[el nordissimo]

By JIM MOORE
SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM

I admit to being an unenlightened dinosaur. I am trying to embrace the Twitter and Facebook craze because I'm told that social media is the wave of the future, the way to survive and thrive in the new world.

Jim Moore can be reached at jimmoore@seattlepi.com or jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com or at 206-448-8013. He’s golfing in Thailand this week and will regretfully miss the next scoreless slugfest between the Sounders and Dynamo.

Here's the link if you want to actually give the geezer the hits he hates to crave http://www.seattlepi.com/moore/411902_moore06.html

Not trying to flame you guys, and I'm sure there's no short history of intense douchbaggery from Mr. Moore. I can't comment without signing up, maybe some of y'all can let him have it. One of the commenters from Boston gives it a pretty good run. Another references a Seattle Times poll with low response on Sounders FC as proof that soccer is doomed to failure, or something like that. Y'all ought to light that sh*t up just to spite the jackoffs.

Not sleeping well these days. Sunday is going to be epic.

[DarthGreedo]

Originally Posted by el nordissimo

no short history of intense douchbaggery from Mr. Moore.

You said all that needed to be said right there. He can be funny at times but man, we don't need these people's approval for us to love the sport. Who cares about this stuff? The times has a great beat writer covering the Sounders, and their columnists go beyond the "why isn't there enough scoring, i hate ties, can't they make it more like american sports" bull shit; and try to make legit points about the games and players themselves. I guess the PI still hasn't caught up... maybe thats why they are the ones that failed and the Times didn't.

[WestSeattle]

Yeah the P-I is lost. Actually, the P-I and Times have very old, not very well educated guys on their staffs.

I have met both Art Thiel and Steve Kelley. I was sitting in a Holmgren press-conference, the day before the NFL draft. I was listening in on the conversations. The beat-writers (Clare Farnsworth etc), were making notes and chatting about potential draft picks and priorities.

Kelley and Thiel were talking about the Ozzy Osbourne reality show, and then bragged about how good the catering is on draft day...and as a result, they finally bothered to show up for it.

These guys are really lazy, but also very vain. Their columns are the kind of shoot-from-the-hip "truthiness", that Stephen Colbert makes fun of with the blogosphere and talk radio. One PR person I worked with, one told me that Thiel often has his football articles written by half-time, and heads home to beat traffic.

These are not bright men, they are not that well educated, and they do the bare minimum to keep their jobs. Thiel is also a dangerous hypocrite. One week he wrote a front page sports editorial on Shawn Springs steroid use, railing on him like a villain. What I happened to know when he wrote that, was that just a few days ago he was begging Shawn to be a speaker at his "charity" event (more like tax-credit event). It was only when Shawn refused, that he decided to get revenge, after all Shawn had just cost him a few extra tickets.

Moore is a Cougar, who think he has a wonderful sense of humor - but actually has a very narrow scope of interest in actual sport. His job is to write outrageous things to flame the "Husky Nation" and keep them engaged with the paper. He doesn't like hockey, doesn't like soccer, barely tolerates baseball and has no in-depth knowledge or history of any sport.

His other job is to be sarcastic, wax his "gosh shucks" middle-class malaise and then put it out to copy as quickly and painlessly as possible. These guys are inattentive in the press box (if they even bother to show up), and never research statistics (or if they do its something basic like win-loss records). They couldn't calculate WHIP on their own if they had a calculator - but frequently tell you the "truthiness" of one pitcher over another.

Mercifully, they are dodos. This kind of "local-yocal kicks the game around" columnist is a dying breed. The blogosphere does it better, faster and with great passion and accuracy. The beat-writer (like Romero) serves a purpose because they are in the trenches with interviews, quotes and attending practices. But, the nerd who editorializes about a game they paid only passing attention to, simply isn't necessary or interesting anymore.

Which explains why the PI is dead in the water - and old mainstream print media in general, can't seem to understand why nobody will pay 25 cents to read them anymore. Well the answer is simple of course: old, lazy baby-boomers simply don't cut it anymore.

Out with the old, in with the new. And Moore is definitely old and definitely out. The P-I hasn't been in my daily news cycle of bookmarks, for years.

I got bigger fish to fry, and ink-stained wretches like Moore won't be missed when they are finally put to pasture for good.

[DonPogi]

Hey WS... seriously, are you a journalist? You should work for one of them...

[safcfan]

It is amazing that articles almost identical to this continue to be published. Turn the clock back 15 years, you would see the same old opinions. I am amazed how this drivel continues to be published...nothing new in this article.

The guy admits he knows little/nothing about the sport...then goes onto tell people how to improve it. How can you critique something you don't understand...?

I am always amazed how people in this country go out of their way to bash a sport...particularly one they know little about. Maybe similar articles exist about the slow/boring nature of baseball, or commercial-filled football games....I'm not sure.

[WestSeattle]

You hit the nail on the head SAFC. Really, this article is the same rant we've heard about soccer from American sports writers for decades. I think soccer is a threat to them. They know it is largely supported by younger men than they are. They know it is supported by minorities who do not consider english their mother-tongue. They know the window on their careers are closing, they know the blogosphere, fan sites, forums and social networking sites are providing better, faster, superior soccer-related content.

It all adds up to a hostile reaction.

And thanks for the nice reaction Don. I am actually on a different career path. I like to write (I write a lot, on all kinds of topics, often just to relax), but I am too sloppy and verbose to be good at it; plus sports writers make lousy pay.

And the last thing soccer needs is another old man with extreme opinions. We need more Greg Roths and David Falks: younger, wiser and harder working men than me.

[Darth Vegas]

I will give him this, he is right about 11 days being way too long a break between playoff games.

Other then that, its looks like he transcribed a Jim Rome show from 10 years ago

[Main Man]

Westie said all that needs to be said about Jim Moore. His breed of "general purpose sportswriter/local curmudgeon" is a dying breed. Art Thiel, Steve Kelly, Greg Johns (of the defunct Journal American), and other local hack writers of my youth are either vanishing or heading to blogs where they are further marginalized. Jerry Brewer falls into the same bucket - a mediocre weather vane shell of a writer.

Now if could only take crap local columnists like Nicole Brodeur who write about nothing with them.

[Charles]

He's trying to do the Frank DeFord thing about soccer, which even Frank DeFord has stopped doing, mercifully, since it was never that clever even when DeFord did it...we've heard these tired cliches so much I've stopped even being bothered by them.

Look in the stands, Mr. Moore. You're a dinosaur, my friend. Find a new whipping boy. We're here and we ain't going away.

[Kevy Metal]

I wonder what Mr. Moore thinks of tennis, a sport with a rich history in America and a laundry list of great American champions.

It also happens to be a sport in which they play "matches".

I guess he doesn't follow golf as well. They don't play games either, but rather "rounds". Too bad it also has a great tradition in American sport.