GERALDO BRINGS HIS TRASH TO TWITTER

Geraldo hasn't embarrassed himself this badly since he opened Al Capone's vault
on national television and found nothing.

The former king of trash TV posted a selfie on Twitter that made just about everybody
on the social media highway go, "Ewwwww!" There was Geraldo in all his glory, with
nothing but a towel on, showing off his physique in a place that kind of looked like a
morgue. The caption under the picture posted by Geraldo?

"70 is the new 50."

Yeah, and Geraldo's obsession with himself is the same at 70 as it was at 50, 40, 30,
and 20.

If I got the exclusive with him, I'd ask him just one question: What the hell were you thinking?

OK, so I'd have a few follow-up questions like any good reporter would do.

Did you need the attention this badly? Is your contract up for renewal at Fox and you needed
something to drive up your Q-rating?

Were you aiming to be on the cover of Rolling Stone?

Are you friends with Anthony Weiner?

In this day and age of Twitter and Facebook, we are not really surprised by anything
anymore, but this decision by Geraldo to show off his P90 Generation X body is just
so bizarre, even for Geraldo.

Oh, Geraldo knows how the media works and realizes that bad press is better than no
press at all. But this is FRIGHTENING! He belongs in the 'Haunted House' at Disney
World instead of the newsroom at Fox. Forget about fair and balanced, this is both
comical and downright scary.

I don't know, maybe I should be like Geraldo and the other television people who
document their lives by taking and posting pictures of themselves every five minutes.
It might help my Q-rating.

I'm going upstairs to take a selfie of me and nothing but a towel.  In the media today,
narcissism is the new talent.

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MANZIEL, CHARACTER, AND HEISMAN TROPHY

Judging by all the comments about Johnny Manziel made over the past week, one might think
he is the worst person on earth. Immature. Disrespectful. Arrogant. Self-destructive. But my
favorite one had to be, "His character is not that of a true Heisman Trophy winner." I got a big
chuckle out of this one.  Either people have short memories or they have been spending too
much time on Facebook, Twitter, and their iPhones.

The Heisman Trophy is given to the best college football player in the country. It's ignorant to
think that it has anything to do with character. That all sounds good, but it's not reality. Good,
Lord, can you imagine if Manti' Te'o and not Manziel won the award last year? He would've
been considered the biggest fraud in the history of the Heisman if he had captured the honor.

Why do people think that if you win the Heisman Trophy you should stay in, read the Bible,
save small children from evil, and help elderly woman cross the street? Why do we think it's
a requirement of them to be perfect? It's silly and not reality. If you're already a good person,
chances are, the Heisman Trophy is not going to change you. If you're already a bad person,
chances are, it's not going to change you, either.

Go down the list of Heisman Trophy winners and you'll be surprised at what's happened to
a lot of them. They make Manziel's "behavior" seem tame and much ado about nothing.

Paul Hornung. The golden boy out of Notre Dame won the Heisman Trophy award for
Notre Dame in 1956. He burned the candle at both ends and got into trouble in the NFL,
getting suspended for a year because of gambling.

Billy Cannon, winner of the 1959 Heisman while playing for LSU,  spent almost three years
in prison for a counterfeiting scheme. Printed $50 million dollars in fake $100 bills. Man,
that is behavior worthy of a Heisman Trophy winner!

Charles White (USC), George Rodgers (South Carolina) and Ricky Williams (Texas) all
went off the rails with drug problems after winning the Heisman Trophy. Williams quit
on the Miami Dolphins and was suspended several times by the NFL for failed drug tests.

I can only imagine what kind of things we would've seen if Facebook and Twitter had
been around back then. Nope, we NEVER would've seen them in bars or at parties having
a good time.

Wow, I thought all Heisman Trophy winners were as pure as holy water.

Should we keep going? Reggie Bush took more than $300,000 from a prospective agent
on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy in 2005. Bush single-handedly put USC on
probation and ended up giving his trophy back, the first player in the history of the award
to do so.

Should we talk about OJ Simpson and his behavior after winning the Heisman Trophy?

It seems like we want our Heisman Trophy winners to act like Tim Tebow and Danny
Weurfel, and when they do, we criticize them for being too good, or frauds, or just not
very good or interesting.

Let's face it, the Heisman Trophy lost its luster years ago. It's not the greatest thing.
since sliced bread anymore. Some say it lost some credibility when Gino Torretta beat
out Marshall Faulk for the honor in 1992. Torretta was about the 8th best player on the
Miami Hurricanes that year and Faulk was a one-man show for San Diego State.

It didn't seem to mean all that much when immortals like Jason White, Eric Couch,
Andre Ware, and Rashaan Salaam won the award. ESPN has tried to revitalize it with
their hype machine, but many feel it just doesn't carry the weight that it used to.

Now, what exactly has Johnny Manziel done that is so bad except be himself. That's who
he is. Winning the Heisman Trophy award is not going to change that. It sure hasn't for
a lot of those who have won it.

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LEAVE JOHNNY MANZIEL ALONE

Johnny Manziel did this, Johnny Manziel, did that, Johnny Manziel tweeted this, Johnny
Manziel drank all that. Enough already! Why is the media and the football nation so
obsessed with the 20-year old quarterback from Texas A & M? Get a life and let him live
his own the way he wants to live it.

Ever since Manziel came out of nowhere to win the Heisman Trophy last year, the first
freshman in the history of college football to capture the award, he has been on everybody's
radar. There's Johnny at a party, there's Johnny at the Playboy mansion, see Johnny get
drunk, see a picture of Johnny wasted on Twitter. You'd think this guy was the illegitimate
child of all the Kardashians or something with all the attention he's attracting. Say this about
Manziel, at least he's got talent, which is more than you can say about the entire Kardashian
Klan combined.

Do you remember what kind of person you were and how you acted at the age of 20? I'm sure
most of us will admit to loving life, taking chances, and not having a care in the world,  even
if we  were still trying to find our way in it. Imagine what you would've done if you had won
the most prestigious award in college football and just about everybody loved you. Yep, you  probably would've enjoyed the good life like Johnny Manziel.

Don't people have anything better to do than keep an eye ball on the kid? Oh, right, this is the
part where he gets torn down after the media built him up so quickly. After all,  he has everything,
the Heisman Trophy, model girlfriend, and the great nickname (Johnny Football). Manziel has
already accomplished more in the last year than most athletes achieve in their lifetimes. Are
people jealous? Never in this country. (wink, wink). Do they want to see him fail? Noooooo,
nobody would ever want to see that.

Over the past few days, the rising sophomore at Texas A & M has been answering questions
about his disappearance/ejection from the Manning Passing Camp. The Mannings are football
royalty and there was the perception that Manziel "disrespected" football's first family. There
were all kinds of rumors of Manziel sleeping through his wake-up call because he was hungover,
to the Mannings asking him to leave. Really?

Get over it.

By the reaction of those on Twitter, Facbook, and all those college football message boards,
you'd think that Manziel ate the children if Nick Saban or was the wing man of Aaron Hernandez.
What has he done? Oh, right, he got busted for a fake I.D., which must have made him the
only student in the history of the world to get booked for that hard crime.

He didn't get arrested like PJ Hairston, the leading scorer for the UNC basketball team, who
was stopped for marijuana possession and had a 9mm pistol, not to mention being associated
with some really bad guys with criminal records.

Manziel didn't get arrested like Kendrick Rhodes of Florida International for a laundry list
of bad things like discharging a weapon on school property, improper exhibition of a weapon
or firearm, discharging a firearm in public, using a firearm while under the influence of alcohol
or a controlled substance.

He wasn't like Manti Te'o who had an imaginary girlfriend.

Critics say the Manziel should do a better job of representing his school, Texas A & M.
Hilarious. He represents their bank account and that's all they care about. Do you know
how many Manziel jerseys and items with Johnny Football they've sold?  Manziel has
meant millions to Texas A & M. Millions. No player in college football is more valuable
to a school than Manziel. He's knows it. Texas A & M knows it.

Manziel said he's going to continue to live his life the way he wants to and "to the fullest."
Good for him. That's how we want to live ours, don't we? You, me, his coach, or Dr. Phil
are not  going to change him.

Let Manziel be who he is; a 20-year old kid loving life, who just happens to be a Heisman
Trophy winner and one they call Johnny Football.

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DEAR ROLLING STONE....

 

Congratulations on getting the attention you so desperately wanted. Facebook. Twitter,
and even Matt Lauer of the "Today" show talked about you a lot on Wednesday. I have to
be honest, I  thought your magazine went out of circulation years ago along with Teen and
Men's Vogue. I guess I'm just not as hip as I used to be. But with the early release of the
cover story due out August 3rd, you made it clear the Rolling Stone still has a pulse.

Putting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover was bold, not to mention insensitive.  Glorifying
one of the two men, who, allegedly, bombed the Boston Marathon to sell a few more magazines,
is about as low as it gets. Was Aaron Hernandez not worthy of consideration? Oh, that's right,
you're waiting to see if he really shot his buddy in the face or killed those two guys at a stop
light in Boston last year.  After all, an NFL star who kills just one man is not newsworthy
enough to get on your cover these days, is it?

I'm sure you'll print that story the week of the NFL's season opener to create more of a buzz
on the Internet and you'll be "trending" on Twitter. That will validate the comeback of Rolling
Stone, for sure.

Why on earth you would choose to deify a coward is beyond me. I realize he may remind
you of Jim Morrison and that attracts  a certain audience, but come on, that is weak, real
weak. I'm sure if Adam Lanza bore a resemblance to Bruce Springsteen, you probably
would've put him on your cover also. But he wasn't "sexy" enough, so you didn't.

I'm close to certain your editor-in-chief came out of womb of the Geraldo show, or perhaps
one of the other trash TV programs like Morton Downey, Jr., or Jerry Springer. He knows that
trash sells, and the more outrageous, the better. Good for him. He's the one who has to look in
the mirror every day.

You make Tsarnaev to be some kind of rock star and he's far from it. Jeff Bauman and Carlos
Arredondo  are the real rock stars and the real heroes. You should've put them on your cover.
Tsarnaev is C-O-W-A-R-D. On April 15, he was just like a   little puppy dog following his
master around on that day back in  April.  He was  a 'yes man', subservient to his brother, who
was the mastermind behind the plot that killed three innocent people and injured more than 200 others.

There was nothing spectacular in what he did. He dropped off a back-pack, walked calmly for cover, then watched with enjoyment as people had their legs blown off by the  bombs he helped make. Kim Kardashian has more talent than  that.

Worse, yet, you poached the kid's selfie off his Facebook page and used it for your cover.
That's weak, real weak.

This is a sad day for you, Rolling Stone. I sure hope it was worth it.

Sincerely,
Paul Devlin

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ROLLING STONE COVER STORY: SHAMELESS

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Boston bomber. Magazine cover. Despicable. Rolling Stone magazine
achieved what they set out to do when they decided to put Tsarnaev on the cover of its recent
issue. They struck cords, ruffled feathers, and got under the skin of many of us, but most of
all, Rolling Stone got the attention it wanted. Twitter, Facebook, and just about every other
vehicle on the social media highway is buzzing about its cover.

With emotions still raw and the wounds of so many still healing, Rolling Stone decided to
glorify a person who was determined to see mass destruction in Boston on April 15. He and
his brother wanted to kill and maim people to avenge the deaths of muslims who had been
killed by the United States in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Innocent people were killed
and lives were shattered forever.

How do you think the parents of Martin Richard feel about Tsarnaev getting rock star attention
from Rolling Stone? He killed their 8-year old son, Martin, and severely injured their daughter,
Jane, 7, whose had to endure 11 surgeries already.

How do you think Jeff Bauman feels as he continues to learn to live without the two legs that
were blown off by the bomb the Tsaranaev brothers constructed and set off?

This decision by Rolling Stone is truly shameless. There was no good or decent reason for it.
But when people and companies are desperate they will do almost anything to save themselves.
The Internet has crippled the print industry. Newspapers are dying and magazines have become irrelevant. It's sadly ironic that Rolling Stone is using the thing that helped their demise to
try to resuscitate the magazine. Rolling Stone is trending today thanks to tweets, Facebook, and
nearly every talk show that's blabbering about it because it's a "hot" story. Sad.

Mass killings by crazed people will continue as long as media outlets continue to feed the
monster. Low-life psychos with no hope for the future, see magazines like Rolling Stone deifying these shameless human beings and they'll decide to go down in a blaze of glory, committing
heinous acts while becoming part of history.

As warped as they are, they understand the message magazines like Rolling Stone are sending:
You want to be glorified and get on the cover of a magazine, just kill people. A lot of them.
It's sad, it's harsh, but it is true. And it's probably true that Tsarnaev is smiling and laughing in
his jail cell because he has achieved rock star status to many in the world today. His fan club,
those idiots who stand on the streets and yell for the cameras, "Free Tsaranaev" are also grinning
from ear-to-ear.

We live in a sick, twisted world. The executives who made the decision of putting Tsaranaev
on the cover had one thing, and one thing only on their minds: themselves.  They didn't do the
right thing, but rather the right thing for them. They wanted more hits, more views, and more
sales of their magazine, which we know, equals more dollars in their pockets.

This has become the way of the industry and Rolling Stone magazine isn't the only one guilty
of it. Last year, TIME magazine, which is also bleeding money and has become somewhat
irrelevant, put a very attractive woman on the cover with her grown-up kid sucking on her
breast. When I saw it, I thought it was an April Fool's joke or something, except nobody was
laughing. Twitter was abuzz, Facebook on fire, and all the talk shows were spewing about the
the picture of the hot mom with the lips of her child on her breast.

TIME magazine accomplished its goal: They got people talking about their cover and their
magazine, which was the first time in a long time anybody had even mentioned TIME magazine.

A few weeks ago, Sports Illustrated, once the gold standard in the magazine industry, put
Dennis Rodman on its cover for its, "Where are they now"?, issue. Unless you've been living
in a cave, we already knew where Dennis Rodman was: Making a fool of himself over in
North Korea trying to talk politics with a dictator who has committed more crimes against
humanity than Facebook has users. Yep, Sports Illustrated chose to put Rodman on the cover
because they knew it would be talked and tweeted about.

It's sad, it's really sad that executives have to make decisions like this. The one concerning
the Boston bomber is the worst to come down the pike in a long, long time. I didn't read
Rolling Stone very much before Wednesday, you can bet I will never pick it up after this
despicable decision to put that loser on the cover.

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TWITTER: ANOTHER REASON TO HATE IT

Dylan McCue-Masone couldn't just enjoy MLB's All-Star game, he had to be a part of it.
So, in this "look at me, I can go viral if I do something stupid world", the 18-year old kid from
Long Island did just that. He tweeted from the game that if he got 1,000 retweets he'd run
on the field and interrupt the game.

The only people dumber than McCue-Masone were those in the social media obsessed world
who helped McCue-Masone reach his goal in about 20 seconds. McCue-Masone got his 1,000
tweets and subsequently, his 15 minutes of fame. Bypassing that stellar security of New York
City's finest at Citi Field, the kid sprinted on the field only to be taken down in a pile drive by
a security worker near second base.

Almost instantly, Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree and McCue-Masone and his stupid stunt
went viral. It used to be that one had to accomplish something great to get that kind of
attention. Not anymore. Not in this, "I can make an instant name for myself if I do something
dumb world." It didn't matter than McCue-Masone got arrested, because to him, all the attention
was worth it. He finally became a "somebody", whether it be good or bad.

Sadly, that has become the thinking of many people in the world today and many of them are
using Twitter as their way of getting there. I truly don't understand Twitter. I don't understand
people who beg to get "followers".  Tracye Hutchins, the morning anchor at CBS in Atlanta,
who documents every 10 seconds of her life by taking self-portraits and posting them on

Facebook, recently sent out a picture to her "fans" begging them to follow her on Twitter.
Really? I'd be more than just a little embarrassed to do that. I don't know, I guess more people
are swallowing their pride these days if it means getting more "followers."

It used to be that you didn't want anybody to know what you're thinking, now it seems,
people want to let the world know exactly what they're thinking, feeling, and doing. And
that hasn't been a good thing for professional athletes  who always seem to be shooting
themselves in the foot with their tweets.

After the George Zimmerman verdict was reached, Josh Scobee, a kicker for the Jacksonville
Jaguars, warned his professional brethren not to go on Twitter to express their thoughts. Scobee
gets it. Unfortunately, Roddy White and Victor Cruz didn't. White, a receiver for the Atlanta
Falcons, tweet that the jury in the case "should kill themselves." Nice. Cruz, who is a level-headed

 

thoughtful man who plays for the Giants, tweeted that "the hood would get Zimmerman within
a year." Ooops. Cruz quickly deleted his tweet, but the damage had been done and he ended
up backpedaling quicker than an NFL cornerback trying to cover him.

The list of athletes who have damaged their reputations with stupid tweets they'd like to take
back, but couldn't,  is a mile long. They try to be witty, funny,and intelligent, but end being
really, really stupid.

Seriously, what is Twitter for? Every journalist wants to be "first on Twitter" these days as
if they'll get a Pulitzer prize award if they are. Reporters tweet action from the game so often,
they often miss the best parts of it. And for what? To satisfy their 1,217 followers?

It seems the only thing Twitter does these days is get you in trouble or make you look stupid.
But I guess in today's world, that's not so bad, as long as you can go viral.

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BRYCE HARPER AND FAMILY HAVE STYLE

 

Bryce Harper didn't say anything during the home run derby on Monday night, but we learned
more about him than we had ever known. The 20-year old phenom of the Washington Nationals
brought his father, Ron, and brother, Bryan, to take part in the All-Star festivities and they
showed us that style is all in the family.

First of all, watching a father throw to his son on baseball's biggest stage, was pretty special. It
brought back a lot of memories for all of us who grew up with our dad's pitching batting practice
on a local field somewhere across the United States. But as the night and contest wore on, we
got to see a lot more than that. The cameras opened a window and let the world see what a
baseball family is really like. We saw the love, respect, and strangely enough, the style of the
Harper's and it was interesting, to say the least.

There was Bryce with his unique, "Rockabilly",  hairstyle. It's part Mohawk, part something
really strange. But that's Bryce, he has long walked to the beat of his own drummer, setting
fashion trends along the way. Remember the 'war paint' eye black he wore on his face in
high school that seemed so over the top to be imitated, but lo and behold, nearly every kid
around the country was wearing their eye-black just like Bryce. I'm not sure if kids are going
to be running to their local barbers to get their hair cut like Bryce, but one never knows.

I never knew Bryce had a brother until Monday night. His name is Bryan, 23, and he stood
out  last night because of one thing: his handlebar mustache. Yeah, he's gone retro--
bringing Rollie Fingers back into the game. Bryan is a left-handed pitcher in the Nationals
minor-league system and has be the only player in professional baseball with a stache' like
that. I've never seen a kid that young sporting the handlebar mustache. It's definitely unique.

The father of Bryce and Bryan has style, as well. We didn't see much of his face the whole
night because the cameras were placed behind him as he tossed cut fastballs to Bryce. But
after he and Bryce embraced for the final time, the cameras gave the television audience a
close-up which revealed a sole patch! Yep, the old man has a sole patch. Bryce has the 'rockabilly'
hair cut, Bryan has the handlebar mustache, and dad has a sole patch. How cool is that?

In this day and age of Facebook, Twitter, iPhones, and iPads, nobody seems very much
into style anymore, but it's clear the Harper family is. I used to think they were all about
baseball and not much else, but I was wrong. They are cool

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