One Day At a Time
After we criticized Tribune sports columnist Fred Mitchell last week for some horrid examples of Cubune bias, he became quite friendly to the White Sox. First he wrote a whole entire column about Paul Konerko and Jim Thome's work on behalf of Children's Home + Aid, and then he nicely noticed out loud that some of the players in the NFL Draft wore Sox caps. Check it out:
Don't know why those football guys were wearing Sox caps. Maybe it just happened to be raining Sox caps. Or maybe Ken Williams trained a monkey to put Sox caps on people's heads right before they go on teevee. It couldn't be that those guys are Sox fans, of course, because Fred can see those guys with his own eyeballs, and everyone inside the Tower knows that Sox fans are invisible. Or, when something resembling a Sox fan does appear, the spectre oft appears in black and white, while the team itself sometimes appears faded, almost translucent. Like ghosts.
Fred and many of his Tribune colleagues don't know why anyone would wear a Sox cap, because they seem incapable or unwilling to appreciate the fact that the White Sox have fans. The Tribune even downplayed the significance of the 1.75 million Sox fans who appeared on the streets of Chicago, where it was awfully hard to ignore them, in October 2005. Maybe they can't see Sox fans because Sox fans don't behave precisely like Cubs fans (Thank God), or maybe it's a culture clash, like the way they can't see places like Englewood and Back of the Yards, or maybe it's just because they can't see beyond the 25-year Tribune/WGN/Cubs collaboration — the 25-year Cubune campaign — to put Cubs caps on everyone in the nation.
(That has been a largely successful 25-year campaign, we might add, involving lots of trained monkeys. Colonel McCormick was right: you can wrap snake oil in newspaper).
Psst: During the 20th Century, hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans migrated to other parts of the United States. A lot of them were from the South Side. A lot of them were Sox fans. So, now there are Sox fans all over the U.S. We know this, because some of us have been some of them. Some of us are also related to some of them. Maybe WGN hasn't always featured expatriate Sox fans on TV as prominently as it does expatriate Cubs fans. But we're out there. That's why "Sox World Series products have emerged as the 'third-greatest hot market' following the 2000 Yankees-Mets subway series and the 2004 Boston Red Sox," according to the Sun-Times (the Tribune missed that story). So yes, there are Sox fans in Chicago and there are Sox fans in America, but the Tribune doesn't know it, because the Tribune doesn't cover Chicago and the Tribune doesn't cover America. The Tribune covers its own private Wrigleyville. Nationwide.
Anyway, this was just a little slip by Fred. He really does seem to be trying. Easy does it, Fred.
Don't know why, but two of the first 11 players selected on Saturday—Redskins safety LaRon Landry from LSU and 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis from Mississippi—wore White Sox caps when they received their calls.You spotted the leakage right away, didn't you? It's that phrase "Don't know why," which certainly would not appear if the same sentence were written about someone wearing a Cubs cap. (Everybody knows why people wear Cubs caps: Because "everybody loves the Cubs!" Especially on WGN.)
Don't know why those football guys were wearing Sox caps. Maybe it just happened to be raining Sox caps. Or maybe Ken Williams trained a monkey to put Sox caps on people's heads right before they go on teevee. It couldn't be that those guys are Sox fans, of course, because Fred can see those guys with his own eyeballs, and everyone inside the Tower knows that Sox fans are invisible. Or, when something resembling a Sox fan does appear, the spectre oft appears in black and white, while the team itself sometimes appears faded, almost translucent. Like ghosts.
Fred and many of his Tribune colleagues don't know why anyone would wear a Sox cap, because they seem incapable or unwilling to appreciate the fact that the White Sox have fans. The Tribune even downplayed the significance of the 1.75 million Sox fans who appeared on the streets of Chicago, where it was awfully hard to ignore them, in October 2005. Maybe they can't see Sox fans because Sox fans don't behave precisely like Cubs fans (Thank God), or maybe it's a culture clash, like the way they can't see places like Englewood and Back of the Yards, or maybe it's just because they can't see beyond the 25-year Tribune/WGN/Cubs collaboration — the 25-year Cubune campaign — to put Cubs caps on everyone in the nation.
(That has been a largely successful 25-year campaign, we might add, involving lots of trained monkeys. Colonel McCormick was right: you can wrap snake oil in newspaper).
Psst: During the 20th Century, hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans migrated to other parts of the United States. A lot of them were from the South Side. A lot of them were Sox fans. So, now there are Sox fans all over the U.S. We know this, because some of us have been some of them. Some of us are also related to some of them. Maybe WGN hasn't always featured expatriate Sox fans on TV as prominently as it does expatriate Cubs fans. But we're out there. That's why "Sox World Series products have emerged as the 'third-greatest hot market' following the 2000 Yankees-Mets subway series and the 2004 Boston Red Sox," according to the Sun-Times (the Tribune missed that story). So yes, there are Sox fans in Chicago and there are Sox fans in America, but the Tribune doesn't know it, because the Tribune doesn't cover Chicago and the Tribune doesn't cover America. The Tribune covers its own private Wrigleyville. Nationwide.
Anyway, this was just a little slip by Fred. He really does seem to be trying. Easy does it, Fred.
Labels: Chicago Tribune, leakage
posted by Chicago Cubune Watch permalink
