The Sun(that bastion of journalistic integrity!), is comparing him to Jesus!
Tue, February 14, 2006
Pursuit of Gretzky a modern crucifixion
By MIKE ULMER
He doesn't deserve this. Crucifixions have changed a bit over a couple of thousand years, but the dynamics are still the same.
You need a mob convinced it's carrying out the will of the public, and you need a victim. The rest -- electronic thorns instead of real ones, soundclip jabs instead of those from spears -- is just progress.
Historically, the role of the person crucified is best played by someone who will appear uncontrite but unwilling to answer his accusers. Wayne Gretzky, an Anglican, always had an eye for detail.
Set against Team Canada working out only a few feet away, Gretzky's press conference lasted just a little more than five excruciating minutes. Andre Brin, the affable media relations guy from Hockey Canada, played a reluctant Pilate in delivering an exhausted Gretzky to the print and electronic media.
What followed was two streams meeting and creating a torrent: An indignant media with the thinnest of rationales and the natural and national inclination we all feel to take down someone who is really big.
Journalists are fun at parties. We're great at Trivial Pursuit, but we are subject to the same mathematics as any group. Put more than two of us on the same story and the group IQ lowers by 50%. Keep taking off 50% with each addition until we become this big stupid mass of microphones and notepads, a dumb, braying jackass convinced that somewhere, just beyond our scent, lies scandal.
The rule of thumb we use for famous people is that they forfeit the right to be treated fairly when they become public figures. Small wonder, then, that the phenomenon of writing about how things look and ruminating about the effects of whatever crap we dredge up occupy so much time.
Journalists, and only journalists, decide what's a story. Cops don't. Judges don't. We do. The story in fashion now is how will these terrible accusations affect our Olympic hockey teams.
'NO STORY ABOUT ME'
"There's no story about me," Gretzky at one point told the mob. "That's what I keep trying to tell you. I'm not involved."
What about the team losing focus, he was asked.
"I can keep it. You guys are having trouble. To me it's no trouble."
This is the price Wayne Gretzky pays to be Wayne Gretzky, for having the audacity to be ridiculously, unforgivably successful. You can win Stanley Cups, Canada Cups, World Cups. You can become the pitchman of all pitchmen, the absolute authority on image. In the end, it will make your detractors more plentiful and more vengeful.
There is no case against Wayne Gretzky. There are no charges for him to answer. No one, at any level of law enforcement, has suggested he did anything illegal, let alone compromised the game.
All there is, all there has ever been, is an investigation involving his friend and assistant coach Rick Tocchet and an assertion that his wife, Janet, gambles with sums that to the rest of the non-monied classes seem stratospheric.
There isn't smoke here. There isn't fire. There aren't even two sticks rubbed together. An earlier leaked report that Gretzky talked to Tocchet about Janet prior to learning of the gambling ring was proven false.
Yesterday another "insider" claimed the Gretzkys spent big money gambling at Vegas. Again no attribution. Again no inference of illegality. But that was enough for a reporter to question Gretzky's extravagant ways.
It wasn't a good day for the media yesterday. The top story in so many papers, the first item on sports shows, showed a tired man, a hero still but a tired one, his hands tied by his loyalty to his wife, battered by those who would otherwise swoon for his autograph.
What would he say? "My wife has a gambling problem" or "What we do with our money is none of your business as long as we break no laws"? And so he gave no answer. Courteously.
The vast majority of Canadians identify this same man as one of the finest amalgams of our virtues. And they are wondering what he did to deserve this.