Posted in: Fox, MLB, Opinion, Sports, TV, TV | Tagged: 9/11, fox, Fox Sports, MLB, opinion
FOX Sports Lives Up to FOX Name, Uses 9/11 Memorial for MLB Backdrop
Okay, here's the thing. It's pretty safe to say that when something has "FOX" in its name lately, you have to kinda look at everything it does with an arched brow and be prepared to shake your head in disgust a whole lot. Obviously, there's the right-wing propaganda machine that calls itself FOX "News" and its toxic waterfall of poisonous misinformation. And then we had FOX's entertainment division, which allowed The Masked Singer to be used by Rudy Giuliani and his cabal as a way of trying to rehab his public image. And in case you think they thought that was a mistake in retrospect? Rob Wade, President, Alternative Entertainment and Specials, Fox Entertainment, made it clear that he had "absolutely no regrets" about having Giuliani be part of the show. He even went with the FOX "News" playbook by looking to place the blame about the whole thing being a controversy on… you guessed it… the media. So when someone sent me a video of FOX Sports using the World Trade Center/National September 11 Memorial and Museum as the background to drop a bunch of graphics for its Saturday night "Baseball Night in America" broadcast, was I surprised? Did you want to go back and reread the last dozen lines or so? C'mon…
As you can see from the righteously inappropriate image above, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox logos are superimposed onto the memorial pools. Those pools are located where the North and South Towers once stood before the terrorist attack, with the names of the 9/11 fallen and the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing surrounding the pools. For their part, FOX sports released a statement apologizing for the graphic, with a spokesperson saying, "During last night's telecast, we used poor judgment on the use of a graphic. We sincerely apologize and regret the decision." As a New Yorker who is more than familiar with FOX "News'" feelings on NYC, the decision definitely deserves two arched brows.