You’ve really got to give them credit. For pure, unmitigated gall, no team can finish a close second to Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, hosts of the “Know-It-All and the Village Idiot” show. They’ve got more nerve than a bum tooth.
Monday, they made a loud, sustained issue of a post-game interview, the day before, conducted by YES’s new Yankee reporter, Kimberly Jones, with Joe Torre, who had apparently provided her curt, snappish answers following the Yanks’ third straight loss in Baltimore.
Francesa and Russo called YES for the tape of the Q & A. YES refused. Then Francesa demanded it. Then Francesa screamed ” literally screamed ” that YES was subjugating the truth.
And yet it is WFAN that has long and regularly refused to provide tape to the news media of Francesa and Russo’s most infamous moments. WFAN will dispute reports of what they said as inaccurate, but then claim that those moments were not taped or refuse to provide the tape.
And Francesa and Russo are quite content to allow WFAN to subjugate the truth on their behalf. Meanwhile, tape of what WFAN regards as the duo’s shining moments is always available, often via same-day replays.
“It was very clear that they were going to use that tape to belittle Kimberly Jones,” a YES source said yesterday, “and we were not going to lend ourselves to that.”
Monday, Francesa wasn’t done being Francesa. Late in the show he re-entered the studio with a news bulletin: The new NFL Sunday and Monday night TV deals. He then proceeded to imply that he ” the great and powerful Oz ” had an inside track on this info, claiming, “A little birdie told me.”
Yeah, a little birdie with a bullhorn. The NFL and its networks had been circulating the info for over an hour. Francesa was among the last to know. But his egomaniacal, disingenuous reflexes would allow an audience to believe that he was among the first, if not the first.
Then again, consistency is the mark of greatness.
Marcus Camby, injured, sat on the Nuggets’ bench, Tuesday, wearing a shirt carrying a large, can’t-miss image of O.J. Simpson. Last week’s Sports Illustrated included a chat with Camby in which he said that if he weren’t in the NBA he’d like to be, “A school principal.”
I just saw Jim Rome sneering about the same OJ shirt (“was your Rae Carruth throwback at the cleaners?”), so I will presume such a garment actually exists (or at least that Rome reads the Post).
When Mushnick rips on Mike and the Mad Dog, I’m reminded of an old joke from early David Letterman: ‘If Gary Coleman and Ricky Schroeder got into a fight with pool cues, who would win? The answer? The American viewing public.’
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however, if such a bout were to take place in the year 2005, the winner would be the Fox television executive who booked it.
Plainly put, Mushnick is almost always, unconditioonally, right on with 99.999999% of his observations and comments. The people he takes on don’t LIKE what he says, but they NEVER, ever attack him b/c they KNOW he’s right. You NEVER hear any of these people try to defend themselves and refute Phil. Why? Easy.
Phil calls it as he sees it, and he’s right all the time. Mike and the Village Idiot hate him, but they know he’s right. They donl;t weant to get into a fight over anything b/c they know Phil has more dirt on both of them, and a million others, and would get buried if they tried to take him on. Esp Russo, who is dumber than a bag of nails.
Last add on Mushnick: if you listen to FAN during baseball season, you’ve probably heard of “Ed Randal’s Talking Baseball”. Its an OK show, hosted by an insecure, somewhat shallow individual named Ed Randall who can at times, big time callers when they know his guests better than he does. Ed is nice enough, but you can tell by his refusal to ever take on anything controversial or offer a colorful opinion, that he basically lives in fear of having his radio show incur the scorn of the Phil Mushnick column. once in a while, Phil will have something nice to say about his program, but I can hear Ed’s mother now when the once-in-a-while unflattering comment is made in the Muchnick column: “Why can;t he be nicer to my son? He’s a nice Jewish boy and you;d think a mensh like Mr. Mushnick would cut my nice jewish boy some slack…”
In short, Ed Randall lives in FEAR of having his program mentioned negatively in the Phil Mushnick column, knowing Phil is 99.99999% right on any matter.
When he puts his head down on the pillow at night, Ed prays “And please dear Lord, no mention in tomorrow’s Phil Muchnick column…”