1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Kornheiser Takes Buyout

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by jgmacg, May 14, 2008.

  1. VJ

    VJ Member

    I guess that's my point -- don't take out your own frustrations with your newspaper management on Kornheiser. He's obviously the exception to the rule, but it took 29 years in the business to get that way.
     
  2. ECrawford

    ECrawford Member

    Hope I'm not infringing too much on a copyright, but I thought the whole Ashe piece should be somewhere on here ...


    The Washington Post

    February 8, 1993

    A Lone, Clear Bell, Mournfully Ringing

    BY TONY KORNHEISER

    Jackie Robinson. Muhammad Ali. Arthur Ashe.

    That's the short list of the most influential athletes of the second half of the 20th century. They're the ones who most profoundly spun the culture to a higher plane.

    Robinson, dead at 53.

    Ali, suffering from Parkinson's syndrome; his speech is slurred, his walk alarmingly slowed at 50.


    Ashe, dead at 49.

    Why?

    I wonder if the strain of being a pioneer, of carrying the hopes and dreams of so many people takes a toll. Can somebody tell me for sure it doesn't? I have written this before, and I write it again now: Arthur Ashe was my hero. He was a man of grace, of intellect, of moral purpose, of courage and integrity. Unlike so many athletes who lend only their names to things, Ashe lent his body and soul. You could count on him. He wasn't just a show horse, he went the distance. Already weakened by AIDS, he came to Washington last summer knowing he'd be arrested, and protested the U.S. policy on Haiti.

    I remember in the 1970s when Ashe went to South Africa, and played tennis there, and many American blacks and whites self-righteously criticized him for it and said he was a puppet for a racist regime, an Uncle Tom. Ashe braved their scorn, because it was more important for him to go to South Africa -- under the condition that the crowd would have to be fully integrated, co-mingling, with no seating restrictions -- to show all the people there, black and white, what a free black man could accomplish.

    And later, after the show horses had moved on to the next neon sign, Nelson Mandela got out of a South African prison after 27 years -- and the first American he wanted to meet was Arthur Ashe.

    You get to meet a lot of great athletes as a sportswriter, but not a lot of great men, such as Ashe. Most athletes run away from the public as soon as their games are over. They live in bubbles. Ashe wasn't like that. He would engage the public, perhaps because he understood that change is a movement, a conga line, not a bolt of lightning, and that movements need popular support. So he was never afraid to take his case to the people. He had the courage to take the hard road, and he never gave up on a principle, even if it meant inviting ostracism from other black leaders -- as if there were a "black position." Like Plato, he made his decisions on logic, issue by issue.

    John Thompson led the fight against Prop. 42 -- an NCAA proposal that would have barred colleges from offering athletic scholarships to high school students who could not achieve recognized minimum scholastic standards -- on the proper grounds it was exclusionary and, de facto, racist. Ashe argued for an even higher standard for college admission. One standard, Ashe said, for all students, regardless of race and background. He was that rare person with the composure and gravity and diplomatic skill to disagree with the movement and still stay within it. In the context of a revolution, that's remarkable.

    The first sport I played was tennis. The first big event I covered was the U.S. Open in 1971. Ashe was my favorite player. I had nothing in common with him, really. I was a diddy-bop white kid with a bad attitude. He was a bookish, skinny black kid, with glasses. But there was something about him that was so arrestingly cool out there. And then, every so often, he seemed bored with the chess-game quality of a rally, and he'd all but say, "Let's blow this popstand," and hit this go-for-broke backhand. I knew he had real passion, and it was a struggle to keep it controlled. Rod Laver used to clean him out, beat him 13 or 14 times in a row. I rooted for Ashe to beat Laver, and he finally did. I rooted for him to beat Connors at Wimbledon in 1975, because Connors was such a punk, and he did. I rooted for him to beat AIDS.

    It was always a treat and privilege for me to see Ashe at the Open, because I knew I would learn something from him -- some insight into a player, or into the world. Our conversations began with sports, but soon broadened to politics, arts, religion, ethics, whatever. He always had a noticeable serenity about him. But in the past few years, as he grew thinner and more deliberate in his movements, he seemed almost spiritual. There's a custom in Judaism, that when they take the holy book from the ark, and carry it around, you should touch it with your prayer shawl, then kiss the fringes of the shawl. I confess that when Ashe walked by I was sometimes tempted to reach out and touch his hand or his clothing, as if he were holy.

    I was sitting in the ringside press row for the Riddick Bowe-Michael Dokes fight at Madison Square Garden when I heard Ashe had died; one of the writers got it from one of the TV guys, and within seconds it was all around like a gusty wind. I stood up -- I don't know why, probably out of respect -- and I found myself staring directly at Jesse Jackson, who was standing too, one section away.

    It made immediate sense to me. There was Jesse Jackson, who had devoted his whole life to the same struggle as Ashe -- equal opportunity. But there couldn't be any more contrasting styles. Jackson is bombastic and theatrical, owing to his training as a preacher. Ashe was controlled and conciliatory, owing to his training as an athlete in a segregated, oppressive system, where, like Jackie Robinson, he had to be perfect at all times.

    I thought about how Jackson had become, like Ralph Nader and the late Mitch Snyder, such an important advocate for the disenfranchised. But how, like Nader and Snyder, he had to be confrontational to be heard -- because his constituency has no power. I thought about how if life were essentially one long adversarial negotiation, it would be the Jesse Jacksons of the world who would force the opposition to the table, and the Arthur Ashes of the world who would do the negotiating. They both recognized unfairness. But Jackson's special gift was to shine a light on it, and Ashe's special gift was to change the bulb.

    An announcement was made before the fight that Ashe had died. And Madison Square Garden was a fitting place for such an announcement, because Ashe had lived in New York for most of his adult life, and more importantly because the Garden is America's cathedral to sports, its holy place, and Ashe was one of America's greatest sportsmen and gentlemen and heroes.

    They asked for silence in the Garden as they tolled a bell 10 times, the metaphor on this fight night, a requiem for a heavyweight.
     
  3. Napolean23

    Napolean23 Member

    This article -- this work of art -- is the kind of passionate work that what we have lost in this 24/7 regurgitation newscylce, driven by Blogs and bull****. I'm a hypocrite, i know, in that I've cut my journalistic teeth and sold my game on the fact that I'm a new-aged, new-media gunslinger, but when I got the news today about TK's buyout, I knew that we officially turned the corner in sportswriting and -- after revisiting such epic work like this column -- I am rooting for the day that work like this is again appreciated and the day that, like TK said, newspapers make a "dramatic comeback."
     
  4. VJ

    VJ Member

    Or as they say on the blogs, / dick joke
     
  5. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Mr. Tony might want it to telegraph his particularly unfunny brand of humor.

    He's paid prodigiously to know what the fuck he's talking about. Or at least pretend that he does. And yet he flaunts his ignorance and shows his ass on MNF every week.
     
  6. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    He's great on PTI.

    His radio work has long been a question of personal taste (I vote no, but understand why people love him).
     
  7. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    PTI is such a solid concept structurally that it would fly with anyone reasonably competent. I really enjoy it when he's not on there.
     
  8. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    you're a fucking cubs fan, aren't you?
     
  9. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    Why do you hurt me, Tomas?
     
  10. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    sadly, i did think of you when i posted that. somehow i thought i could sneak it by without you seeing, though.
     
  11. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    I disagree. I think the show blows whenever it's anyone but Kornheiser and Wilbon. Their friendship makes the dynamic work so well; otherwise, it's hardly watchable. Just a bunch of (sometimes unknowledgeable) idiots screaming at each other.
     
  12. I read Kornheiser nearly every day in the mid to late 90s, before PTI. I was always impressed with his versatility. He'd have a great sports column and then the next day he'd have me laughing out loud with a Style column that had nothing to do with sports.

    The guy was a genius. I say was because he's just a caricature of himself now. Like Buck, I enjoy watching him and Wilbon on PTI, but he is unwatchable on MNF, which is clearly not in his wheelhouse.

    He also lost points with me when he responded the way he did to the Post's criticism of his MNF performance.

    I don't begrudge him for advancing his career, but everything is about moderation and sticking to the things you do best. I'd prefer he stuck to PTI and writing, and left MNF to a professional.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page