good call my little nut. i agree with your comment.

these days mass media appoints crowns to people that are market friendly or have some lifetime entertainment story to offer for increased ratings. case and point was palmer's life ordeals cum saga of survival that was smeared/perhaps exploited across expn2 and 'usa today' not too long ago.

sadly, the mass market appears to file story's, such as palmer's amazing achievements, under lackluster titles, like 'a remarkable athlete with an empowering story' and forget about the pzalm until he pops up at the next 'extreme broad casted event', leaving the mountain dew couch potato to say to himself, 'oh yeah, i remeber that guy... what's his name... sha...shaun something or other. does he have his own video game or is that the other shaun guy?'

this same viewer (and most probable purchaser of axe body spray™) is the same guy who knows riders like shaun white through mediums like, cnn's ticker-tape of 'the flying tomato does it again!' or some weak 'outside magazine' layout or some low-end 'rolling stone' article that portrays snowboarders as fruitcakes that don't know vowel sounds from doughnuts.

now, don't get me wrong, these market friendly riders, like white and bleiler, are truly worthy of their accomplishments and respective appointments (whether it be a check for $50k for first place in the dude tube, an espy or whatever). however, i find that all of these little things have lead to the jock-ti-fi-cation of snowboarding.

when crazy money enters the ring, the one time local slope comps are now moved to arenas full of blue chip sponsors (like audi, gillet razors, red bull, volvo, etc.). these venues now house sports agents who handle their rider/client's interviews while that same rider tells his/her waxing team what s/he wants to make them go thirty-plus feet off the quater, so that they can win that solid gold 25K oakley watch.

now everyone wants a piece of a mass market rider-car sponsors, resort sponsors, even signature clothing lines at big box stores (a la mr. white's shaun white target collection®). what happened to the days of getting spit on by supposed adults while you waited for the chair and being called a punk by thirty-something tourons? those same tourons, are the same fools high-five-ing each other every time they see the flying tomato loft out of an aspen pipe at the x-games. the aspen x-games, where they shunned snowboarding at one of their mountains up until recently...makes about as much sense as awarding the olympic halfpipe venue to park city (who also hated you for snowboarding until recently).

the snowboarding that a lot of us view as a lifestyle (whether it be the riders that we look to or influence us in regards to lifestyle, style emulation, purchases or whatever) go beyond the 'usa today' headline banners and cnn ticker-tape. personally, i don't give two-shits who won the u.s. open or any other urban rail contest. i'd rather be hiking for powder, looking for some pillow line and jibbing some deep-forested log slide than having to watch some contest donkey from my couch on a sunday morning.

whose to say if espn will 'grace' a rider, like france-roy, to enter into their country club of kewl. something tells me france-roy wouldn't give a fuck either way, as long as it did not get in the way of her snowboarding.