You, Sir, Are Jim Lampley

By Adam Greene

Sometimes, as you go through life reading various things posted on the internet, you will occasionally come across something so profoundly stupid and insane that it causes you intense physical pain. I experienced such an event last week when I happened upon articles on The Huffington Post written by HBO Boxing announcer, Jim Lampley. I can’t be certain, but after reading them I’m pretty sure my face melted.

Most of my time visiting The Huffington Post is spent trying to figure out who the fuck most of the bloggers are and why I should give a damn about what they say. I had hoped that it would be the repository of celebrity political thought it was originally billed as. For someone who wants to write comedy for his website, hearing that I could have consistent access to the political writings of Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Sharon Stone, needless to say, had me pretty pumped.

Sadly, that’s not been the case. I’ve not been this disappointed in celebrities since CHiPs’ Larry Wilcox blew the kayak relay race for Team NBC on Battle of the Network Stars.



So far we’ve had John Cusack’s "Dude, I totally went to Hunter S. Thompson’s funeral" piece. We saw Rob Reiner write a commercial for his parenting website and videos. We learned that Christine Lahti thinks you can defeat thousands of years of African religious superstition with a condom and tri-fold pamphlet. And finally, we witnessed Tim Robbins, in whom I laid all my hopes, skim quickly past any ridiculous political banter and go straight to plugging his DVD. Et Tu Tim?

Until last week, the only thing I thought I had to work with was Walter Cronkite walking into the room, shitting his Depends, saying "And that’s the way it smells" before passing out, face-down into a plate of apple sauce and mashed potatoes at his local Shoney’s.

In the tiny article Walter is able to type out before returning to his normal daily routine of chasing an imaginary bat around his house while waving a wooden tennis racket, he shows pretty plainly that he has no idea who Arianna Huffington actually is. He seems to think that he’s part of some journalistic endeavor and not some mad grab at a sixteenth minute of fame by a woman who talks just like Dracula.

Walter begins his contribution by falling madly in love with the word "interesting" and making it his mission to make sure Arianna has its precise definition. His prescriptions wearing off and the invisible bat just inches from his head, Walter threatens a future of post after post of "exceedingly interesting pieces" that have thankfully never materialized. Walter was, evidently, distracted by a shiny object or frightened by the ghostly robot noises coming out of a passing child's Gameboy or something because he hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Hell, maybe the bat finally got him.



Arianna herself graces the site every day with a little nugget of something special like plugging her book, this one time she watched Oprah, or discussing the Yoga exercises she does during Tim Russert’s Meet the Press. I’d like to personally thank Arianna for the vicious nightmare fodder she planted in each and every one of our heads at the end of the Russert/Yoga article. The cruel visual of her in a skin-tight unitard in the "Downward Facing Dog" position should end all speculation once and for all on why her husband Michael turned gay.


I had, after my first day disappointment, only checked The Huffington Post periodically. Clicking on it last week changed all that. Which brings us back to HBO Sports talking face Jim Lampley...



It seems that Jim, between reading A-Team slash fiction and buying Precious Moments Figurines off Ebay on November 2nd, made his way to an off shore betting site to check the odds for the 2004 presidential election and learned that, at that point, John Kerry was a 2 to 1 favorite to win. Because of this, Lampley believes that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove stole the 2004 presidential election that Bush won by over 3 million popular votes and 34 electoral votes.

Yes. A sports betting website has convinced Jim Lampley of massive voter fraud. His graduate school degree springing to life, Jim harnesses all the energy he usually uses to tell you which fighter is wearing the purple trunks, fires up his Google search engine, blows past obvious pro Bush websites like The Washington Post and the Official Website of the Ohio Democratic Party, and instead zeros in on impartial, unbiased websites like Democratic Underground and Commondreams.org to back his claim. Brilliant.

Jim’s investigative reporting not done, he then links to a crazy-eyed bald guy’s home page,gives us some Democratic Underground message board posts we should totally read, and finishes off with a link to a Geocities site to put the final nail in the stolen election coffin. With a "mountain of evidence" like that, how could anyone refute it?

Actual journalist and author Byron York made an attempt here and here, but come on. His argument is inherently flawed. A link to a Washington Post article? A transcript from C-Span? The explanation of the flawed exit polling from the actual people who did the exit polling? What kind of amateur dog and pony show is York running here? Where are the message board posts? The geocities sites? The explanation of which man is wearing the purple trunks?

This isn’t the first big story that Jim Lampley’s graduate degree has broken. This whole "describing someone getting punched in the throat for HBO" thing is just a side gig. Lampley’s main passion in life is blowing the lid off of things no rational person believes in.

Do you know who snuck his way onto a UFO and found perfect amphibious clones of Elvis Pressley, John Lennon and Kurt Cobain?



It was Jim Lampley, my friend.

Who separated his shoulder and broke three of his own ribs wrestling a Sasquatch to the ground so scientists could tag its ear and take detailed photos?



Mister Jim Lampley.

Who discovered Jimmy Hoffa’s remains by following a holographic map projected from a 4,000 year-old crystal skull?



Jim... Lampley...

Who saddled and rode the Loch Ness Monster for 8 and a half minutes before assisting it in the birth of its breached baby?



Jim mother fucking Lampley. That’s who.

And now, with only the power of his web browser and internet connection Jim has unearthed the biggest election fraud in the history of the universe. Astounding.

If I could take a moment and explain to Jim Lampley that though he is very adept at describing men hitting each other with their fists, people striking tennis balls with rackets, and has, in the past, deftly spoken of speedy cars driving in a giant circle, he is in fact, still Jim Lampley, and has only managed to uncover the breadth and depth of his own mental instability. And there’s nothing a graduate degree or internet access can do to change that.