John Nicoletta insulted by Op-Ed Writer

[gaijin]

What I find to be the absolute most interesting notion here is the discussion, the debate all of you are in because of an Opinions Editorial. Opinions writers do NOT write their own opinion. Their job, is to write an opinion with the motivation of sparking discussion. The less they have to fill on the next page as a result of people's replies and contributions to the editorial, the greater the community discussion. I hope nobody here actually thinks that Craig meant anything he wrote.

His job was to get every single one of you to look at your life, your sport, and give an assessment as to what the limits are. And, you're doing it. How much thought would you have given to the risks you take if he hadn't written that piece? Perhaps you've given a lot of thought to it, but I'm willing to bet each and every one of you sat back a moment and analyzed your own views.

We all know what we know, but when we articulate that opinion in text, we have to formulate it and digest it first. That's writing. That's the written expression of the human spirit. All of you want your expression understood and you post it here. Some of you never even read what you wrote because you still think it's just a conversation. However, most of you read your opinion before clicking post.

How many of us would have written-off the accident as an accident if we hadn't been provoked to define what an accident actually is? How many of us now have a further understanding of the risks we will take in our own lives... and how those risks compare to what others assess and describe as risk?

You have to admit, Craig hit you all and made you think, articulate, and express your own value of the human existence. This is NOT a value that any single writer could have delivered to you via a single piece.

Not many of my own friends could do that regarding this situation. Most of them wouldn't have the courage to provoke us like that. They'd be like- "Quit arguing!"

Rant on, my friends. Just know that Craig is just an Opinions Columnist who dedicates his life to provoking you. And as a result, you're showing your love. Perhaps, you're showing more love than his measily one page Op Ed piece could have possibly articulated by his lonesome. I'd go even farther to say that your discussion here was actually his entire point.

That's good writing, guys. And you love it. You love it because you can jump on-board and say he's wrong. Why? Because each and every one of you has a value for the life you live. Very few writers can tap that. Most of them sound high-and-mighty. Many of them are ignored as assholes. Very few provoke you to actually write back and say- "Here's what I think..."

I have no affiliation with Craig, nor do I know him. I'm just a writer who used to have his job. And in that job, I would hope to God that somebody would forward this thread to me so I would know that people actually give a fuck.

Russian Roulette... he had that motif down before you even knew he was talking about you... and not a revolver. I hope he's smiling as large as I am right now. I love seeing people go off about what they cherish most. Sometimes they just need a little stick in the ass.

I'm not suggesting that anyone was played like pawns. I am, however, suggesting that he hit you, and he made you think, and... he made you stand up for yourself and say... THIS is life. Nobody can do that for you.

I nominate this as Thread-of-the-year. Why? Because you are all convinced that you are right. And- it's glorious.

[Kya]

freewill.

[alto]

Opinions writers do NOT write their own opinion. Their job, is to write an opinion with the motivation of sparking discussion. I hope nobody here actually thinks that Craig meant anything he wrote....

I hope he's smiling as large as I am right now. I love seeing people go off about what they cherish most. Sometimes they just need a little stick in the ass.

If Medred didn't mean what he wrote, why did he return to bash the same group of people in at least three separate pieces? To really insult the people involved in a tragedy? Oh, I get it now.

You hope he's smiling as large as you are? Please don't let your presumptuous literary personality overshadow the fact that this is about a friend's death. How it will be discussed and how it will be forever remembered is no joke, and I frankly feel sick after reading your response.

[jce338]

You probably feel pretty smart posting your 11 three word paragraphs but what you don't seem to realize is that just because he is writing an op-ed does not mean that he has any right to belittle and disrespect the death of a fellow skier.

That's good writing, guys. And you love it. You love it because you can jump on-board and say he's wrong. Why? Because each and every one of you has a value for the life you live. Very few writers can tap that. Most of them sound high-and-mighty. Many of them are ignored as assholes. Very few provoke you to actually write back and say- "Here's what I think..."

And when that "Here's what i think..." is followed by "you are a disrespectful prick" instead of reaching readers in a tactful and skillful way, maybe that is a sign that you actually have no journalistic ability. Readers should be engaged in the subject of the op-ed, but the author. op-ed isn't about getting a rise out of people by saying absurd shit that is untruthful. A skillful writer provokes thought with the facts, without disrespect and without belittling the community it addresses. I don't know John directly but do know people who went to high school with him and I hate to see anyone disrespected like this.

RIP John

[awake1563]

Gaijin... check your pants, you sound as if you may have creamed yourself writing that reply.

There is a small portion of truth to your post, it is mitigated however by the fact that a "good" Op-Ed writer can do the same thing respectfully, with real statistics, as jce338 stated. Medred's writing has neither respect nor truth. In fact, most of its lack of respect is due to its lack of truth. He might have been on to something if he had used any respectable statistics.

[powder11]

come on people, did they stop competing at Mavericks when Mark Foo died on a fairly benign wave? No fucking way. Shit happens. Its ok not to agree or understand it, but thats our sport. I don't get why people feel the need to summit Everest and lots of people die up there, but I still think its rad that people go out to risk their life in pursuit of what makes them tick.

The thought of being 80 and sitting around shitting my pants scares me way more than anything else!

[gaijin]

Sorry if you feel sick, Alto. I didn't post to argue or to attack, just to note that I am loving all of your replies defining what is important to you. Nor do I condone disprespect. I just didn't take the article that personally. I just took it as an Op Ed piece. Apologies.

Did the writer know John? Perhaps I'm way out of line. It wouldn't be the first time. Nor does that make disrespect to the unknown anymore tolerant. I just didn't take it personally.

[Lone Star]

you make a good point, gaijin. it wasn't meant personally. but the hateful attitude was still there and that's what is disappointing and upsetting.

[splat]

Op ed writers are hired to present the viewpoints of their publisher.
I don't know who Medred is, but I do recall akpm saying Medred would have a field day with John's death. Apparently, this Rush Limbaugh style is his MO. You know - badmouthing anything the disenfranchised majority of middle america cannot comprehend and therefore simply comdemns. I was going to not post anymore, but thought I'd dump my .02 response to the SLT here. I was upset and just knocked it out, so I hope it makes some sense.

Dear Mr. Medred,

Your article regarding the death of John Nicoletta and the sport of big mountain skiing at the competitive level could not have been more poorly written, with facts mismanaged, misleading allegories proposed and a grossly inadequate understanding of the sport demonstrated. Though you might find it comfortable to draw such conclusions from the sacred comfort of the quarterback position in your computer armchair, please desist from using the perceived credibility you garner from actually getting your fear-mongering articles published to depict the sport of competitive big mountain freeskiing as Russian roulette on snow. Your pulpit of misinformed reasoning should not be confused with being a bastion of sensibility or credibilty.

Firstly, if skiers died or were injured every time they fell, the sport itself would surely die for a lack of participants. You conveniently failed to acknowledge that in seventeen years of competition with thousands of runs made during competition and hundreds of falls, only two deaths have ever occurred. The most recent death of those two was John Nicoletta. Apparently that was all you required to undertake your sensationalistic grandstanding. Why did you not call for a ban on skiing in general? There were a significant number of deaths in the sport of skiing within resorts this past season. Did you write a similar article after the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001, calling for ban on car racing which, by far, enjoys a much longer list of dead competitors who died doing what they loved than skiing ever will. You did a crazy thing in the mountains of Alaska? What might that have been and how does your experience qualify you to make the assumptions you made in your article? Did you throw a snowball at a glacier?

You certainly went off the deep end when you attempted to draw an analogy between freeskiing and Russian roulette. This allegory is either so blatantly misinformed, hysterical or used simply for sensationalistic purposes, it is beyond deplorable. Russian roulette is certain death once you fail. Skiing competitively in big mountain freeskiing allows a significant amount of error, as illustrated by the numerous people who fell before and after Mr. Nicoletta. Not unlike a fatal car accident, Mr. Nicoletta's death was simply an accident. One that might have been avoided had he stayed home and not ventured out into the world, much the same as the victim of an auto crash would have been safe at home rather than getting in his car and driving.

Your implication that a skier in these competitions will die in one in ten crashes is absurd, false, and again, a tool for fear-mongering sensationalism designed, I assume, to entice your readers to linger beyond the headline and lead of your story. Has the world become so dumbed-down that your editors have asked you practice such tactics to retain readers? I know Professor Lindley, my former Journalism 101 teacher, wouldn't buy it for a second, whether as news or an op-ed piece. It's too bad this kind of misleading and false garbage is what you have chosen to sell. A good story requires a certain amount of investigative diligence and professionalism. I saw little, if any, of those qualities in your article.

[Smails]

A-fuckin-men splat. Beautifully written and well thought out response.

Op ed writers are hired to present the viewpoints of their publisher.
I don't know who Medred is, but I do recall akpm saying Medred would have a field day with John's death. Apparently, this Rush Limbaugh style is his MO. You know - badmouthing anything the disenfranchised majority of middle america cannot comprehend and therefore simply comdemns. I was going to not post anymore, but thought I'd dump my .02 response to the SLT here. I was upset and just knocked it out, so I hope it makes some sense.

Dear Mr. Medred,

Your article regarding the death of John Nicoletta and the sport of big mountain skiing at the competitive level could not have been more poorly written, with facts mismanaged, misleading allegories proposed and a grossly inadequate understanding of the sport demonstrated. Though you might find it comfortable to draw such conclusions from the sacred comfort of the quarterback position in your computer armchair, please desist from using the perceived credibility you garner from actually getting your fear-mongering articles published to depict the sport of competitive big mountain freeskiing as Russian roulette on snow. Your pulpit of misinformed reasoning should not be confused with being a bastion of sensibility or credibilty.

Firstly, if skiers died or were injured every time they fell, the sport itself would surely die for a lack of participants. You conveniently failed to acknowledge that in seventeen years of competition with thousands of runs made during competition and hundreds of falls, only two deaths have ever occurred. The most recent death of those two was John Nicoletta. Apparently that was all you required to undertake your sensationalistic grandstanding. Why did you not call for a ban on skiing in general? There were a significant number of deaths in the sport of skiing within resorts this past season. Did you write a similar article after the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001, calling for ban on car racing which, by far, enjoys a much longer list of dead competitors who died doing what they loved than skiing ever will. You did a crazy thing in the mountains of Alaska? What might that have been and how does your experience qualify you to make the assumptions you made in your article? Did you throw a snowball at a glacier?

You certainly went off the deep end when you attempted to draw an analogy between freeskiing and Russian roulette. This allegory is either so blatantly misinformed, hysterical or used simply for sensationalistic purposes, it is beyond deplorable. Russian roulette is certain death once you fail. Skiing competitively in big mountain freeskiing allows a significant amount of error, as illustrated by the numerous people who fell before and after Mr. Nicoletta. Not unlike a fatal car accident, Mr. Nicoletta's death was simply an accident. One that might have been avoided had he stayed home and not ventured out into the world, much the same as the victim of an auto crash would have been safe at home rather than getting in his car and driving.

Your implication that a skier in these competitions will die in one in ten crashes is absurd, false, and again, a tool for fear-mongering sensationalism designed, I assume, to entice your readers to linger beyond the headline and lead of your story. Has the world become so dumbed-down that your editors have asked you practice such tactics to retain readers? I know Professor Lindley, my former Journalism 101 teacher, wouldn't buy it for a second, whether as news or an op-ed piece. It's too bad this kind of misleading and false garbage is what you have chosen to sell. A good story requires a certain amount of investigative diligence and professionalism. I saw little, if any, of those qualities in your article.

[alto]

Sorry if you feel sick, Alto. I didn't post to argue or to attack, just to note that I am loving all of your replies defining what is important to you. Nor do I condone disprespect. I just didn't take the article that personally. I just took it as an Op Ed piece. Apologies.

Did the writer know John? Perhaps I'm way out of line. It wouldn't be the first time. Nor does that make disrespect to the unknown anymore tolerant. I just didn't take it personally.

You're right giajin. Medred is a predictable element in such a situation, and should be looked at as being representative of the full range of reactions that such an incident creates. I suppose it is important that such words are said, regardless of how callous, so that we all know how some people think about us. Contrast offers identity, as I think you were suggesting.

[Lone Star]

Op ed writers are hired to present the viewpoints of their publisher.

I think that we get that impression sometimes, especially in cases like these. we forget that the job of these writers is to sell papers.

you sell papers by getting publicity and there wouldn't be any publicity coming about if he wrote a half-hearted eulogy. instead, he wrote a half-hearted diatribe 20 minutes short of a deadline, knowing that the more coarse he came off, the better chance he had at getting people talking.

medred succeeded, and this thread shows it. i wish i wasn't so gullible as to get pissed off and respond. it probably gives the dude a hard-on.

[gaijin]

A contrast of identities seems to be quite the motif of this entire thread. Free-will, to each his own, safety nets, we're outside the mainstream of society. It's not so much that it's important that the words are said, it's that they exist and have for multi-millenia. I'm thankful to see them spilling out these days.

Perhaps my calling that article "good" writing as it resulted in such responses was a poor choice of words. Surely, we all view good writing differently and the semantics there are endless. To me, anything that stimulates cultural influence is good. Those pieces that get ignored are not so good for society. That distinction clearly wasn't iterated on my part. Good doesn't mean agree.

Lone Star, you're right... sending a pissed-off response will give the dude a hard-on. However, sending a well-articulated response such as Splat's will make him realize that diatribes written 20 minutes short of deadlines are likely to insult the masses. And- that's his tight-rope. Generate responses-----get tarred-and-feathered---- or stop writing because nobody cares and are perfectly willing to accept what they are told to be holy.

Cultures war over semantics. I say God-----they strap bombs to their chest. Draw a picture of God, now that... will fucking get a war waged on your ass. Remember that shit with the Dutch and bombs as tourbins?

Not in many worlds does this freedom exist. And, I'm damn happy to read yours and everyone's interpretation of that freedom.

Just remember, readers, that you're just a reader and no more significant than the others. You can enter this dialogue, express your beliefs at to which extent you value life, just understand that that expression is not something that is welcome in other parts of the world.

I say, step it up a notch. Tell everyone here why the decisions you make and the risks you take are yours.

This thread better not chill out.

And to all of those who lost a loved one, and are anchored in this thread for reasons other than any world-belief system, your love has not been lost.

[bones get broke]

Craig loves everyone who takes offense or objects to what he writes about. Without uproar like what you read on this thread, he would be managing a Wal-Mart somewhere. I personaly wouldn't use the ADN's Outdoor section to potty train a dog on, let alone read. People like Craig Medred leach off of people's emotions to sustain a reader base. Take Howard Stern for example, most of his listeners don't even like him, I bet if you polled Craig Medred's readers you'd find similar statistics.

[powderpond]

With all due respect to you Pat, I want to tell a story that I've never told anyone. Three years ago, I was visiting my home mountain of Crested Butte. I and a friend skied Teo Bowl which was open for the first time in years. We took the high traverse and exited via the bottom of Rabbit Ears. As we rounded the corner, we watched a body tumble down a series of rocks to the skiers right of Angle Gully. Angle is where the qualifying round of the CB comp is held. The body continued to tumble another 700 feet. LIFELESS. No breath. No pulse. Nothing.
My friend and I hustled to help. When we arrived, her head was the size of a basketball. She was bleeding from every place imaginable. I was the better skier of the two and my friend had considerable first responder training. So I skied to the NF lift and asked them to radio help. My friend stayed and did everything he knew how to help her. Patrol soon arrived. She was helped and eventually heliod to Grand Junction.

It turns out that she was trying to pre-qualify for the CB comp. The mountain offered one of their staff a free spot in the comp for one lady and one guy, depending on how they did at an informal "ski-off". The "judges" were at the base of the headwall. No patrol present. No standards other than you had to be an employee of the mountain. They didn't help in any way. The prize? a two hundred dollar entry fee. She not only was a mountain employee but she was the daughter of the former head of Aspen and at the time the head of CBMR. She didn't need the 'prize'.

I believe that she ended up being ok. Although it would be hard to tell because she had a few screws loose to begin with (Later, I found out that I knew her). None the less, years of recovery.


I couldn't tell you one way or the other if she ever skied again. But it doesn't matter. What does is that the situation she competed in was faulty. And completely avoidable. Yes she could have fell anywhere anytime, but she didn't. She fell during a so-called comp. With a potential prize. With no set safety. And she suffered brain injury and she easily could have died. In fact, she was dead.

Its time that this sport decided to take itself serious and really put some effort into protecting the athletes. I can't think of any sport where increased safety regulations hurt the level of competition. A perfect example is the UFC. Once they set rules and standards, it became much more legitimate and the athletes stepped up. You can't walk out of just any kickboxing cardio class and fight Chuck Lidell. You can't go from driving your BMW to racing F1. You can't go from playing JV football to the NFL. But you can go from being a skier to being an entrant in any of a number of freeskiing comps.

So that is the basis of my opinion. And I ask you, what does it hurt to have increased safety standards? Lets start with making sure the athletes have helmets that pass certain standards. Then how about requiring back protecting body armor. Then we can require that the sponsors pay for health insurance for their athletes. Testing to make sure the athletes are up to par in their skills. Testing athletes to make sure they are sober (yes I know guys who compete while coked up). Any finally, lets require that the athletes are paid in line with what they bring to the product. Nike sponsors Lebron and pays him a 100+m$. Skiers and especially snowboarders, bring a lot of marketing value to the products who sponsor them. Unionizing or collective bargaining would certainly help. However I don't know if its to that level yet but its certainly heading there. $10K in prize money for a first place finish is retarded. The author is right, the only ones who profit are the companies like Burton or Smith or Subaru. Time to fight back. In order to do so, athletes need to be protected.


-aaron

Well said aaron...I think you are right on target!

[Skijunkie]

Though you might find it comfortable to draw such conclusions from the sacred comfort of the quarterback position in your computer armchair, please desist from using the perceived credibility you garner from actually getting your fear-mongering articles published to depict the sport of competitive big mountain freeskiing as Russian roulette on snow. Your pulpit of misinformed reasoning should not be confused with being a bastion of sensibility or credibilty.

PAWN3D

nice work dude!

[gonzo]

that "article" is a total piece of shit. haven't read the responses here but thanks for putting good comments up there guys. alto, thanks for leading with the self-quote-next-to-jack-london call out. i looked at that for a few minutes trying to figure out if he really did that...and yeah, he did. fuck him.

[powder11]

gaijin= author stroking himself

has to. nobody else would give enough of a shit to spend that kind of time writing posts defending someone they dont know. what an ego tripper. Alto should delete this thread and stop giving this ass clown more material to jack off to.