It's Like He Never Left Chicago

By Chuck Sudo in News on Aug 25, 2008 7:37PM

The Beijing Olympics are over, which means that Jay Mariotti has returned Stateside after being his verbose self for two weeks in mainland China. The summation of Mariotti's final Beijing-datelined column? "China is creepy!" It's worth noting that Mariotti filed the column just as he was leaving China on a jet plane and free from being detained for "re-education" by authorities.

We know this shouldn't have been unexpected. After all, Mariotti filed 28 columns during a two-week span in Beijing. Of those 28, 9 were about Michael Phelps that so fawned over the Baltimore Bullet they bordered on gay slash fiction, 6 on the US men's basketball team and five on emerging "creepy" superpower China. The subjects of Mariotti's other columns? Brett Favre, the opening ceremonies, Becky Hammon and Mariotti's own climbing of the Great Wall (and near-coronary in doing so). (BTW, big propers to the masochists at Jay the Joke for, as always, doing the Lord's Work and keeping tabs).

Contrast Mariotti's with the columns of fellow "Bright One" columnist Greg Couch, who was also
in Beijing. Couch went into the dark corners of the city, interviewed athletes, covered a plethora of events and dove deep to understand the behind-the-scenes goings on. It makes one wonder why — if he insists on doing such lazy, mediocre work — Mariotti even carries a passport. [S-T, Jay the Joke]