"Bataan Death March on skates."

So I don't get a reputation as an irrational Korea-hater from my coverage of Korean hyperbole after the Namdaemun fire here's an example of homegrown ignorance. Pittsburgh's own Mark Madden wrote, in a column from 2003 about why Mario Lemieux needs to return to the Penguins lineup:

Compare that to the Penguins' recent offensive zone play, which has been akin to the Bataan Death March on skates. The Penguins have averaged 1.6 goals in the 13 games since Kovalev was traded. They have been shut out four times, held to one goal three times and held to two goals twice. Ah, the glory of the left-wing lock. If you're trying to win a scoring championship, it's not exactly the perfect system.

This column, which is five years old today, stood out for me at the time because I remember my journalism professor some years earlier, in a lecture on hyperbole in sports writing, giving the example of a sportswriter comparing a game or something to the Bataan Death March. Interestingly, Madden wrote about inappropriate war metaphors in sports two weeks later.

Mark Madden is a goddamn idiot, as any Pittsburgher knows. He strives to be a shock jock through his local sports talk radio show, and some of you might remember him---probably not---from his short stint as a broadcaster for WCW. He fancies himself a wrestler, frequently uses wrestling slang in his radio shows, routinely shouts down callers, and considers feuding with local celebrities like Hines Ward, Franco Harris, and Myron Cope a way to generate "heat" and get himself "over." An example of generating local heat has been taking the extremely unpopular stance, especially in Pittsburgh, that Bonds is better than Babe Ruth and is one of the greatest Pirates of all time. If for some reason you'd like to see a topless Madden get his fat ass beat up by a UFC fighter, you can watch the video here.

* Update: Welcome, visitors from The Big Lead. I doubt any of you care about South Korea issues, but you might be interested in a post I did a little while ago about some "Horry Kow" T-shirts on sale outside of Wrigley Field. Not sayin' they're the worst things ever, just sayin'. You might also be interested to read some coverage of the "Korea's 9/11" talk that was in full force a few months ago and that was inspired when one of Seoul's landmarks was hit by an arsonist. I'm sure many Americans would take exception to the comparisons some of the media over here made.