Published: March 4, 2010

Dear reader, if you learn only one thing from this newspaper, let it be this: Bob Costas, sports announcer for NBC, anchor of the 2010 Winter Olympics broadcast, is inarguably the worst person in America.

A little background on Bob Costas (one of those people whose full name you must always say): born in Queens, he started college at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications but left before graduating to pursue a career as a sports commentator. He now works mainly with NBC Sports as their go-to sports announcer, using him for anything marginally related to the Olympics and any other athletic event they broadcast.

While that last paragraph may make him sound like a normal, successful sports announcer, I assure you that Bob Costas deserves every measure of loathing I have for him. The first and most important reason: he unhesitatingly hops onto the most popular bandwagon of the moment. Instead of looking for an original angle for a story, Mr. Bandwagon either repeats what the majority of commentators are saying already or simply states the painfully obvious.

His verbal beat-down of U.S. alpine skier Bode Miller during the 2006 Winter Olympics perfectly illustrates his “jerk” classification. After Miller painfully failed to win a gold medal in Turino, Costas criticized Miller for his failure to live up to the hype the media built up for him. As if that weren’t mean enough, Costas insinuated that Miller didn’t even try his best, saying, “…if you don’t care enough to consistently give your best and at least sometimes do your best, then pretty soon no one else will care either.”

Even when Miller won gold in Vancouver in the men’s Super Combined on Feb. 21, Costas reacted by simultaneously hopping on the Bode bandwagon and remaining a complete jerk, quoting Austrian skier Benjamin Raich, calling Bode both “crazy” and “the perfect skier.”

Bob Costas’s smugness is not limited to his musings on sports. Take his recent appearance on Jay Leno’s Ten@Ten segment. It might as well be a top ten list of reasons why Bob Costas is worse for humanity than Sarah Palin, global warming and hipsters combined:

• Lied to get his first job, which started his career in sports broadcasting. So his entire life is based on a lie.
• Made fun of respected broadcaster Marv Albert and made a complete stranger sound dumb.
• Made a creepy comment about Kim Kardashian. He is a perverted old man.
• Somehow managed to piss off the ever-friendly Marshall Faulk.
• Made another Barry Bonds joke. Hilarious? Five years ago, maybe.
• Still insecure enough to carry around a lucky baseball card.
• Makes fun of Winter Olympic athletes. I get making fun of the Winter Olympics, but not the athletes themselves.
• Favorite Sport: Baseball. I guess everyone has one redeeming quality.
• Hates on Michael Jordan for “selfishly” coming out of retirement and making Costas’s call for the 1998 NBA Championship the immortal last call for MJ.
• Makes fun of the L.A. Clippers even though they are nowhere near the worst team in the NBA.

Third example: Bob Costas on Bob Costas. A YouTube clip of Costas being interviewed for the Archive of American Television proves that most of America is still fooled by his boyish charm. I could only keep my gag reflex in check for the first five minutes. Mr. Bandwagon’s list of interests as a kid includes such fascinating subjects as baseball, football, basketball, “whatever was at the movies,” and Top 40 radio; he could not be more bland.

But now, this self-described “normal kid” can’t report on even the most mundane event without using some insane metaphor to make some unnecessary and overdramatic commentary. This makes me think that he either lied about being a boring child or that his commentary is just an overexcited act. More jarring is the fact that he lists Batman AND Superman as his favorites, as only someone as fake as Bob Costas could be so oblivious to that inherent contradiction. Unforgivable.

The same interview reveals the second side of Bob Costas: unfortunately, all words that accurately describe him cannot be printed, so we’ll go with “jerk.” At one point he “jokingly” refers to himself as “a perfectly formed 150 pounds,” but you can tell that he’s only half joking about the perfectly formed part, he actually thinks he is the bomb. The hair-dyeing, 5’7” bomb.

So for the love of God, please, stop your work for ending world hunger and help me prevent Bob Costas from destroying Earth.