January 14, 2005
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
Citizen Jordan: A basketball legend's soulless retirement caps his soulless career (Charles P. Pierce, Slate, 1/13/05)
Michael Jordan was a great player. He also was a great salesman. And that was all he ever was, and that seems to be all that he ever will be. There's nothing wrong with that. He made some great plays and some pretty good commercials. Has anyone so completely dominated his sport and left so small a mark upon it? From the very beginning of his professional career, and long before he'd won anything at all, Michael Jordan and his handlers worked so diligently at developing the brand that it ultimately became impossible to remember where the logo left off and the person began. He talked like a man raised by focus groups. He created a person without edges, smooth and sleek and without any places for anyone to get a grip on him. He was roundly, perfectly manufactured, and he was cosseted, always, by his creators and his caretakers, against the nicks and dings that happen to any other public person. He held himself aloof from the emerging hip-hop culture that became—for good and ill—the predominant culture of the NBA. Remember, he once warned us, Republicans buy shoes, too. He always sold himself to people older than he was.Charley Pierce might be my least favorite Journalist (with a capital "J") who is also a talented writer. He is one of those ideologues who thinks that his sports pieces are enhanced if he shares with us his purile politics. It was Pierce, remember, who wrote "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." But reading this article on Michael Jordan, I was more puzzled than anything. I had no idea what the point of writing this article was, until I realized that there was no point.
A couple of decades back, academia killed that great American art form, the short story. Plot, in the sense of something actually happening, went from a requirement of a good short story to taboo. Characters were to be limned, and the essential banality of modern American life, particularly in middle-class suburbs, must be illustrated, but nothing was to happen on penalty of scorn. As a result, the only good short stories today are genre stories, mostly science fiction or mysteries, and they aren't what they once were, either.
Now, apparently, the same aesthetic that killed the short story is oozing into Journalism. In fact, this piece is all aesthetic, which might be ok if it weren't a winding, mish-mash aesthetic that, in interior decorating, would be called "eclectic" if one were being polite. Michael Jordan has announced that he's involved with opening a new Las Vegas casino. For no particular reason, this causes Charley Pierce to write a piece scorning Jordan for being nothing but a transcendent player who took care to live a small-c conservative public life. His great fault: apparently that many years ago he didn't adopt hip-hop culture and tried not to alienate Republicans. Jordan, Pierce informs us, is no LeBron James. Somehow, I don't think that the Slate newsboys will be crying "EXTRA, EXTRA" today.
(Note, though, that like Harry Reid, Charley Pierce is a white lib born to the job of ruling on whether black men are sufficiently authentic.)
Posted by David Cohen at January 14, 2005 12:54 PMDavid, that was a *great* piece of writing.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at January 14, 2005 10:20 AMDavid:
What's fascinating here is that Pierce is, as you suggest, Jordan's opposite, a "sportswriter" whose politics (soul?) is so much his central concern that he can't be bothered writing well about sports. He makes the already painful Only a Game, on NPR, truly excrutuiating.
Posted by: oj at January 14, 2005 10:32 AMGetting a CD player installed in my car was a smart move on my part. I haven't listened to NPR in months!
Posted by: Governor Breck at January 14, 2005 10:42 AMPierce suggests that Jordan failed as a human because, in effect, he wasn't as charismatic as Muhammed Ali. His real persona is inaccesible to the public. WTF? His on-court skill wasn't enough to entertain you? There is something very wrong with Pierce.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at January 14, 2005 10:44 AMMichael Jordan is only the player most primarily responsible for making the sport of basketball an international phenomenon. While Bird and Magic saved it from going the way of roller derby, it was only during the Michael Jordan period that the sport went from minor league to major league. Jordan's skill, court smarts and obvious love of the game transcended the sport and made him a compelling figure. You can go to Nigeria, Singapore or NYC and can still see people wearing Bulls basketball jerseys with the number 23 on them.
The only other American sports figure with such a worldwide impact in recent generations is Muhammad Ali. And in his case, it was for stuff outside his sport as much as inside.
Writers as dumb as Pierce can cause nosebleeds.
Posted by: Bart at January 14, 2005 10:48 AMI lived in Chicago from 80 through 86, so I saw Jordan play a couple of times in his first few years in the league. I will never forget one night against the Celtics. Late in the game, Jordan had the ball at half court. He was staring at the basket and everyone in the place, from Larry Bird to me, high in the nosebleed seats, knew that he was about to drive straight to the basket. He did exactly that, and there was no way he could be stopped short of arming the Celtics. It was the equivalent of Ruth calling his homerun.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 14, 2005 11:07 AMAs far as the timing of the story, Pierce might have had his Jordan hostility meter set off by this story from late November. While it's not actually about Jordan, the connection to both him and to something you can be sure that Pierce disappoves of could have been the motivating factor to start work on a Slate article trashing Michael.
Posted by: John at January 14, 2005 11:19 AMKinda funny that this clueless sportsjerk lauds the hip-hop culture in today's NBA. Did he see what happened to the hip-hoppers in the 2004 Olympics? When the NBA crew played teams who didn't hip-hop but who *could* pass and shoot...they lost.
Oh well, somehow they got the bronze. And they could probably still beat Vatican City, despite the Pope's infallibility from three-point range.
Posted by: Casey Abell at January 14, 2005 11:40 AMThis is the greatest response to an article I have ever read. Clear, to the point, and truthful. Easy understanding is where it's at.
Posted by: Butch Key at January 14, 2005 12:16 PMDoesn't this smack a bit of racism, too? Does anyone demand that Dan Marino do anything than hawk products and count his money? Or Greg Norman? Or Pete Sampras?
Why is it only black athletes (Jordan, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams) who get taken to task for not being more than simply being good at a game and enjoying the money that earns them?
Posted by: Foos at January 14, 2005 01:35 PMCharley Pierce is also on Tim Blair's list of journalists who have falsely claimed that Pres. Bush held up a fake turkey in Iraq.
Posted by: George at January 14, 2005 01:36 PMFoos:
Yes, it's a little like the rascist attitude to religion. White churchgoers are repressed, mean-spirited know-nothings hellbent on oppressing minorities and taking all the fun out of life. Black churchgoers have a rocking, cool spirituality and are into natural highs and social justice.
Posted by: Peter B at January 14, 2005 01:43 PM"Jordan, Pierce informs us, is no LeBron James"
LeBron at 19 was a father without benefit of marriage. Just a typical NBA player.
Jordan had that gambling scandal so I guess he wasn't perfect but at least he was not a thug like about 95% of the NBA.
Posted by: Bob at January 14, 2005 02:07 PMPierce turns up his nose at Michael Jordan because he didn't have the gangsta chic to color his phenomenal success. How similar to the story blogged here recently of New York elites who pine for the glory days of Times Square rank with smut and winos.
Posted by: Frosty at January 14, 2005 03:25 PMOuch, hard words even for us small-j journalists, David, though I can't disagree.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 14, 2005 04:43 PM"his handlers worked so diligently at developing the brand that it ultimately became impossible to remember where the logo left off and the person began. He talked like a man raised by focus groups. He created a person without edges, smooth and sleek and without any places for anyone to get a grip on him. He was roundly, perfectly manufactured, and he was cosseted, always, by his creators and his caretakers, against the nicks and dings that happen to any other public person."
Which almost perfectly describes the presidential candidate Pierce surely voted for in November.
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at January 14, 2005 05:42 PMMichael Jordan must've pissed in Pierce's Wheaties.
Imagine: a young black man from the backwoods of North Carolina (yes, it's not *all* backwoods in my home state) works hard, listens to his coach, becomes a very good basketball player, helps his college team win the NCAA championship, goes to Chicago, helps them win, what, five championships, becomes one of the biggest draws in any sports league, by all accounts a nice guy (or at least not a thug), retires to become a businessman, and that's not good enough for Charley Pierce?
One question: Who the f*** is Charley Pierce?
Posted by: Bill Peschel at January 16, 2005 08:16 PM