Stay Classy, Mariotti: "Ebert Can Kiss My Ass"

By Karl Klockars in Miscellaneous on Jan 23, 2009 9:20PM

We made it about three weeks into our "No Mariotti New Year" resolution, but damnation if we have to go and bust it. In an interview with RealClearSports, Jay the Joke goes out of his way to generally shit on everyone and everything in his way. Including the Pulitzer-Prize winning, Steak & Shake loving, everyone's-favorite-movie-critic, Roger Ebert. This aggression will not stand, man.

After some pointless questions about Obama's impact on professional sports, Mariotti unloads (as he always does - insecure much?) on the newspaper industry, the Sun-Times, and Ebert specifically:

It's my life, not theirs. I wrote 5,000 columns for them in 17 years. I wrote on holidays, spent massive amounts of time away from home. Roger Ebert, whom I've met once, can kiss my ass. No one gave more blood to that place than I did, and if I decide it's going to die an imminent death, it's my call. And based on events of the last four months, I couldn't have been more accurate. The place is dead.

We could be wrong, but the Sun-Times - financially struggling though it may be - is still alive and kicking. It would appear that what Mariotti calls "accuracy" the rest of the world calls "completely and pigheadedly wrong." In addition, we'd love for the financial offices of the Sun-Times to go back through their reciepts and check how many hotel rooms Mariotti stayed in, how many hot dogs he bought, how many plane tickets were purchased for all that "time away from home." Numbers don't lie.

After some banter straight out of the AOL publicity and demographics department, Mariotti accidentally complimented - although he certainly didn't mean to - the Sun-Times, saying this:

If Hunter Thompson envisioned a newspaper during his worst drug trip, it would be the Sun-Times. It's a nuthouse.

I'm not sure what about that is supposed to be derogatory, because it sounds like a good time to us. Are there firearms, Wild Turkey and acid on hand in every S-T office? Because we're cool with that. We're also starting to think that we might need to change the "Get Well / Thumbs Up Roger" program to "Middle Finger Mariotti."