NASCAR Nation: Keeping the Muslim man down? (Or: Being intolerant of intolerance)

Another thing I refuse to blog about is the topic of media bias. For every left/liberal site that claims there is no media bias, there are another 100 right/conservative sites that can detail part and parcel alleged media bias. In other words, at last count, there were roughly 1.8 million blogs on the Internet that tackle this weighty topic; it's not my intention to add more heat but no light to the matter. (Besides, I find the topic really tiresome.)

Now: That being said, this report on NBC sending Muslim ringers – i.e., not really Koran-carrying Middle Easterners, but swarthy-looking men who might pass for card-carrying Allah lovers - to Nextel Cup races to detect supposed anti-Muslim bias is quite troubling.

I am no defender of Cup racing anymore, by any stretch. To a certain extent, the sponsors have taken over the sport, and while I can accept that – tell me, what doesn't money drive these days, besides this blog? – I have a much harder time accepting the crass commercialization that goes hand-in-hand with it.

I have a hard time accepting that Coors Light pressured Chip Ganassi to dump geezer Sterling Marlin – who was never really one of my favorites, to be honest - in order to put someone younger in the seat who is more appealing to the watered-down-beer-drinking demographic.

I have a hard time accepting that there's really no dues-paying in the sport as there was in the days of Rudd, Wallace et al, that the seats that high-profile seats that Brian Vickers, Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, David Stremme, Reed Sorenson, etc. now occupy weren't earned so much as they were given.

I have a hard time accepting that Garnier Fructis is a part-time sponsor in the sport.

I have a hard time accepting "Boogity Boogity Boogity!"

I have a hard time accepting a lot of things about NASCAR these days … but that's the old fogey in me coming out. (Change happens – get over it. OK, fine.)

Yet, the stunt that NBC is pulling – an attempted exposé of the NASCAR fanbase as the exclusive home of inbred, bucktoothed, Jesus-lovin', sister-marryin', James-Byrd-draggin', Matthew-Shepard-beatin', furriner-hatin' behavior – oh, and let's not forget the obligatory "redneck" epithet – is completely unacceptable, so much so that the previous transgressions I listed in the paragraphs above are truly inconsequential. And you know something? Even if the NASCAR fanbase was all of those things – and you will find elements of pure, unadulterated jackassery everywhere if you pull from a large enough statistical sample – what, exactly, is NBC's point, other than a half-assed attempt to confirm Blue State America's fears about their countrymen?

Not to veer off into Little Green Footballs land, but you will recall that it wasn't 19 rednecks who hijacked four bass boats and turned them into guided missiles on a certain September day some four-odd years ago. I'm not trying to perpetuate any xenophobia or anything like that – just making a point that if NBC truly wanted to create news (as they are doing with this Muslim sting), they might try sending some Christians to Afghanistan or the Middle East to get a true view of intolerance. I'm just saying.