FanHouse BillConlin

Normally, when people make oversights, or slight mistakes, or brain farts -- particularly if these people are fellow writers, regardless of medium -- it's best to leave them alone. It's too easy to pick up on small little errors like that. We all make them. No one's perfect. And so on.

But when said scribe is named Bill Conlin, the same Bill Conlin who once dropped the Hitler-bomb in reference to bloggers (and compared us to colonial pamphleteers, which I actually regarded as a compliment), no mercy shall be given. Which is why I'm telling you this: Bill Conlin was asked to create a list of the best Phillies of all time, or something, and here are his second basemen (via Wrigleyville23):

1. Mariano Duncan.
2. Manny Trillo.
3. Mickeeeeeeeeeee Morannnnnnnndeeeeeeneeeeeee!

Ahem. Bill? You forgot Chase Utley. It's not even really close, either; Utley is so much better than Mickey Morandini it's laughable, and the next two on the list are fair game too. But no, Bill, you're right: It's definitely bloggers that are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Whatever, you clown. At least we know how to use Baseball-Reference.

Watch this video (from TheFightins.com) and see if you can find anything offensive about it:

That was a panel of Philadelphia sports reporters discussing the Eagles' minicamp. At the end of the clip, the longtime Philadelphia newspaper columnist Bill Conlin said in response to an e-mail from a viewer, "Amazing that guy would leave the blueberry harvest to send that off." The other panelists then laughed before one said, "Don't mock the blueberry harvest, mister."

I didn't get what was so funny about Conlin's comment that all the panelists laughed, but I also didn't see anything offensive about it. Apparently some people did find it offensive, though, because after the jump we have a video from the following day of the station's apology.

As of yesterday, the excellent blog Crash Burn Alley's interactions with Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin cast Conlin in a pretty negative light. After all, Conlin was openly arguing with -- and losing to -- a blogger on the merits of his pro-Jimmy Rollins argument by saying things like "Tell your bloggers, my career against theirs ..." and so on. It was a baseball argument that made Bill Conlin look stodgy and disconnected, but nothing worse.

But now, Conlin is saying things about Hitler wiping all bloggers off the Earth, the type of things that will get more than just us sensitive blogging types riled up, the types of things far worse than mere sabermetric stupidity:

The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler's time on earth–I'm sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called "Pamphleteers." They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO. Shakespeare accidentally summed up the genre best with these words from a MacBeth soliloquy: ". . .a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. . ."

So clever, that Conlin! In the matter of 100 words, he manages to reference Hitler wiping a certain brand of people off the Earth -- always an intelligent image to invoke -- before stopping back in colonial times -- someone's read their eighth-grade social studies textbook! -- and closing with a barely applicable Googled Shakespeare quote. That's at least three unrelated cultural contexts, all utilized in the service of total stupidity. Nice.

Conlin sent another email to CBA trying to defend himself against charges of anti-Semitism, but it's too late for Philly's sports poet laureate. If this exchange doesn't give the Daily News the confidence to mercifully end Conlin's career, maybe nothing ever will.