“Jay The Joke I”

When the Jay The Joke weblog first surfaced last May ("Welcome to Jaythejoke.com!" May 21), it billed its mission as “uniting Cubs fans and Sox fans through a common hatred of Jay Mariotti.” This was pretty transparent, I thought at the time, and honest critics immediately saw through it, with the weblog’s obsessive and even ritualistic acts of venting spleen toward the one sportswriter for whom none of the local sports cows are sacred providing proof that Mariotti’s effectiveness over the years had earned him his many enemies. Particularly among Chicago’s ownership ranks, where the fattest cows nest, awaiting slaughter.

Now, in its current incarnation, Jay The Joke bills itself simply as a “site for Chicago sports fans.” If this were true, it would be perfectly boring--and we would find it no more interesting than twiddling our thumbs. But it isn't true. And though the weblog may have dropped the act about hating Jay Mariotti from its self-styled reason-for-being, a quick glance at the weblog’s recent content shows that its Mariotti axe is as sharp as ever. Even if the people grinding the axe and swinging it remain dull and hateful and in themselves of no moment.

Take two of Jay The Joke’s recent weblogs: "In Which Jay States the Obvious" (Oct. 5), and "In Which Jay Makes a Big Mistake!" (Oct. 6).

My suggestion is that you take close looks at both of these blogs. Although each pretends to take offense with Jay Mariotti’s October 5 column, “Thankfully, Lovie not type for hype,” this cannot be the case. What the The Jokesters claim that Mariotti wrote he plainly did not. Their initial fraudulent claim evaporating on close inspection, we are left trying to figure out what The Jokesters’ real beef with Mariotti’s column is. (Hint: Since the current incarnation of the Jay The Joke weblog is as dedicated as was the previous incarnation to obsessive and ritualistic denunciations of the Sun-Times’s sports columnist, readers shouldn’t expect anything but. Hence, the denunciations, accompanied by the feigned offense over something that Mariotti in fact never wrote.)

Jay The Joke’s "In Which Jay States the Obvious" takes a 30-word excerpt from Mariotti’s October 5 column, decontextualizes it and badly misrepresents it—and then accuses Mariotti of misrepresentation!

Since the Official Members of Jay The Joke appear to be oblivious to how the weblog to which they've pledged their allegiance really operates, here for everyone to see are (a) Jay The Joke’s 30-word excerpt from Mariotti’s October 5 column, followed by (b) the relevant passage reproduced at length from Mariotti original October 5 column, context and all:


(A) Jay The Joke’s excerpt

Take Grossman, who said this after the Seattle romp: ''Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that.'' Mere days later, Rexstraint prevails.


(B) Jay Mariotti’s actual October 5 “Swagger” comments

Swagger can disappear in a hurry

Lovie prefers a quieter approach. Without saying he has tranquilized his players, he has done so. We know it because they're now echoing his thoughts, a familiar hypnotic effect in coaching. Take Grossman, who said this after the Seattle romp: ''Thirty-seven [to] six just shows what we're capable of, but we're a lot better than that.''

Mere days later, Rexstraint prevails. He was asked Wednesday what he thinks of the reams of praise for him and his team. ''We're in a routine now,'' he said. ''We know what's expected of us. We're going to try to keep it going, prepare the same way and have the same intensity level no matter what goes on around us.''

The same question was fired a different way. ''I've got a pretty boring life,'' Grossman said. ''I'm either at Halas Hall or at home. I don't comment on stuff like that. It's only four games, and we have a lot of work to do, no matter if people are praising me or the team in general.''

Alex Brown also got the message. After the Seattle game, the defensive end said, ''You should be talking about us as one of the best teams in the NFL, not just the NFC.'' Wednesday, he was telling reporters, ''We can't put much stock in it. You get a kick out of seeing it, but if you go out and play bad, you're back to square one. We want to get better. We did a lot of things wrong that last game.''

If there are trophies for four-game titles, the Bears would own one of the biggest in recent NFL history. They have blown out three opponents by more than 25 points and beaten another with a last-minute comeback on the road. Their defense, potentially one of the best of a brief century, has allowed one touchdown in four games and, more remarkably, hasn't allowed double-digit points at home in eight games. Grossman's emergence is legit after all our preseason gripes, and if he gets hurt, the offense won't miss a beat with Brian Griese. The lakefront has become a hellhole for other teams.

But any impulse to swagger or talk big should be quelled by events of last January. Before the Carolina playoff game, the Bears squawked about their earlier rout of the Panthers and how they planned to administer more pain. You know the result. ''We're slow to have a swagger,'' tight end Desmond Clark said. ''We had a swagger that game, and someone kicked the hell out of that swagger. We're worried about Buffalo.''

So, fortunately, is Smith. In his world, talk of Miami is a Vice.

Drone on, Lovie.


Those were Mariotti’s exact words. Anybody who doesn’t come by them already prejudiced by a devious mindset, bent-on denouncing Mariotti, plainly can see that Mariotti was paying compliments to the stabilizing influence that the head-coach’s personality and coaching-style have exercised over the 2006 Bears team. What is more, nowhere in this column does Mariotti attribute a “swagger”-comment to Rex Grossman. To Desmond Clark, yes, at the column’s very end. But never Rex Grossman. In Mariotti’s actual column, Rex Grossman, Alex Brown, and the rest of their teammates presumably have “got [Lovie’s] message.” And this message is (to adopt the familiar clichés): The season is long. There still is room for improvement. Sure, the Bears look damn good. But they haven’t won the Big Game in Miami yet. So stay focused. Stick with the program. (Blah. Blah. Blah.)

Of course, there is a mistake in Mariotti's quotation from Grossman. It occurs where Mariotti attributes the phrase "we're a lot better than that" to Grossman. In fact, what Grossman had said was "they're a lot better than that." Meaning the Seattle Seahawks are a lot better than that--better than their 37 to 6 throttling by the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field that recent Sunday evening, October 1.

Whether or not Mariotti’s sense of the stabilizing influence of the Bears head coach is true, I don’t know. It is a question for honest people to debate.

But what I do know is that in at least two separate weblogs ("In Which Jay States the Obvious," Oct. 5; and "In Which Jay Makes a Big Mistake!" Oct. 6), and at least six comments posted by Official Members of Jay The Joke, the weblog misrepresented Mariotti as “Criticizing the team's post-win swagger” (Oct. 5), and then went out of its way to falsely accuse Mariotti of attributing a “swagger”-comment to Rex Grossman. “Turns out Jay based Rex’s ‘swagger’ off of compliments Rex had intended for the Seahawks,” The Jokesters falsely asserted (Oct. 6)—Mariotti never having attributed a “swagger”-comment to Grossman in the first place. Only the incorrect "we're better than than." Instead of Grossman's actual "they're better than that."

This makes The Jokesters' YouTube presentation (Oct. 6) all the more dishonest: Reaching for evidence to prove Mariotti wrong about Rex Grossman and the "swagger"-comment, when in fact Mariotti never attributed a "swagger"-comment to Rex Grossman over which The Jokesters ever could prove Mariotti wrong.

Does anybody appreciate the scope of the vendetta practiced at Jay The Joke? First, The Jokesters falsely attributed something to Mariotti. Then, The Jokesters produced an audio-video stream to provide some kind of weird Internet creature-based evidence of the falseness of what The Jokesters had attributed to Mariotti. Last, this was followed by “Mariotti should be fired” (tyrone briggs). “[T]he guy’s a hack” (TomD). “Nice piece of investigation” (Darch—you don’t suppose Darch meant nice piece of fabrication, do you?). “The Douchebag strikes again” (Fred K). “[D]on’t expect an apology” (Ray Mariotti). And so on.

You see? The Dittoheads are all congratulating themselves over nothing.

Doesn’t anybody who visits Jay The Joke recognize a scam when he sees one? Or does membership in the The Jokesters Club require a certain kind of zealotry--a willful blindness to the axe-swinging vendetta behind the weblog?

Wake up, sports fans.

Pathetic, yes. But oh so Jay The Jokish.