Friday Night Fights: Buzz Bissinger vs. The Internet
Oct. 27 2008, Published 7:07 a.m. ET
BUZZKILL Bissinger's vandalized Wiki, Bissinger (inset) (Photo: Wikipedia) Last night on Bob Costas' eponymous HBO talk show Costas Now, Deadspin's Will Leitch sat down with Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and Friday Night Lights scribe Buzz Bissinger and had a polite, informative, and altogether illuminating discussion on how the Internet is changing the landscape of sports journalism. So willing was Bissinger—a writer we actually like, mind you—to engage Leitch in civilized discourse that he kicked off the proceedings by telling him, "I think you're full of shit." Things quickly spiraled downhill from there, to the point where even poor Costas, not exactly the biggest fan of new media out there, had to tell him to shut up already.
The remarkable video, after the jump, is a sight to behold: it's a rare thing to see someone who was made a career of making thoughtful, cogent arguments on paper come off as such a stark, raving lunatic in person. The ultimate irony, of course, is that Bissinger shows himself to be the exact person he spent the previous five minutes wailing against: a profane, inarticulate, windbag.
As his freshly-edited Wikipedia entry proves (pictured above), denizens of the Internet are already having their revenge. Leitch's take on the ambush is here.
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