Tamron Hall Laughing at Creepy Brent Musberger Funniest Thing on TeeVee in 2013 (so far)

[alcibiades_mystery]

The video in question is here:

Musberger goes on a bit too long about "all the good-lookin' women" that quarterbacks "get" - and advises all the "youngsters in Alabama" to "start getting the football out and throwing it around the backyard with pop...," presumably so you can date a super hawt Miss Alabama like the Crimson Tide quarterback! This was on national television last night: a dude in his 70's salivating over a college student, and advising "youngsters" to get quarterbacked up if they want a "good looking woman" like that!

Tamron Hall just lost it on MSNBC while describing this event. She was literally crying tears through her laughter.

I was watching the game last night, and my eyebrows raised well past my hairline when I heard the commentary live.

Now, amid all this laughter, we should note that a shocking football-related gang-rape case is going on in Ohio.

Maybe it's not that funny after all.

[riverbendviewgal]

1. I agree

K & R

[thelordofhell]

2. What the hell does a gang-rape case have anything to do with this???

Except in conspiracy-theory land?? What's next........Musberger notes how cute a child is at a football game and you're uncomfortable because it reminds you of Sandusky??

[Floyd_Gondolli]

11. Some people don't like sports

That's what I gather on DU from reading about both issues. Whether or not it's because they got bullied by "jocks" in school or are just annoyed by them, it's out there and part of the landscape here. I accept it as a big sports fan myself, and one who managed to get through middle and high school sports without jamming a broomstick up some freshman's ass.

[alcibiades_mystery]

38. I like sports

If I didn't, it's unlikely I would have been watching the game, yeah?

[Floyd_Gondolli]

41. I wasn't responding directly to you

Otherwise I would have mentioned "OP" or "the OP" specifically. Just speaking in general.

[alcibiades_mystery]

42. Ah

[radicalliberal]

45. You almost seem to be making light of what, in fact, is a form of physical assault.

That form of violence sometimes results in the victim having to wear a colostomy bag.

You acknowledge that some DU members were bullied by "jocks" in school, but have you ever expressed any sympathy to them? Seems to me that some of the sports fans here, despite their professed liberalism, would prefer that victims of this kind of bullying keep their mouths shut. (Sounds like a Repub attitude to me.) Ordinarily, I would expect liberals to be sympathetic to victims of bullying; but some apparently have no sympathy for those whose tormentors happened to have been "jocks." After all, athletes can do no wrong.

No wonder I'm not a sports fan.

[TeamPooka]

13. The connection is in the culture of the game and the attitudes it breeds...

condones and enables in the institutions where it is played.

[thelordofhell]

17. Football does not condone gang-rape

C'mon now........Stop with the ignorance already

[TeamPooka]

20. The attitudes of some toward women create a slippery slope.

You should stop your ignorance and denial.

[thelordofhell]

29. No.....you said that football culture condones gang-rape

And you're wrong.......end of story

[TeamPooka]

40. sorry you don't make the rules

Fine it does condone rape in Ohio and kiddie molestation in Penn State.
Now you get to show me where it doesn't do these things.
Prove it.

[1983law]

43. I agree

And I do make the rules.

[alcibiades_mystery]

39. Um...what?

[Lint Head]

3. Musberger went a a little too far with the quarterback comment but I do not think it

rises to the point of being a cause of football team rape. His comments were a bit of a slam to women who would not be considered the Madison Avenues idea of a catalog model. Musberger comes from a time when men were considered dominate and that misinformed social idea is dying a slow death. The most beautiful women I know are not 'model' types and generally I don't think calling someone beautiful is necessarily a bad thing. I do not consider beauty as a skin and skeleton thing. My opinion is that Steubenville is the result of the very dominance of women taught to younger generations. They have to learn it from somebody. Most people are not 'born' rapists. Musberger is an example of the older generation who teaches the young and what he said was not what a boy wanting to play sports should be taught as a desire when he excels in his chosen sport.

[LittleBlue]

4. What does gang rape have to do with admiring a beauty queen's beauty?

Because all he did was admire her looks, and say young men should learn to be QB so they can date a beauty queen too.

This is football, what's the problem?

[Brickbat]

6. Being a QB entitles you to a beauty queen?

Interesting.

[LittleBlue]

7. No, it doesn't entitle you to anything. But it gets you a good chance at dating one.

As anyone who played starting QB in high school or college knows, there are always good looking women who will date QB1 no matter his other qualities.

In practice it's more like a perk than an entitlement.

[Brickbat]

8. I object to a nationally known broadcaster implying that it's important for boys to play catch with

their dads in order to become quarterbacks so they can have access to hot women. That shouldn't be the point of getting involved in sports, and in fact I find it odd when men excuse this kind of reasoning.

[LittleBlue]

9. It's true, though. One of the best parts of playing sports

is being popular and knowing that you'll always have access to friends and specifically sexual relationships with desirable women.

Shallow as it is, the social aspect is by far the biggest perk (unless you're NFL bound, then it's also money)

[Brickbat]

10. You don't think that's a little bit of a generalization?

So much so, in fact, as to be laughable? And one that really shouldn't be a part of youth sports?

[LittleBlue]

14. Well I played football

And I know some guys who gave just enough to be starters so that they could get the "perks." Everyone has their own motivation for sports, it's not always pure. Many fathers cite the huge salaries of professional contracts as a reason to get their boys involved in sports. Easy access to sex partners is implied later on. At my high school the cheerleaders were basically a club of concubines. It's the sports culture in the US and Europe where young soccer players do the same thing.

[Brickbat]

16. Is that an admirable culture to foster, and do you think it's changeable?

[LittleBlue]

26. I don't know

If it's changeable. Honestly the mentality was so ingrained. Then again I was at a high school where we were state champs one of the years I was there for football and went to few state title games in basketball, so maybe it's different at schools where sports have lower expectations.

A lot will have to change for that mentality to change. Athletes would have to lose their hero status, getting big salaries in the pros, parents being big supporters monetarily and politically of the team, and probably girls would have to stop liking popular and athletic guys. I don't see it changing in my lifetime.

Is it admirable? Depends. Russell Wilson met his wife when they were in high school. They stayed together through college even though they went to different schools. He is now starting QB of the Seahawks and married her. That's admirable. Would she have dated him if he weren't an incredible athlete (he was also drafted into the MLB)? Who knows. Some of these HS "status" relationships have happy endings like that, most don't. I don't judge anyone about their sexual relationships as long as it's legal. If boys want to play sports to pursue women, I can think of better reasons and women with broader interests than fucking QB1, but that's just me, everyone has their own thing.

[DLevine]

21. Calling high school cheerleaders "a club of concubines" is offensive. nt

[Raine1967]

28. Agreed. eom.

[Raine1967]

27. *perks* I really don't like how you have used that word in this thread.

And I REALLY hate that you are justifying cheerleaders as concubines.

You are justifying an awful lot that is wrong in our country by basically saying, and this is how I am interpreting you: That's just the way it is. boys will be boys.

I was a cheerleader. I resent -- beyond belief -- that you look and think about women this way. You are entitled to you opinion, but expect pushback from people who no longer accept this point of view.

[LittleBlue]

31. Sorry, perhaps that was too insensitive a term

I just wanted to emphasize that these weren't a large group of individuals deciding to be shallow. In my experience, it's like an institutionalized, unbreakable system, like the ancient systems of concubinage. Something that many outsiders would find appalling but insiders view as normal.

I don't know how else to describe a group of women exclusively reserved for a group of men through mutual expectations. It was like a caste.

[Raine1967]

24. Wow.

Just fucking wow.

I don't even know where to begin with this sexist piece of crap post.

Guess what? There are a lot of REALLY beautiful women who place a lot more in intellectual thought than Jocks.

Posts like this make me feel like I am back in the 70's. Don't assume you know what women think.

Women are not PERKS.

[LittleBlue]

30. Where did you come to believe relationships were noble and respectful?

For my own part, I realize that there are very beautiful women who pursue men for reasons other than athletic ability. There's money, there's intellectual ability, there's humor, similar interests, and sometimes reasons I can't understand.

But we're talking high school and college level relationships. In my experience, participating at one level and observing both levels, enough good looking girls are willing to date popular athletes that such athletes will never be without a pretty date. And cheerleaders (at least at my high school) were practically "reserved" for the popular athletes. In other words, there was the expectation from boys that only popular athletes could pursue them and succeed, and there was the expectation from girls that they should only date the popular athletes because they of the same social clique. It became institutionalized as the younger cheerleaders were inducted into the process by the older cheerleaders, and when the younger boys tried to emulate the team captains.

That's just how it is. It isn't the 70's, I was in high school about 7 years ago and have cousins in high school now. Nothing has changed since I left.

[Raine1967]

34. You are aware that your response id filled with fail, I hope.

Starting with this:

Where did you come to believe relationships were noble and respectful?

Did I ever propose that belief?

Maybe you should take your straw-man elsewhere.

As far as your high school -- you should be damn well ashamed of how your boys, friends and classmates (as you insinuate) looked at females. YOU yourself said they were looked at as concubines. You didn't offer any shame for that point of view.

The fact that you are saying that this was just a few years ago makes everything you are saying even more pathetic.

I was in High School in the 80's -- and that shit was NOT condoned when it was discovered. You act like this is normal as opposed to something that should be shunned and changed. IF you can't grasp that, then you are the problem. I don't need you to tell me how things are. I don't need your lecture about "boys being boys"

Women are NOT perks, and they should never be assumed to be in reserve for the popular boys. Telling me, and DU -- that this is normal is just asking for the status quo to remain as such -- and that makes you STILL a part of the problem.

JUST HOW IT IS is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

[LittleBlue]

37. It's just the way it is.

Condoned? How do you "condone" a voluntary relationship? It implies there is some rule or law being broken when it's just a consensual relationship.

Their friends aren't going to shun them, it's part of the social fabric. How many girls would be shunned by their friends for dating the quarterback? They'd be praised rather than shunned.

If you think that's bad, college is worse. A classmate of mine who was being recruited by the nearby university was involved in a university recruitment process that basically involved being handed off to a "student body rep" who was a pretty female student, eventually leading to sex to recruit the player. This happens at many universities and is reported, but nothing can really be done because it was consensual.

The reason no one changes it is because no one can change human nature. Popular people are liked, pretty girls are prized, athletic boys are prized.

[radicalliberal]

44. And shallow people like you denigrate nonathletic boys. n/t

[Skittles]

32. that's kind of pathetic

that it is a perk for people to want you solely for your status

[Upton]

22. Absolutely nothing..

but there are a lot of folks here at DU who don't like sports, so they will use any excuse to try and put the blame on them..

[Brickbat]

5. Creepy and gross. And it has everything to do with the rape case because the implication from

Musberger is access to hot women is a direct benefit of being a football player. It's disgustingly entitled, enforces the male gaze and tiresomely heteronormative.

Seriously, the dude just creeped on two women on national TV. That's fucked up. Announcers need to keep their eyes on the field and talk about the game, and that's it. Who gives a shit who the players are dating?

[trumad]

12. Oh horseshit...

and video games create mass murderers...

[Brickbat]

15. Hee!

I do think that comments like Musberger's can help support an environment where some men feel they're entitled to sex because of what they've done or who they are. And some kids in youth sports are catered to all the way through and given the best because of what they've done or who they are, and comments like Musberger's feed into that.

[jobycom]

33. Exactly.

And don't let that other guy tell you it's horseshit.

The attitude in this nation, and throughout the world, is that women are not fully equal humans, that they are commodities based on their looks. That's what leads idiots like Musburger to gush like a dribbling old fool, but it's also what convinces young teens that women are just rewards or goals for them. That women are objects. And that objectification is the exact center of misogyny, without which it could not stand.

So, ok, Musburger didn't cause the rapes in Ohio, but the mindset he revealed did. And the only way I can think of to start shifting that mindset is to shine a light on it when it rears its head.

[Cali_Democrat]

18. I actually didn't pay Musberger's comment much attention

I was too busy laughing at Note Dame.

[JoePhilly]

19. I got the sense that Tameron was "laughing in Church", which is always funny.

Musberger was apparently trying to provide some color commentary, and it goes WAY, WAY off the rails, and it was highly inappropriate. Musberger thinks he's saying something complementary, and its totally inappropriate.

I got the sense listening to Tameron, that she was basically watching the car wreck ...

She could see it happening, and its getting worse with each syllable spoken by Musberger ... and as a broadcaster, perhaps her own inner monologue, that voice in your head that helps you stop when you are about to say something dumb, is shouting "STOP, STOP, STOP" ... but its yelling not at her, but at Musberger.

[madrchsod]

23. she has the best play list on facebook!

she posts her favorite music videos ...oh yes and other comments.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

25. The woman in question was Miss Alabama. She was also a contestant in

the Miss America pageant.

[Buzz Clik]

35. I have disliked Musberger for decades. This just provides more validation.

His creepy, sexually charged, "where's your other hand" rant about that young woman was disgusting. All of us watching the game yelled at the television as he went on and on about her.

Give me a washed up jock any day over this shriveled voyeur.

[Are_grits_groceries]

36. Brent Musberger is way over-hyped as an announcer IMHO.

He is an older announcer who either doesn't know there is a line not to cross or doesn't care. I suspect it's the former. Herbstreit knows better especially with his track record.

This isn't the first ime an older male announcer has had trouble with sexist remarks. Ron Franklin was fired after the exchange he had with Jeanine Edwards.
Story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010405045.html

I'm glad she fired back at him. She's a good reporter and should't have to put up with that.