So as not to sweat the small stuff, I didn’t get worked up over the Bakersfield Condors hockey team’s juvenile promotion of its Dec. 27 game against the Stockton Thunder as “Our City Isn’t Bankrupt Night.”
Besides, Sports Editor Bob Highfill said all that needed saying.
But you might like to see the reaction by my counterpart at Bakersfield’s newspaper.
“Whatever you think of the Bakersfield Condors’ actual hockey skills you have to admire the team’s marketing, um, hustle,” writes Columnist Lois Henry. “Their pranks have regularly raised the hackles of opposing fans and, more importantly, put butts in the seats at Condor games.”
Let me translate. The Condors play poor hockey, the marketing department is immature, but it sells tickets, and that’s what counts.
Nowhere in her column does Henry mention the misery the foreclosure crisis has wreaked on thousands of people. Selling tickets, that’s what counts.
“Riley was surprised by the vehement reaction,” she writes. “I’d think the plunger with their logo was way more offensive,” Riley said.”
That just shows how lacking in gravitas these guys are. The plunger promo is just a lowbrow raspberry to a rival team. Mocking the misery of foreclosure makes it clear that Riley, and his apologists, are comfortably indifferent to bankruptcy’s shame, truly frightening crime and other impacts.
