Hey! That picture looks familiar!

Have you been off the grid for the last two days? Yeah? Okay, catching you up real quick: Caps fans taunted Tim Thomas with Obama signs, and then everyone and their moms wrote about it. Even The Huffington Post wrote about it, and they’re like the Ocean’s Eleven of the Internet: only stealing the good stuff!

And then on Tuesday, the Pardon The Interruption crew featuring former Washington Post columnists Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon addressed the taunting during their toss-up segment, WORD!

Video is below the jump.

Here’s the transcript:

Tony Reali: It was blank that Caps fans taunted Tim Thomas with President Obama heads.

Tony Kornheiser: It was apt. I know that’s a small word. Size doesn’t matter all the time. It happens to be the apt word. Tim Thomas would not accompany the Bruins when they won the Stanley Cup to visit the White House because he doesn’t like President Obama. So the Caps tried to get at him because of that, to some degree they did. The Caps got three goals which is more than they hard gotten in the first two games of the series so it was apt.

Michael Wilbon: It was totally Duke-ish. I mean you can picture the Dukies, the Cameron Crazies, doing something like this. You don’t want to come to our town, Washington, the White House to visit President Obama we go after you and we go after you hard. It was straight out of the Duke Blue Devils student playbook. Duke-ish.

Once again, a huge thanks to everyone out there who printed out the signs that we made, and Top Gun high-five to all who made your own. Your enthusiasm and humor make the Caps fan community what it is, and what it is is way better than Boston. That’s for sure.

Huge thanks to reader @TrevorCampbell8 for first alerting us to this!

Video transcribed by Chris Gordon.

Thursday night, I turned to ESPN2, and watched PTI while I ate dinner. It almost resulted in me spitting out my cheesesteak. Former Washington Post columnists Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon led the show off with hockey and expressed their opinions on the result of Game Four between Washington and the Rangers. Because I heard the words “championship” and “Capitals” uttered in the same sentence, I felt compelled to share. The transcript is below.

Tony Kornheiser – I’m going to say something I don’t say very often. Let’s begin with hockey. The Washington Capitals came back from a 3-0 deficit on the road last night, scoring three goals in the third period to tie, and getting a fluke goal to beat the Rangers in the second overtime period. This silenced Rangers fans who had lustily serenaded Bruce Boudreau with taunts of, “Can you hear us?”

Michael Wilbon – Lovely.

TK – Can you hear this?

MW – I heard it last night.

TK – Wilbon, let’s start with the game-winner. If you are Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, how are you feeling right now, big boy?

MW – Well, I wouldn’t say it, and I wouldn’t even tweet it. But I might be a little bit disappointed in my defense. After stopping 49? I mean come on now. I’ve done everything in this game.

TK – And just watching the puck just roll out there. Clear the puck.

MW – I’d be upset with that. What have I done here but play great? This to me, Tony, was a championship signature performance. If the Capitals win [the Stanley cup] – and a lot of people think they can win even though Vancouver’s said to be a better team by some – you’re going to look back on this game when the Rangers could have evened this series and say, “That’s it! That’s the point when the Capitals established who they are.”

TK – But because we have watched the Capitals for years and we’ve watched them – not once, not twice, but four times – blow 3-1 leads, they’ve got to back this up by winning Game Five at home. They’ve got to do that.

I thought the big part of the game -and the reason I thought the Rangers would win- is Ovechkin’s all alone in the first overtime with a breakaway. He’s got it on his stick. He doesn’t get it. That’s like popping out with the bases loaded. I thought it was going to turn for the Rangers at that point.

MW – First of all Tony, I turned away and I stopped paying attention. Three nothing. And you’ve mentioned the Capitals’ futility in the playoffs. That’s one of those games you go, “Oh my god, the Rangers are now even, the pressure’s back on the Capitals.” They came through. They delivered.

TK – Let’s say something here. This is a big gag by the Rangers. 3-0 at home. One period to go. And you don’t close it out? That is called a big gag.

MW – After Boudreau called out their building and their people?

TK – Big gag.

Who's got two thumbs and an incoming rant directed at him? THIS GUY

Sportswriter and TV personality Michael Wilbon shared this opinion about Alex Ovechkin:

[He] is bordering on out of control. He’d do well to get himself under enough control to concentrate soley on leading his team to victory because that’s all Crosby seems fixed on.

This is hokum.  Duh.  But let’s pretend for a moment that Wilbon is right (he’s not), and figure out how he reached this decision.

Alexander Ovechkin’s recent crimes

1. Flattening Jaromir Jagr in a vicious, but legal hit.
2. Palming a camera shooting him and his friends.
3. Hitting Tim Gleason knee-on-knee in November.
4. Hogging three shoot-out attempts against the Slovaks.
5. Avoiding the media, particularly the Americans in Vancouver.
   (Feel free to provide more in the comments below.)

If you’re able to discern a pattern here, you are wiser than I. Rather, I’d submit that the following: Michael Wilbon and other sports writers demonize Ovechkin and lionize Crosby because it is in their explicit interest to do so.

Just as American politics has replaced genuine analysis with ignorant bombast, sports journalism too has grown u-g-l-y (and Michael Wilbon, sadly, has no alibi). While there is obvious value in the sage reporting of Tarik El-Bashir, Corey Masisak, or our own Daniel Moroz, the unwashed masses seems to prefer obnoxious bluster instead. Granted– guys like Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser are undeniably gifted, intelligent writers; but they trade in stories, not sports.

The perceived narrative of Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby is far more valuable than any objective truth. Wilbon saying that Crosby is “is so far ahead of Ovechkin right now Ovie would need a telescope to see him” is ridiculous and demonstrably false, so of course he’s being rewarded for it. Wilbon has delivered a great pullquote, got people talking, provided fodder for pieces like this one, and built up his own cult of personality. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Let’s sober up for a moment. Ice hockey is a team sport, and Sidney’s teams have surpassed Alex’s by every metric.  As an individual player, however,  AO has more trophies, the same number of goals, more hits, and more assists (at least this season) [Source 1, Source 2]. Like most people I have a personal preference between these two players, and I’m unafraid to launch hyperbole against the other in the service of entertainment. But if I were to say that Sidney Crosby is a “21st century Wayne Gretzky” (quoth Al Michaels), I’m writing crazy-people fiction– and everyone knows it.

And so we’ve spent the last two weeks in an echo chamber. The TV personalities exploit Crosby vs. Ovechkin to make the Olympic tournament more approachable for casual fans. Guys like Mike Milbury and Don Cherry try to inflate their Q-ratings by boasting laughably unsound opinions (even if they’re completely entertaining). Less informed, less scrupulous, and even more fame-hungry pundits then pick up those storylines and blow them up to a grotesque, epic scale. And now it’s up to dwindling number of rational minds still left among us (Hollaback, Dan Steinberg!) to reconcile.

Here’s an unremarkable but valid opinion: Ovechkin has had a bad two weeks. He played unspectacularly, and his team lost. Sidney Crosby also played unspectacularly, but he scored a crucial goal, and his team won.  It’s true , but that’s far less entertaining than if I had said…

Alex Ovechkin teeters on the precipice of existential disaster.  Lest he undergo a radical and experimental personality therapy in Palm Springs, Ovie’s urine may not develop the healing qualities that have rendered Sidney Crosby’s as good as cash in some rural Canadian towns.

We’ve all been wrapped up in the emotions of the tournament, but it doesn’t mean we have to talk out our asses.  Michael’s a funny guy, but he’s not serving his audience by being a blowhard.  Until he and the others come around, let’s vote with our mouse-clicks.