This is one of the reasons I never got into pro football. The gameplay should dictate the coverage, not the other way around.
Athletes should really be spared this nonsense in their contracts. Their actual job is playing their sport and doing endorsements, not telling us for the thousandth time “it was a team effort, gave 110%, etc.”. They’re not actors or politicians. Answering inane and sometimes insulting questions yelled out by journalists in a scrum while a constant stream of flashes go off in a players face doesn’t bring any real money into the sport. The bulk of the revenue mainly comes from broadcast rights for the games and matches themselves as well as merchandising.
Some might claim that Kelly is right about Osaka because she’s fine with a Netflix documentary crew following her, doing magazine cover shoots, and running her social media accounts. What unsophisticated or ungenerous people like Kelly miss is that Osaka is less anxious in those situations because all of those things are being done on her terms with the level of control that implies.
An elite athlete can screen out the noise of a stadium or arena crowd of tens of thousands when she’s “in the zone”. She can also reduce the TV audience to an easily ignored abstraction. Stage fright is more easily overcome when you’re not dealing with a couple of dozen people screaming in your face in a potentially hostile situation.
Megyn Kelly understands none of these things, and decided to single out a PoC to victim-blame.
I’m sure the setting has a lot to do with how well one copes with a crowd.
In past jobs where I had to deal with crowds, I would basically play a role, adopting a persona which was much more outgoing and engaging than my quiet, deeply introverted self. I suspect the same is true for many people on stage, whether they are giving a speech, playing Hamlet, or warbling out a song at a bar.
As you pointed out, Osaka is is highly trained pro. I’m sure the crowd is the least of her concerns when she is on the court and focused on the job at hand.
Press conferences and social settings are a different beast altogether.
Kelly is relying on and reinforcing Dunning-Kruger. “Hey, you’ve never experienced social anxiety, listened to someone who has, or studied it academically. Here’s a thing that I’m presenting as unintuitive-sounding. Trust yourself to be an expert, your intuition is the truth!.”
Shohei is amazing, a once-a-century player. Do believe the hype!
stephen a(sshole) smiff apparently has no problem with Vlad Guerrero Jr’s interpreter. He made no mention of Mr Guerrero, nor has anyone who’s justifiably criticized mr smiff. Also, I have learned that mr smiff knows nothing about any sport besides basketball. He sure as hell doesn’t know much in the grand scheme of things.
The product is the athlete being, you know, an amazing athlete. The ads show tennis stars lunging for the ball or stretching into a serve, not sitting in front of a microphone, or above some awesome thing they said.
Really? But what does sports create? They don’t make or produce anything anybody needs other than the show. Their work does not even have artistic or cultural merit. Basically a pro tennis player expects to be paid for something any Labrador in your local pound will do for free.
Sure, they are more trained and skilled at it, but since they don’t produce any worth that skills has no worth either… other than the exposure their sponsors want. They are content creators, nothing more.
Everything is “content creation” in some form or another, the term is meant to be a catch-all. In this case as you’ve just had pointed out the content is not quotable lines like you said, but shows of impressive feats that few people can do and many others find spectacular or entertaining.
So where are you going with all this? Do you think sports would create more artistic value if it were about press conferences instead of the actual sports themselves? And what does anything you’re saying have to do with Kelly going after Osaka?
My point is that a sportsperson who want to make a lot of money from sportsball etc… but who does not want to do the press interviews is like a painter who wants to make a lot of money from painting without ever selling any painting.
The press coverage IS your product. If you don’t want to do it don’t but don’t expect any money from it.
Sure, from a certain market-centric point of view. But even then press coverage doesn’t have to mean conferences, and it’s not plain Osaka is actually in things just to make as much money as possible. And I still don’t know what that has to do with Kelly attacking her, the topic of this thread, unless you’re trying to imply it was right…I hope not.
I’m also like this, I haven’t performed in public in quite a while but I never had much stage fright, it was always exhilarating. If I’d memorized lines or really knew my presentation subject I was fine in front of a crowd or even answering questions.
When I have to talk to people at a party, especially new people or people I haven’t spoken to much recently, it’s three days of post party worry about what I might have said wrong. Making phone calls is something I have to do a bunch of prep for, or composing email or messages like this I revise 100 times, and then I’m very anxious for a while after hitting send.
Recently I’ve had to talk to a bunch of new medical people for a treatment I’m in the middle of and have gone into panic mode a few times, although once was in a scanning machine to be fair.
Seems more like a dancer who wants to make money off of dancing and not press coverage to me. Which suddenly sounds very very normal.
In fact, sports seems a lot more like dance to me than anything else. In a way you are just paying to see people’s bodies do cool things. I think there is a stigma against the body that goes deep in our culture. It’s very sad too. Because of it people believe things that involve the body are of a sort of lower intellectual order.
I’m guessing in the US it has religious origins in taboos about sex and Greek philosophical ideals about “physical” and “technological” having a hierarchical relationship.
Yet, of course, in a capitalist society people show enthusiasm for things with money. And realistically, with much shame and anger over it for some, people love seeing other people’s bodies… particularly if they do cool shit with them.
This is a really good analogy! I love it.
And yes, with sports there’s the added frisson of competition. Essentially, it’s about providing entertainment.
Some celebrities (film, authors) do have to regularly do press for an upcoming project, but that seems different. That’s more appearing on late night shows.
I do hate that in our USian culture we (collective we) seem to think we “own” celebrities and deserve to know everything about their personal lives, even when that has nothing to do with why they are a celebrity.
