“comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable”
Mr. Dooley, ca. 1900
For every last one of the more than 150 real or imaginary Internet I.D.s currently signed-up to play ball at Jay The Joke’s Members’ List, a few questions are in order.
First and foremost: If in the spirit of Finley Peter Dunne’s old Mr. Dooley character, one of the, and perhaps the most memorable and most revered definition of journalism both around these parts as well as nationally is to comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable, then who among us does a more bang-up job of plying this trade to the Chicago sports scene: Jay The Joke? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti?
Second: Beyond the splitting of single hairs plucked from the head of Jay Mariotti (which, I wholeheartedly concede, Jay The Joke and its 150-plus members do better than anybody else—and thanks to which, the rest of the planet sleeps more peacefully at night), who among us do you think rakes more of the muck that sticks to the heels of the millionaire owners, their millionaire athletes, and the sports media around Chicago that cater to them both: Jay The Joke? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti?
Last but not least: When, instead of muckraking among millionaire owners and over-paid, grotesquely pampered, even fetishized athletes, the topic shifts to single-issue navel gazing and acts of onanistic projection (Splat!), whose work do you suppose enjoys a greater freedom of movement and target-selection, and whose work more slavishly follows the little sneezes and coughs of the other fellow’s: Jay The Joke’s? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti’s?
In conclusion: There are literally dozens upon dozens of reporters, columnists, and hangers-on working the Chicago sports beat for the many print, radio, television (cable especially), and web-based media that take a keen interest in this bread-and-butter enterprise of their daily news packages. Out of the lot of them, the one sports columnist in whose name a website was created for the exclusive purpose of attacking him, and attacking him, and attackng him some more is the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti. Don't you find it at least a little bit curious that the columnist who is by far the least popular—no, the most despised—among the richest and most powerful ownership figures on the Chicago sports scene, also happens to be the columnist singled-out by a website that exists to attack him?
Wake up, sports fans.
Perhaps the elementary suck-up motive of the family of administrators at Jay The Joke is sufficient to explain the focus of their labors. But what about the rest of the weird Internet creatures who flock to this website and lend their support to it, oftentimes with fanatical zeal?
Mr. Dooley, ca. 1900
For every last one of the more than 150 real or imaginary Internet I.D.s currently signed-up to play ball at Jay The Joke’s Members’ List, a few questions are in order.
First and foremost: If in the spirit of Finley Peter Dunne’s old Mr. Dooley character, one of the, and perhaps the most memorable and most revered definition of journalism both around these parts as well as nationally is to comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable, then who among us does a more bang-up job of plying this trade to the Chicago sports scene: Jay The Joke? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti?
Second: Beyond the splitting of single hairs plucked from the head of Jay Mariotti (which, I wholeheartedly concede, Jay The Joke and its 150-plus members do better than anybody else—and thanks to which, the rest of the planet sleeps more peacefully at night), who among us do you think rakes more of the muck that sticks to the heels of the millionaire owners, their millionaire athletes, and the sports media around Chicago that cater to them both: Jay The Joke? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti?
Last but not least: When, instead of muckraking among millionaire owners and over-paid, grotesquely pampered, even fetishized athletes, the topic shifts to single-issue navel gazing and acts of onanistic projection (Splat!), whose work do you suppose enjoys a greater freedom of movement and target-selection, and whose work more slavishly follows the little sneezes and coughs of the other fellow’s: Jay The Joke’s? Or the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti’s?
In conclusion: There are literally dozens upon dozens of reporters, columnists, and hangers-on working the Chicago sports beat for the many print, radio, television (cable especially), and web-based media that take a keen interest in this bread-and-butter enterprise of their daily news packages. Out of the lot of them, the one sports columnist in whose name a website was created for the exclusive purpose of attacking him, and attacking him, and attackng him some more is the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti. Don't you find it at least a little bit curious that the columnist who is by far the least popular—no, the most despised—among the richest and most powerful ownership figures on the Chicago sports scene, also happens to be the columnist singled-out by a website that exists to attack him?
Wake up, sports fans.
Perhaps the elementary suck-up motive of the family of administrators at Jay The Joke is sufficient to explain the focus of their labors. But what about the rest of the weird Internet creatures who flock to this website and lend their support to it, oftentimes with fanatical zeal?
posted by Robert Bonner at 11:59 AM
<< Home