Fox's Marketing Ploy May Have Been More Evil Than Previously Thought

It's bad enough that stupid Yuppie Gollum was nothing but a promotional stunt, but this is so much worse: A reader reports that Yuppie Gollum wasn't even at the All-Star Game. I'll let that sink in.

As we now know, the man is actor Michael Cerveris, a Broadway veteran who plays a character called the Observer in a teevee program I refuse to name because it's all so goddamn stupid. According to this , Fox's staffers have cheekily taken to calling the campaign "Where's Baldo?" He's shown up at football games, NASCAR races, American Idol — just about anywhere he can get within range of a Fox camera, thus enabling the network to furiously jerk itself off. This morning, we had thought that included yesterday's All-Star Game, but then, in response, came the following e-mail from reader Aaron that has made us question everything we've ever believed:

... but in an even more akward [sic] twist- all that was filmed at the Home Run Derby and used last night in the telecast. It wasn't live. Some pics below, including one where I finally was like, "What the fuck is going on with you man?" where he proceeded to be pretty damn cool and take a picture with me.

That photo is the one above. Here's another:

Aaron reports that he was seated in roughly the same area last night and didn't see the guy. If it's true, and Yuppie Gollum wasn't actually at the game last night, this means that Fox dicked around with a live sports broadcast, splicing in day-old video that's more or less a commercial and presenting it as live, undoctored footage. This seems particularly evil, and by an order of magnitude worse than that time they let Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore cross-promotionally dry-hump all over the Busch Stadium infield.

Maybe Fox had its reasons for taping the Observer on Monday. I can think of only one: It's probably unwise to let an actor known for playing John Wilkes Booth anywhere near an event the president will be attending.

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