August 28, 2004

• Because he's cool. "Testy Cod", on the other hand, has never been quoted. Draw your own conclusion. Seriously, he probably had some journalistic contacts that spread his name around. When a journalist is looking to quote a professor they don’t go through a selection process, they ask the guy next to them who's easy to get a hold of and will give me a good quote.
• God. I always thought I was decent about paying attention to what I read, but I've probably read hundreds of quotes by "experts" like this without thinking twice. Just goes to show how gullible we are, I guess.
• Fortunately, this Richard Thompson is still the #1 Google hit. Why did he and Linda have to break up?
• My guess is that there are not a lot of Professors of Television (excluding Russell Johnson, of course) running around at major universities.
• Fortunately, this Richard Thompson is still the #1 Google hit. How would Robert Thompson getting a lot of linkies affect the excellent Richard Thompson's ranking?
• Here's one answer.
• In my summer of media journalism, we called it "dropping the Thompson bomb"- something you did when you needed someone else to say the things you were thinking. He was always really friendly and intelligent, but now, whenever I see or hear him quoted, I always smile and think somewhere, a reporter got desperate.
• I think it's because he's actually the goatse man.
• I'll be honest, because I have a Master's Degree in Popular Culture, I am not at all fond of Robert Thompson. I find his comments to frequently be fairly bland and unremarkable. I first became aware of him when he was quoted in a videogame magazine a couple years ago. He made some comments about videogames that I strongly disagreed with. As someone who studies videogames, I was dismayed to see that someone who also deals with popular culture to make such comments. It was then that I searched for him on the web and found out how often he was quoted. Since then, I've sort of seen his frequent appearances on such a wide variety of subjects as a facinating phenomenon. It is a rich area for future research. There is the appeal to authority (when somehow I find it hard to beleive that anyone could be an authority on the many subjects he gets quoted on), there is also the lazy reporting angle, there is also the rolodex of resources that reporters have (ironically about a year and a half ago on NPR they were doing a story on people who get quoted all the time, and seemingly unironicly, they turned to Thompson for an explanation!), but there is also the fact that as an academic, I wonder how he gets any work done when he must talk to numerous reporters every day, and well as the fact that all of the professors in my old department stopped talking to reporters because they were sick of being quoted out of context and misquoted.
• How would Robert Thompson getting a lot of linkies affect the excellent Richard Thompson's ranking? A very good question, to which you will have to apply to the excellent Robert Thompson, that know-it-all, for an answer. It's been a hard week, OK? My brain's already on vacation. I'm going to Montreal on Monday; when I return I will be ready to make comments that actually make sense if you hold them up to the light and squint a little.
• As if I would ever pull your leg.
• i used to quote him years ago, but he's really overexposed now. he USED to be just about the only academician to comment on niche stories like "reality TV," stuff like that. but now others are coming along. unfortunately, some journalists (we're human too, surprise!) get lazy. thompson is easily available, well-versed on many issues and good at giving succinct quotes. a political source in this vein is larry sabado. everyone always laughs in my office when it's two minutes until deadline and you're faced with no quote, or larry sabado -- again. heh.
• I knew Bob in college at Northwestern -- he was my TA in a few classes when I was an undergrad, and then later he was still there as a doctoral student while I was doing my MA. He's a great guy and very thoughtful about all of this stuff. SideDish is correct -- Bob was always willing to give a good sound bite, but then eventually the lazy journos all decided he was the go-to guy for any pop culture subject. Now he's a ubiquitous talking-head.