In sports, everyone is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like Breleigh Ann Favre, 11-year-old spawn of Brett, unamused ESPYs guest, symbol of a disgruntled sports nation.
Brett Favre won an ESPY for something or other, and he was there with his family yesterday, and Will Ferrell was there, too, for some reason, and he did some prop gag with a vuvuzela, and a lot of people laughed, and Brett Favre smirked what was surely his millionth smirk of the night, and the ESPYs bounded merrily along, an ESPN celebration of ESPN's ability to celebrate celebrities. Oh, but not you, young Breleigh Ann. You gazed upon the stage and saw it for what it was — a void; a great, light-sucking quantum singularity; a cloud of stellar gas spiraling inward — and you did not laugh.
I didn't watch last night, so if I'm mischaracterizing the show at all, well, I really don't give a shit. I hear there was a lot of sport made of LeBron's Decision, which would be fine and all if ESPN ever realized that terrible notions like the ESPYs created the conditions in the first place out of which a risible horror like The Decision could emerge. The programming philosophy that gave us the ESPYs 18 years ago is roughly the same one that gave us The Socratic Hour with Jim and LeBron, and no one liked that show, either. We all know that ESPN thinks we're a bunch of slack-jawed morons who'll eat up whatever they slop on the table, and we all know there's nothing we can do about it, and that is why today we turn to a surly 11-year-old as our avatar. You stared into the void, Breleigh Ann, and you were not amused. Today, we are all Breleigh Ann Favre.