F1 News

People love a hero, especially a homegrown one. And the media, if it can, will provide them with one. So it should come as no surprise that the British media will sing the praises of Lewis Hamilton. Young, popular and very, very fast, he has hardly put a foot wrong, either on or off the track. And until a backlash becomes necessary to sell papers, Hamilton will have praise lavished upon him.

Though our morning papers are filled more with bad news than good news, the media can be quite good at singing praises and Hamilton has had the journalists reaching for the thesaurus to find new words to describe the young Brit.

The writers at Pitpass.com, on the other hand, have never heard of a thesaurus and so, perhaps out of jealousy for their better paid counterparts, resort to repetitive, childish swipes at actual journalists (that is when they’re not busy re-publishing press releases as ’stories’) in lieu of genuinely constructive criticism of the media.

That isn’t to say Pitpass doesn’t have a point about the British media’s preoccupation with Hamilton. But if there’s one thing worse than the media’s Lewisaphilia, it’s Pitpass’s obsession with making cheap homosexual jibes about it, week after week - an obsession with an obsession, if you like.

Take a look at these quotes from Pitpass.com articles. Click on the link to read the original context of the quotes:

• “…a hard core of British newspaper journalists continue to swoon at the feet of Lewis Hamilton, churning out even more gushing reports as their schoolboy crushes develop into something more meaningful.” So far, so innocent. But how many more times do you think we’ll be seeing the word ‘gushing’ today?
• “…indeed, when reading some of the more gushing articles the expression ‘get a room’ springs to mind.” They particularly liked this one, as you’ll see below. (’Gush count’: 2.)
• “…reading the gushing, somewhat flowery, eulogies, one feels almost embarrassed, indeed the phrase ‘get a room’ regularly comes to mind.” Yeah, you said. (Read the rest of this article for the most incisive political commentary this side of a GCSE Citizenship class). ‘Gush count’: 3.
• “Hamilton takes a fine second place which is sure to see the British media having multiple orgasms.” OK, you think the British media’s support for Hamilton has sexual overtones. We get it.
• “…media darling Lewis Hamilton getting the British media all hot and sticky.” Please, I’m eating.
• “…the British media continues its love affair with Lewis Hamilton, sometimes to an embarrassing degree” Yep, I too can see some embarrassing journalism around here.
• “It appears… word went up in the media centre that Lewis was at the end of the paddock showing off his diamond encrusted helmet”. Oh, I get it, you’re making a joke about safety apparatus and Lewis Hamilton’s cock. Genius. No, really.
• “British press coverage of Lewis Hamilton has been worrying, to say the least.” Well, at least Pitpass is worrying about things for us. The rest of us can sleep at night now. But if that is them saying ‘the least’, what would they be saying if they were telling us ‘the most’?

Pitpass.com is one of a very small selection of quality F1 websites that provides (occasionally) insightful comment and biting criticism of the world of F1 (the only other one that comes to mind, apart from the many blogs, is Joe Saward’s excellent Grandprix.com). Unfortunately, some of it is biting just for the sake of having something to bite.

More: Lewis Hamilton F1 news stories on Digg.com

Share on Facebook

Buy Lewis Hamilton’s autobiography, ‘Lewis Hamilton: My Story’ from OnPole.com.

Stumble it!