his predecessors; in fact, they are far more indebted to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood than any prior iteration of the wanted man song. This is a tale of paranoia and regret and complete insanity, and the driving, pulsating heartbeat of the underlying music coupled with Nels Cline’s shrieking, stabbing electric guitar (the likes of which we hadn’t heard since A Ghost Is Born) add to the palpitations and claustrophobia just as those elements added emotion and meaning to “Radio Cure” or “Less Than You Think” before. Great tone, great lyrics, and one of the few moments of great creativity apparent on WTA.

Low – KP (90) – Part of my problem with this album, other than it not pushing any interesting creative boundaries, is the guitar sounds. I just don’t like them. The underwater echo thing sounds like something I’d hear a 16-year-old kid at Guitar Center just absolutely crushing on an amp worth more than all his possessions combined.

81. Hate It Here (Sky Blue Sky)
PV – 67 | CG – 86 | KP – 56

High – KP (56) – The vibe and old-school synth are all WIN here. I hate to contradict myself on the value of lyrics, but I dig the hook at the end of each verse for whatever reason. To use a phrase we’ve thrown around here — you know you’re in full on Dad Rock when you’re singing about clean sheets. You won’t get Slow States Points for that kind of thing.

Low – CG (86) – I’m not the kind of music fan that needs or wants to carefully unpack vague lyrics, but come on.  Even Rebecca Black thinks this is a bit simplistic.  I do have the sudden urge to clean something, though.

80. I Thought I Held You (A.M.)
PV – 81 | CG – 63 | KP – 63

No embed code. Apparently this song never actually existed.

High – KP (63) – Look at that, a tie. This is actually one of my least favorite A.M. tracks, but it’s got that classic Wilco draw-out, which I always appreciate even (occasionally) on Wilco (The Album) songs. Also, another top five Tweedy lyric: “You’re the reason I’ve run out / Run out of metaphors”.

High – CG (63) – Two things totally redeem this for me: the beautifully arranged pedal steel and the drawn out lull before the chorus kicks back in at around 2:20. Nicely teased.

Low – PV (81) – “You’re like a moon that’s full/Across a sea of foam/In the sky/You are burning.” Those are the only lyrics in the first minute of the song, a minute that has no particularly interesting moments to make up the time. I know the entire premise of the song is that he’s at a loss for words, but come on, Jeff. You have to have something there to fill in the dead space. I agree with Chris on the pedal steel, but it’s not redeeming in and of itself.

79. Wilco the Song (Wilco The Album)
PV – 25 | CG – 88 | KP – 93

High – PV (25) – I have this ranked this high for one reason and only one reason. In the summer of 2000, I got a job as an accountant for a small department at the University of Iowa with my friend Ted. We spent at least 40% of that summer listening to the local classic rock station and looking for what we called “The Holy Trinity”: Songs with identical names to both their artists and albums. We came up with “Bad Company” from the Bad Company album Bad Company and “Living in a Box” from the Living in a Box album Living in a Box.Technically, there were two songs named “Living in a Box” on that record, because those guys were really into living in a box. A little while later, Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins made the movie Bad Company, but oddly enough the song “Bad Company” wasn’t on the soundtrack, thereby eliminating the one and only chance we’ve had of a quadrupleponymy. The world continued to spin on its axis.

Anyway, depending on how you treat the parentheticals, this is the third song in The Holy Trinity. Three threes. The circle is complete, and The Rapture is coming with it. The song itself is passable.

Mid – CG (88) – This is a shark-jumping moment for my favorite band. That’s how much I hate it. What made this a good idea? Why did nobody step in and prevent it from happening? “Do you dabble in depression?” Well, I do now.

Low – KP (93) – Oh look, the worst song Wilco ever recorded! I don’t understand how Tweedy is even able to sing this song with a straight face. I mean look what he’s doing with it on live TV. This song should be put into a rocket and fired at the sun. Get on it, science.

78. Red Eyed and Blue (Being There)
PV – 69 | CG – 65 | KP – 72

High – CG (65) – A rare tight grouping from us, I see.  I like this for a number of reasons — the echoing piano and the big transition halfway through that feels like a tempo change, but isn’t.  Always liked this one from a former hack musician’s perspective, too.

Low – KP (72) – I might have underrated this one. I like the vulnerable piano at the beginning, straightforward lyrics, and alcohol involvement. Screwing around on YouTube, I think this song really comes through live as well, in a way the sterile studio kind of crushes.

77. We’re Just Friends (Summerteeth)
PV – 61 | CG – 90 | KP – 51

High – KP (51) – I was probably too fair with this one, it was clearly written drunk on the tour bus, which isn’t bad in and of itself, but it slurs a little too long. Feels honest, though.

Low – CG (90) – Surprised I disliked this the most, as the resident Summerteeth advocate.  This has always felt disjointed from the beginning, and plays against the band’s strengths in a way rarely seen in their other songs.  This would be a gorgeous Beach Boys song, however.

76. Box Full of Letters (A.M.)
PV – 90 | CG – 75 | KP – 33

High – KP (33) – This song benefits in a big way from its placement on A.M. — third, the most versatile spot in a lineup, cool and strong and right after “Casino Queen”. I’m not even sure what he means by writing his mind, but it sounds interesting.

Mid – CG (75) – A simple, benign pop-rocker. Hard for me to get worked up in either direction.

Low – PV (90) – They should have taken this song, removed Tweedy, replaced him with Del Amitri, and made the most queefcore song ever produced. They would have sold a lot more units of A.M. and the record company probably wouldn’t have given them any shit for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot all those years later. Jay Bennett never would have quit the band, they never would have made that movie that makes Tweedy out to be Mr. McMahon, and Wilco would pretty much be The Beatles Jr.

Yes, “Box Full of Letters” ruined the whole goddamned world.

75. Please Be Patient With Me (Sky Blue Sky)
PV – 43 | CG – 69 | KP – 83

High – PV (43) – There’s nothing complicated about it, but this is a wonderful and gorgeous little song. Plaintive, apologetic, and utterly honest in its depiction of “that” conversation, where he can’t really come out and say what the problem is without scaring the bejeezus out of his significant other and is just begging for a little time by dancing around the 500 pound elephant.

Low – KP (83) – Patrick always makes me feel like I’m not appreciating things in the right light, but frankly it reminds me of The White Stripes’ “We’re Going To Be Friends” in tone, only way worse.

74. I’ll Fight (Wilco The Album)
PV – 92 | CG – 55 | KP – 45

High – KP (45) – Acoustic guitar intro, that’s one way to get my attention. It also captures this kind of strange personal devotion in a lyric that is about 1,000% more substantive than anything else I hear on the album. Patrick does nail the pretty simple formula, of course, but it resolves nicely.

Mid – CG (55) – I rather enjoy this from an instrumental perspective. I like the hammer-on acoustic guitar at the beginning, the in-and-out organ, and the layered guitars. It has a certain determination mostly lacking elsewhere on the album. But Patrick hates the shit out of it, which intrigues me.

Low – PV (92) – The Twitter reaction to the announcement of this project stunned me, mostly because some people I really like had this in their top fives. I no longer like any of those people. Or should I say “I no, I no, I no, I no longer like, ger like, ger like, ger like any of those pee, those pee, those pee, those people.”

Here’s the thing with “I’ll Fight”: Since Bennett left during YHF, all serious creative control has been with Tweedy. Sure, the musicians around him are incredibly talented and fill the gaps, but the drive of the entire project is Tweedy’s alone. And the most consistent and truthful knock on post-Bennett Wilco is that Tweedy’s artistic drive, when unopposed, lasted for about an album and half. So now you’re Jeff Tweedy, and you are angry about people saying that you’re over the hill and making dad rock, so you release your new album, and we get a couple of early flashes of the good stuff, and then the fade begins, and it’s about eight songs into the album, and you’ve done AM Gold like “You and I” and “You Never Know” and this thing, just like your last album, is fading to the finish and needs a kick in the pants. Your reaction? Sing-song and acoustic guitar, of course!

I think I hate this song so much because it was the first time I’d heard something from Wilco, my favorite band basically to that point, and said, “Oh, fuck this boring shit, I’m not a goddamn geriatric yet.” I get enough of this watching Iowa play football. I don’t need it from my music. I don’t even necessarily disagree with Chris’s description of the instrumentation, but you have the abilities of Nels Cline relegated to filler chords and Glenn Kotche turned into the little drummer boy between lyrics about Vietnam and Jesus or something. These are incredible talents wasting away so that we can hear…what, a bit of organ and Jeff’s acoustic strum again? This song — and this album, and this band since about halfway through Sky Blue Sky — rarely escapes from second gear for fear of actually doing something interesting. Contrast it with “Muzzle of Bees,” another simple acoustic diddy, but one where Cline and Kotche were freed up to do something interesting within the song’s context. The message I would send to Tweedy, I guess, is that if you aren’t going to do anything with the space, for Christ’s sake let someone else try. You used to do that. You can do it again.

ESPN got toasted yesterday. Fried, burnt, roasted, whatever. The Subsidiary of Disney tried to turn this into an argument about whether a timeout is different than a suspension, but this seems like strong wording if it’s about something that never happened:

That’s Mandel getting uncharacteristically real with a competitor, which he’s not doing without information. Spin is futile. We’re all laughing at the word danger, because it’s hilarious.

The Subsidiary of Disney got so Properly Owned here I’m struggling to fight off contrarianism. This story is begging for such treatment but not even the Internet has the gaul to offer it up. All I can think about is a thoughtful, two sided conversation I stumbled across at BSD, and this sinister but painfully obvious reality TSoD must now stamp on their faces:

A journalist’s product is fairly useless if he or she lacks credibility and ethics and such a thing is discovered by the public; the general public isn’t going to pay to read or sit through adverts to watch or listen to something that they can’t trust unless it has practical or entertainment value aside from the consumption of facts. If the public won’t sit through adverts or pay for subscriptions, the company fails and the journalist is out of work.

Journalistic ethics are a fantastic example of what Aquinas called Natural Law and what Hayek called emergent order: a set of rules that, codified or not, need not be, because without them the subset of society to which they pertain fails. It should be clear, however, that they arise not in contrast to the bottom line, but because of it.

We’re talking about a brand that (and this still puzzles me in a lot of ways) survived The Decisions, even while playing the scoop angle hours before it aired. Their predominant up-and-comer predicted a massive coaching change that never happened, and he’s still their predominant up-and-comer. Nothing has been as damning in these particular circles as what just went down with Feldman, and besides being painfully and hilariously illogical, it sets a pretty clear standard in terms of (1) ESPN’s core market play, which is clearly not truth above all else, and (2) how easily lullabied they think college football fans will be by a PR army* despite that whole “resume”contradiction.

*An interesting ratio I’d love to know but never will: what is ESPN paying their full writing staff, listed as a percentage of what they’re paying their PR executive and “messaging” foot soldiers?

On that second part, maybe they’re right. I sure hope not, obviously, but when we’re really looking for reality I just hope we all remember point number one.