Mariotti Has His Finger on the...

....asshole of Chicago. This flaming piece of shit was printed in the Sun-Times after an incident where Ozzie Guillen called into a sports-blab talkshow to chew out notoriously moronic morning host Mike North. It seems quite obvious why Mariotti is so quick to defend North--it's only natural that ignorant, loudmouthed windbags would feel a certain camaraderie for one another. And though it also seems quite obvious that Ozzie needs to keep his mouth shut and refrain from cursing on the airwaves (especially when my beloved White Sox are in 3rd place) the way in which Mariotti goes about his argument is typically ridiculous, irrational, and hugely embarrassing to the city of Chicago as a whole. Let's check it out.

Rather than disgrace the city again with his manure mouth, Ozzie Guillen should have stayed home and let a random fan fill out the lineup card. For this was a very bad day in what has become a pathetic 11 months for the Blizzard, who is pushing all the wrong buttons and, of course, saying all the filthy things that will get him fired someday. Ozzie's Flying Circus was cute to some when he was winning a World Series.

All I really want to point out here is how pathetic Mariotti's attempts at humor are here. The "Ozzie's Flying Circus" and "Blizzard of Oz"..."jokes" Mariotti peppers his White Sox articles with are nothing new, but they predate this blog and must be addressed. The "Blizzard of Oz" thing is clearly a pun on "Wizard of Oz," the 1950 whatever movie starring Judy Garland, but what it's trying to prove I don't know. I guess Jay just recognized that Ozzie's name could be shortened to Oz and that Wizard of Oz sounded too complimentary so he changed Wizard to something that must have struck him as vaguely insulting (though I can't imagine how). The whole "Flying Circus" thing has got me stumped. Am I missing something? Is there someone famous who had a flying circus whose name sounded remotely like Ozzie? Or is Jay just making a completely lame throwaway joke based solely on the fact that Ozzie is essentially a media circus. I really haven't a clue. At any rate, I am curious as to whether anyone besides Mariotti's dad (who's notorious for posting incendiary tripe in the comments section of another Mariotti bashing board) finds Jay's epithets even mildly clever.

Anyway, on with the opera.

But it came off as a clown act and sick joke Friday when he made an ill-advised lineup move, defended it by calling into the White Sox' flagship radio station from his car, then dropped profane language on a live show that inexplicably didn't bleep out his obscenities via a delay system. Compounding the crudity later was a 6-3 loss to the Cubs, who took advantage of Guillen's decision to start a rusty Toby Hall at catcher instead of hot-hitting lightning rod A.J. Pierzynski and watched Hall and other Sox defensive butchers relinquish a late two-run lead.

I love this shit. Just love it.We're playing, probably, the least important series of the season (against the non-playoff bound national league stinker of a franchise known as the Cubs) and Ozzie catches flak for playing his back up catcher. Let me count the ways this was not an ill-advised lineup move

--Toby Hall is coming off injury and needs to have a first start at some point in the season

--Toby Hall was widely considered the Sox's best offseason transaction and is considered an integral factor in the ballclub's success this season

--AJ Pierzynski got into some shit last year when Michael Barrett punched him in the face. Why give the Cubs any more motivation to win a game that should be seen as the most meaningless game of both teams's seasons?

--This is one of the most meaningless games of both teams' seasons.

Obviously Ozzie's decision didn't work out on Friday, but the season is 162 games long, not 1 game long. If the White Sox are going to be successful, Toby Hall is going to have to be healthy to spell Pierzynski into August and September. At any rate, all this is meaningless, because this article is not a debate on whether Ozzie was right to start Hall on Friday. That would be the kind of article a sportswriter would write. And everyone knows Jay Mariotti is not a sportswriter. Jay Mariotti is a tabloid journalist. And a tabloid journalist of the worst kind--the kind who focuses on straw men and smear campaign. Observe.

I've always said the Sox masses, discriminating folks who know baseball, would turn on Guillen if he ever started managing poorly and let his maniacal sideshows be a distraction. Seems that time may be upon us, since this was the sort of morbid loss that can bury a team. For some reason, Guillen threw Hall into the Crosstown Classic pressure pot in his first game off the disabled list. Not only is it too much to ask of a catcher recovering from a dislocated shoulder, it ignored the undeniable emotional surge provided by Pierzynski when playing the Cubs. Wouldn't you want him in the lineup of the opener when he leads the soft-hitting Sox in clutch home runs, hit a three-run homer the last time the Sox were at Wrigley and continues to ride the wave of last season's fight with Cubs pugilist Michael Barrett?

Observer how Mariotti distorts the truth and appeals to the basest denominators of Chicago sportsfan emotion. While it's true that Mariotti has always said the masses would turn on Ozzie (he actually said that early in the 2004 campagin, and well into the 2005 World Series campaign), he has never once admitted the Sox masses were "discriminating folks." Time and again he has attacked us for being the following:

--Fairweather fans

--Sheep who buy into KW's decision hook-line-and-sinker

--Sheep who buy into Frank Thomas hook-line-and-sinker even though he, Jay Mariotti knows the real truth about the "Big Blurt" (clever ain't he) and his "me-first" attitude (even though Mariotti is too big a pussy to set foot into a professional sports teams' clubhouse

--and so on.

Look at this concession Mariotti makes to the Sox fans to try to get them on his side. He also appeals to "the crosstown classic", something that forever lost all meaning when the Sox won the WS in 2005. The "crosstown classic" is a consolation prize for non-playoff teams. It has no actual meaning besides the win opportunity it offers. A game against even the worst (KC Royals) division rival has more meaning. Even a game against teh worst (Baltimore Orioles) non-divisional AL team has more meaning. The only meaningful interleague game imaginable would be against an NL playoff team, and lord knows the Cubs aren't that. But Mariotti is trying to stir up "Cubs-Sox rivalry" bullshit...He also tries to stir up the "intangible electricity" shit with the Pierzynksi-Barrett storyline. Anyone with half a brain should know that the taunts and heckling AJ would have received at Wrigley in the first game of the "Crosstown classic" would have heavily outweighed any "intangible" effect his presence in the lineup might have had. But here Mariotti is, appealing to the egos, insecurities, and superstitions of his "fan-base." Notice the one thing Mariotti refuses to appeal to:

Logic.

I'd go on, but what would be the point. Here's some more excerpts from this article that are asinine, pointless, and through-and-through Jay Mariotti:

Instead of listening to smooth jazz, ''Kathy and Judy'' or a recording of chirping birds, the Blizzard was listening to North defend A.J. on his way to Wrigley.


And how does Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf feel about his manager's smutmouth -- and North's insensitivity -- when the team's marketing people are trying to woo families to U.S. Cellular Field after years of ugly fan incidents? Last year, Guillen offended gays. This year, he's violating public decency.


Obviously, he has learned nothing from his humiliation last summer, the edict from commissioner Bud Selig to take sensitivity training.


I'm no shrink. But if Guillen can't remember what he said on the radio, he needs a long rest and shouldn't be managing.

No one's laughing anymore, Ozzie.

No one.

Do these attacks seem vaguely personal? Like Mariotti has some sort of grudge against Ozzie? They should. In case you forgot (and most people have, for reasons I'll get into briefly) the "incident" Mariotti dances around in these excerpts is when Ozzie called Mariotti a "faggot" last summer. In case you forgot, the outrage was at the bigoted slur Ozzie used, but that he was quickly forgiven after an apology. Mariotti hasn't forgotten that incident, because the one thing it showed, besides the fact that most White Sox fans like Ozzie enough to overlook this kind of thing, is that while most people condemned Ozzie's use of the term "Faggot", they didn't condemn his application of its negative connotations to Jay Mariotti.

What did Ozzie mean by calling Mariotti a faggot? He probably didn't mean that Mariotti took it up the ass (although I wouldn't put it past the "Blizzard"). He probably meant it in its epithetical form, using it mostly for its connotative value. Ozzie likely meant that Mariotti was

--a weak, cowardly individual

--effeminate

--stupid

Like I said, most people, myself included, object to Ozzie's association of these qualities with homosexuals. However, most people, myself included, did not object to Ozzie's association of these qualities with Mariotti. This article is only further proof that the "Blizzard of Oz" was right.