Roman Wrote:
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> Hearing the audio is always worse than reading the
> transcripts.


The relevant journalists in this case are morons and lose all credibility when their stupidity is revealed. I say this and my father was a producer on 60 Minutes and I know many of the people who founded and ran 60 minutes for many years. Unfortunately, things have really gone down hill.

How is this for an example of idiocy that just disqualifies the piece from being seriously considered --

They introduce Stuart S Janney, the Jockey Club Chairman, as a member of the family that owned Seabiscuit.

First, why that connection is relevant is never explained.

Second, he is quite a distant cousin of the owners of Seabiscuit.

Third, his distant relatives' involvement in Seabiscuit is that they were impatient owners who gave up on the horse and sold him to the guy who was famous as the horse's owner for giving the horse a chance. Not a great endorsement of the family's horsemanship.

Fourth, his parents owned Ruffian. This is never mentioned.

Fifth, Ruffian is the most famous breakdown of all time. He was front and center for it with his parents being the owners. One would think this is relevant to the topic at hand if they need to talk about his familial connections to the sport and his family's horsemanship.

His parents involvement in Ruffian would have been quite instructive. She could not have been treated better as a horse. She was never given illicit substances, yet she broke down. Nobody in a million years would have blamed Frank Whiteley for Ruffian breaking down.

Horses evolved to die by breaking down. No horse in the wild ever died of old age. Many horses in the wild break their legs, nobody measures this. No horse ever died because a predator outran it. Horses commonly die in the wild because they break a leg and then a predator catches them. With the helpful tool of speed comes the downside of fragility. The two are inextricably linked. This is all called evolutionary biology. While it is unfortunate when a horse breaks down in a high profile race, it is something that inevitably happens whether in the wild or in the racetrack. It is called mathematics -- big enough sample size and..... Finally, many more horses die at the hands of butchers outside the USA than inside the USA. Why isn't the US's equine care given credit for how few horses are butchered in the USA? In the US, you cannot get a license to own a racehorse if you are discovered to have sold a horse to a butcher. What other countries do the same?

I could go on, but once you hear them say that the significant thing about Stuart Janney is that his family once owned Seabiscuit, you already know the journalist is an idiot, doesn't know what they are talking about, and have no interest or capability of getting to the truth or even relevant facts.