ON THE DL

AJ Daulerio on Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, Whitlock, Hero Worship & Why Everyone Hates Him

AJ Daulerio joins us for the first time in a while. And he’s not happy with how big my britches have become.

It turns out, my commenting privileges have been de-starred at Deadspin. What does that mean? Well, I’m not really sure, but I do know it’s making a very vocal subset of Deadspin readers quite upset.

We start with a little bloggy business. Gawker is a huge blog organization and recently the highest ups at Gawker decided to restructure their commenting sections, eliminating people who weren’t adding enough to the overall conversation on the site(s). Some commenters were banned. Others were ‘de-starred’ to lessen their impact on a story (starred commenters are moved to the front of the line). The whole thing is pretty ridiculous, but in a tight community like the Deadspin comments section, from which several blogs have spawned, people took this as an affront to their civil rights.

And now everyone hates Daulerio.

Getting to actual news of the day, we discuss Michael Jackson’s funeral. How much was Daulerio able to watch and, of what he saw, how much of it was funeral and how much of it was sideshow?

We all agree that the last 20 years of Jackson’s life was some what of a circus, so his funeral should be no different. That said, we do wonder how many of the people who performed on stage at Staples Center, and how many of those hired guns on TV talking about the social and cultural boundaries Jackson crossed, are hitching their wagons to his star to get in front of the entire world one last time. Had his father not tried to plug a new business venture during one of the first interviews, we might not have such a jaundiced opinion. But how much of that exhibition yesterday was tribute and how much of it was spectacle?

We discuss the outpouring of support for Jackson, including people flocking to Los Angeles to be near the funeral, to what we went through with Harry Kalas. Is it all that different? If Jackson’s music touched someone’s life, is it that different than a local man we didn’t really know, but felt he was a part of our family?

My problem has never been with the fans, but rather with the breathless media coverage, talking in tones of reverence and sadness while on TV. This is a side show, just like the next story they’ll cover is a side show. The news

media latches on to a story, cares about it for as long as the ratings tell them they should care about it, then move on to something else. Gawker (shoot and even us) is not immune to it. So is it fair to reject the entire spectacle because of the way it was covered?

The notion of hero worship is an interesting concept and we transfer that concept to talk about Steve McNair. Because a man can sing and dance, or throw a football, does that make him a hero? Especially when news comes out that in their private lives, neither Jackson nor McNair were saints. Everyone has baggage, but is it fair to cast that baggage aside the moment someone dies and deify them?

That said, the McNair coverage has been equally terrible on both sides. The gun shy mainstream media has lauded the man because of his toughness on the field, mostly glossing over the fact that he died while, reportedly, stepping out on his wife and kids. But as Spencer Hall

pointed out at TSB, some of the blogs have been even worse, one going so far as to accuse actual people of murder and another finding any random excuse to throw half naked pictures of the deceased mistress (and speculated murdered) on the site in hopes of page views.

And now the MSM has hopped on that bandwagon as well.

We ask Daulerio how Deadspin -- a site that has never been afraid to cross the line -- has covered the story. How much of Deadspin’s coverage has been on the developments and how much of it has been

covering the coverage? And while we all understand the irony of having this line-crossing conversation with the editor of Deadspin, we wonder where exactly that line is. Has the line moved, or have we crossed it so long ago we forget where it ever was?

Everytime Daulerio is on our show, Jason Whitlock seems to chime in with something worthy of comment. Yesterday he penned two columns worth discussing, with the first being about McNair’s most egregious crime in all of this -- being an absentee father. I reached out to Whitlock yesterday to ask why he so vehemently bashes men -- and specifically black men -- when he feels they aren’t there for their kids. This wasn’t the first time Whitlock took an athlete to task for that. After telling me, via Facebook, that his columns speak for themselves, I wondered if he had a personal experience to lead him to such anger or if it was just a cultural responsibility as a strong voice in the community. His reply: “common sense.”

And maybe he’s right. But he does take McNair to task for not being with his kids enough on the same day it was reported that McNair spent the day fishing with two of his kids. Whitlock doesn’t judge McNair for stepping out on his wife. And he doesn’t judge that his ‘Becky’ was only 20 years old, claiming that “every man I know has a little Captain in him. We see a pretty young thang working her way through nursing or cosmetology school and it's just in our nature to pay a cellphone bill, a car note or get her nails done. It's what we do.”

Well, it’s not what we do, but good luck with that. Regardless of your thoughts on Captaining, it seems Whitlock’s only judgment was about the way he treated his kids.

If one man could write two things on the same day that are diametrically opposed, Whitlock managed to do it, penning a column about Serena Williams and how she could have been the greatest transcendent athlete of all time if she just stopped eating so much.

“BBWs — Big Booty Women — do not write me angry e-mails. I'm only knocking Serena's back pack because it's preventing her from reaching her full potential as an athletic icon. I am not

fundamentally opposed to junk in the trunk, although my preference is a stuffed onion over an oozing pumpkin.”

Yes. He wrote that too. I’ve never seen a stuffed onion and I’m certain I never want to see anything oozing out of a pumpkin. But how is Whitlock able to write this kind of stuff? We discuss how Whitlock is constantly able to get himself read. In a sea of thousands of voices, Whitlock is one of the only writers who can pull something like this off, and somehow come out the other side unscathed. It’s uncanny.

And to his point regarding Serena...well does he have a point? Clearly it’s misogynistic and chauvinistic and reprehensible, but is he actually making a point? Do we care more about photos of the dead girlfriend of a male athlete than the on-court success of a female athlete? Was Whitlock’s column an actual challenge to Serena to take her responsibility as potentially the most famous female athlete on the planet a little more seriously? (Note, we do not consider Anna Kournikova an athlete.)

Oh, and has Daulerio ever ‘Captained his own hoe’?

We make a hard left turn to talk about Roger Goodell. He and Jim Mora Jr, the new coach of the Seattle Seahawks, are starting a buddy comedy filmed at the base of Mount Rainier. That has to be why the duo are training to climb the mountain -- for the hilarity that will undoubtedly ensue.

Could you imagine Gary Bettman climbing a mountain? Or David Stern and Bud Selig base jumping? And we discuss if the trek up Mount Rainier is successful for Goodell, should he use the exercise as a team building experience for wayward NFLers. Should Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick be sent to climb a mountain, tethered together by ropes and pulleys? In all seriousness, it might be a fantastic idea.

It wouldn’t be a show with someone from Deadspin if we didn’t talk about Hitler. So we briefly address the comments of F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone who recently praised Hitler for his ability to ‘get things done.’ Why do stupid people open their mouths? And we discuss how the racism in Europe seems so much more overt than the racism in America. Both are bad, but is one worse?

We thank Daulerio for coming back on the show. Oh, and never ask him if he has anything else. I learned that lesson today.

Thanks for hanging with us another day.