From the “unlinkably elitist” Hotline’s Last Call:
Now that “Talk Like A Pirate Day” is getting cable news coverage, it has officially jumped the plank.
I gave this pseudo-event some space in the Blogometer last year, and today Technorati counts 863 links to the main Talk Like A Pirate page in the last 6 hours alone (note: this factoid will be out of date as soon as this is posted, if not already). So, we can chalk this up as just the latest blogosphere phenomenon to be picked up by the mainstream media. Right?
Actually, chances are this “holiday” would rank somewhere below Festivus without significant pushes by nationally syndicated Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, first in 2002 and again in 2003.
Popular as Barry is, he’s no match for 150 bloggers an hour (for today, at least). And with as broad a reach as those bloggers have, they’re no match for Barry’s celebrity (that is to say in our media culture, authority). Better, then, to call this an example of the self-reflexive mediasphere, where the amateurs and professionals are simultaneously the source and audience.
So it is fitting that in 2006, Dave Barry is on hiatus from his column, and now himself one of those bloggers celebrating International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
P.S. Arrrrrrrr.
“Now that ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ is getting cable news coverage, it has officially jumped the plank.”
Does the “jump the shark” rule really apply to holidays? If so, when did Christmas and Thanksgiving hit the water?
Pedantically, allow me to observe that at least technically, Hotline isn’t arguing that the day “jumped the shark,” but the plank — and that even if we were talking sharks, Fonzie never hit the water, his skis did. If he
Less annoyingly, I’ll just point out that now that “jump the shark” has become a fixed part of the English language, it applies to pretty much everything. It hasn’t been sitcom-specific for years.