People I Fucking Hate: Stephen A. Smith

Stephen A. Smith—former Philadelphia Enquire sports columnist, current all-purpose, ESPN blowhard—is “Quite Frankly” (the name of his short-lived ESPN television talk show) one of the most terrible human beings on the planet. How is this possible for a seemingly inconsequential sports talk cretin? As the man himself might say, “Let me break it down for you.”

You see, Stephen A. Smith is a prime purveyor of a technique that has become a cottage industry in all types of television reporting. It’s the “I’m going to tell you that I’m telling you The Truth before I say something that is either: a. an outright fabrication, b. a subtle bit of sophistry or c. a puffed-up bit of bloviating meant to give the illusion of credibility to what is nothing more than a shallow attempt at promoting my personal agenda.” You see this all the time on the political shows. Keith Olbermann—one of my favorite brains on television, actually—does this quite a bit, and FOX News is practically inundated by these windbags.

But Smith has them all beat for a couple of reasons. First off, he NEVER STOPS YELLING. Stephen A. makes it his business to be even louder than the other obnoxious louts on sports television, of which there are a seemingly limitless supply. Skip Bayless, Michael Kay, Mike Francesa, Woody Hayes, Jay Mariotti, Chris Berman, Terry Bradshaw, Dick Vitale, and their ilk have made a handsome living on television by screaming over their fellow "reporters" with a sense of self-righteousness completely disproportionate to the importance of whatever virtually meaningless topic they happen to be discussing. But even those frothing beasts take it easy from time-to-time, in order to show the audience that not all issues are created equal. Not Smith. Everything he deigns to speak of is instantly awarded red-level threat priority. Bryant Gumbel referring to David Stern as a “plantation overseer” gets the same decibel level as incredulity over Eli Manning’s unwillingness to say hello to Plaxico Burress when Burress visited Giants training camp. Smith even went so far as to argue that common decency should’ve compelled Eli to greet his former wide receiver (who, by the way, was commonly decent enough to effectively ruin the 2008 Giants’ chance to repeat as Super Bowl champions by shooting himself in the leg. But I digress.).

There is another, more insidious aspect of Stephen A’s persona which gets me even more riled. It is this mock-preacher, hallelujah cadence he affects, a staccato, rhythmic, Sermon on the Mount syncopation that is nothing more than a distraction from the “paucity” (one of Stephen A’s favorite words) of substance in his rantings. Smith’s manner immediately disarms all would-be dissenters, as he thunders from his pulpit of unimpeachable wisdom. Combine this with the usual trumped-up machismo that all of these preening commentators carry with them from years of trying to compensate for their own inadequacies (namely that most of them are frustrated athletes), and you have the most irritating possible pop culture personality. Stephen A. tries to beat you up with his affected, exaggerated anger, while couching it in a religious-like fervor intended to convey that he is, indeed, the Last Word in sports analysis. (I use the word “analysis” loosely here.) Don’t think for a second that Stephen A. doesn’t purposely cultivate this preacher persona. It’s become far more magnified over the years.

There’s more. He’s a terrible writer, like most of the hacks at ESPN. Still, take a look at this sentence about Mets owner Fred Wilpon: “After all these months of being in the news for the wrong reasons, with a court of law looking into whether he is simply sleazy or just inept, the New York Mets' principal owner leaned heavily toward the realm of stupidity in one of the more unconscionable interviews we've heard in some time . . .” Let’s set aside the fact that the interview to which Smith refers in the New Yorker (in which Wilpon criticized several players on his team), is certainly not “one of the more unconscionable interviews” anyone has heard. But how exactly does one “lean heavily toward the realm of stupidity?” How did he sneak that one past his editor? Maybe he simply means “sounded ignorant?” That’s a little tidier, don’t you think?

Later in the same piece, Smith lets fly with some of his famously overzealous vocabulary, like a tenth grader with a Word-of-the-Day app on his new iPhone. Smith writes that Wilpon was “evidently attempting to absolve himself from the latest preponderance of evidence pointing to the Mets' desperate need for new ownership more than new players.” And later, sarcastically, in the same article: “He had nothing to do with the dereliction of leadership that's infected the Mets franchise over the last four or five years, during which his own son, Jeff, has been chief operating officer.” It’s not that these words are used incorrectly. It’s just so infantile to use them in an otherwise fatuous, fluff piece where the indignation is clearly manufactured, partly on the basis of this inflated vocabulary.

Everybody already knows that Stephen A. is way too buddy-buddy with his sports-world cronies, all back-slapping and secret handshaking with the very people he’s supposed to be covering objectively. Isiah Thomas, a man guilty of subjecting a woman he worked with to unwanted sexual advances and a barrage of verbal insults, was repeatedly defended by Smith. Way to stand up for the little guy, Stephen A. But I wouldn’t even care about Smith’s volume, his proselytizing, his bastardization of the English language, his cronyism, were it not for the impression he leaves, no matter the topic, that there is absolutely no room for negotiation, that his reputation is unassailable, that every one of his thoughts is informed purely by his desire to set the record straight. The fact that he cannot—or will not—admit that his personal prejudices almost always inform his opinions and that he is an entertainer, not a reporter, is his most unforgivable sin.

Look, I get it. He’s a TV personality. This is what he’s paid to do. And the truth is, despite these many-hundred words, I don’t really hate Stephen A. Smith more than I hate any of the other blowhards. Stephen A. is just a symbol. The bigger problem is that immediate opinions—the kinds lauded in ESPN Land, as well as the all-politics networks—can only be crafted by the most vacuous people. True, measured circumspection is feared like some sort of emasculating affliction, like having a small dick. (One of ESPN New York’s radio commercials brags of all the “big opinions” on the network. But nobody ever asks: what if a smaller opinion is required?) And yet, the real trick of talk TV is that the stupidity being spewed on thousands of topics actually masquerades as reflection to most of the audience. This is the true skill of Stephen A. and his brethren: talking fast about just about anything, regardless of their level of knowledge. In that way, they are truly gifted. They are perfectly suited to analyze reality TV, hot button social controversies, or games won or lost by the bounce of a ball because those topics encourage reductive thinking. Thrive only because of reductive thinking, in fact. And opinions about them are easily skewed by arbitrary bottom lines and the whims of personal agenda.

But for all the things that are more complex and require heartfelt scrutiny and agonizing introspection—forming relationships, having a conversation, helping someone in need, reading a difficult novel—these people are seriously ill-equipped. Unfortunately, there are more Stephen A. Smiths than there are, say, Louis C.K.s. And that, for all of us, is a much bigger problem than just the annoyance of another pompous sports reporter.