Mike Downey, Trib Obsessed with Drunken TV Woman's Rant
By Margaret Lyons in News on Jan 24, 2008 9:44PM
Tribune sportswriter Mike Downey briefly departs from the sporting world to announce the end of a glass ceiling today in his "In the Wake of the News" column, True equality: Both Sexes can be Ingrates". The column includes a roundup of "publicly humiliating stunts that female TV personalities have pulled" in recent months, beginning with ESPN's Dana Jacobson, who got liquored up at an off-air "Mike and Mike" roast last week and laid into Notre Dame's sacred "Touchdown Jesus" (she's an alum of rival Michigan).
Female broadcasters are making the same career-ending blunders as their male counterparts these days, but in many cases, they're receiving more negative press. Jacobson seems to have dropped the F-bomb a few times (gasp!) while deriding Notre Dame and the Touchdown Jesus, but videos of the roast haven't been released, and accounts vary as to what she said exactly. [Ed note: Fuck Notre Dame, fuck Touchdown Jesus" and "fuck Jesus," apparently.]
In his column, Downey takes a few lines to show how a real man roasts:
As a member of the male species, may I say it's a relief to see how you women have been catching up to us pigs and pagans, slowly but surely, in advancing to high-profile media positions and then proceeding to become notorious for irresponsible and embarrassing behavior?
Do we detect a tinge of schadenfreude? Downey isn't the only Trib writer covering Jacobson though; Manya Brachear also devoted her religion blog to the story yesterday ("Dana Jacobson roasts Jesus").
This is tabloid fodder that the Trib is seizing on in an attempt to make news where there isn't – most other big papers gave the incident only passing reference. Surprisingly, it's Jason Whitlock at FOX Sports that gets it mostly right:
The second-best thing about Jacobson's rant is that it drew attention to the lame Mike and Mike roast. ESPN desperately wants you to believe Greenberg and Golic are big stars. They're not. If they were, they wouldn't have an F-list celebrity/assclown like Jacobson roasting them.
--Mark Boyer