What do Tommie Harris and Sarah Palin and Bob Knight and basically all professional athletes and coaches and really just everyone in the country have in common? They hate the media. Because the media, you see, they're the evil ones. They're the ones that antagonize. That ask questions. That second-guess why, you know, the Bears are so readily allowing Kerry Collins to waltz down the field. How dare they, you know?
That's why Tommie Harris took a stand yesterday. Unfortunately, it got lost in the Cubs-Sox offseason insanity, but it was awesome. It may have been entirely incoherent and, at best, hilarious, but it was a stand nonetheless:
"I found out another thing, you think a lot of fans are saying a lot of negative stuff but really it’s the media that keeps us going," Harris said. "It’s what you guys have to do. It’s not everybody in the media. It’s certain guys, and you know who you are. I pray for you guys and hope you can sleep at night."
"If I was on the outside looking in, obviously, then I’m not a football player," Harris said. "I’m a fan. So that means I’d be a fan and sit home and enjoy what they’re doing. If they did have anything wrong the defense, I would know that my coach who I am being a fan for would take care of it. That he knows how to do that. You guys are more than regular fans. Your opinion kind of hurts. I went home Monday and I read the newspaper and I was like, man, these guys are killing us."
There was a bunch more where that came from, and you really have to hear the audio or see the video to enjoy it fully. Over the course of a few minutes, Harris switched back from "don't criticize us, it hurts my feelings" to "it's OK to criticize, just don't lie" to "it's not the players' fault, we didn't get drafted here," even though Harris just signed a contract through 2012. It's really difficult to parse. The only overriding theme was: the media sucks.
Which is partially true, sometimes. Maybe some people in the media do suck. We know we do (and this is the royal we here, not the "everybody at NBC we"; basically, if it wasn't for our editors, we would make ourselves look stupid much more often than we already do). But most of the people covering the Bears do an awfully good job. They ask tough questions but avoid the pack mentality and the righteous indignation that characterizes the New York press corps, and but for the occasional foray into Ditkaism, the Bears media is pretty competent.
It's just ... no one likes to hear when they suck. Especially, apparently, not Tommie Harris. But blaming the media for it is akin to shooting your postman to avoid paying your credit card bills. Or something like that. We're not very good at metaphor, either.
