Jay Marriotti’s Bonehead Call
The Kid from ‘Tude Town hadn’t been around long enough to appreciate that Chicago has an attitude of its own, and deference to authority isn’t central to it. So Mariotti wrote a column ripping Michael Jordan for not going to Washington. “This is about the most disturbing, irresponsible and irrational thing Jordan has ever done in public life,” fumed Mariotti about Jordan’s decision to play golf in North Carolina while the other Bulls schmoozed with the president.
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This sweeping judgment was ridiculous. As Mike Royko pointed out the next day, the sojourns of championship teams to the rose garden are “strictly political hokum arranged by the president’s political propagandists.” The jocks do the president a favor–but apparently Mariotti thinks that’s as it should be. He wrote, “The only other member not to appear was John Paxon, who had a good excuse–he was effectively working for Bush, speaking to kids in a federally sponsored drug program.”
“Until the day comes that the White House is declared a palace and its royal occupants are granted the power to summon their subjects, there is no reason that Michael Jordan or any other free citizen of this free country ought to be chastised for not showing up to be George Bush’s, or anyone else’s, political prop. That issue, we thought, had been pretty clearly settled when the founding fathers gave another George–George III–the gate.”
We called Jarrett. “I got more calls on this–a sporting event!–than I’ve gotten on any other column,” he said with some rue. “All of them positive, thanking me for answering him.” Any from whites? we asked, and Jarrett said the calls ran about half and half. “One person called saying he’d had a lot of disagreements with me on many subjects, but I was dead on target on this.
He went on, “I guess what bothers me is I wrote my column as a sports issue, a Bulls issue. And now there are various factions–I’m not really talking about Sun-Times people–trying to turn it into a political issue, a race issue. If Royko and Jarrett and so on want to write what they want about this issue, so be it. I’m not uncomfortable at all about people writing anything about me.”
At least Mariotti has clarified that attitude of his. Michael Jordan should have been fined for not calling on the president. Horace Grant was properly fined for speaking his mind. If Mariotti doesn’t succeed in Chicago he might look for work on the Rehnquist Supreme Court.
