Jay the Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
I paid my dues at Jay the Joke when I wrote about Jay Mariotti a few weeks ago. Jay the Joke’s the Web site that Matt Lynch and Pat Dahl set up to give Mariotti mockers a place to hoot from, and it served a sort of purpose when Ozzie Guillen called Mariotti a faggot and Mariotti let it be known he wasn’t happy with the support he was getting from his paper and disappeared for a few weeks. But when the Sun-Times freshened his contract and the prodigal came home, the drama was over.
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And from poster “Ny-ex chicagoan”: “I sincerely hope that [the despised] Fuckbrains Joe … is out tonight getting out of his tow-truck, quietly giggling to himself on how this poor guy is 2 minutes over the meter and gleefully anticipating the damage he’s going to cause to this guy’s wallet, and down the street comes a group of punks in a Mustang, drunk and tearing down the street, and here they see this fat blubbery mess of a man, and the driver says, ‘Hey, how many points for the fat woman over there?’ And his buddy says, ‘Ten! Ten points, Mitch!’ And so Mitch, this drunk son of a bitch, guns it and promptly runs over Fuckbrains Joe, and his fucking head rolls down the street to stop at the foot of CPK [for Cabbage Patch Kid, equally despised], who’s been watching the whole thing in sheer terror. CPK would pick up Joe’s head and kiss it a little, tears streaming down his fat fucking face.”
“The first rule of Jay the Joke states that all posted material should denigrate Jay Mariotti.
In the early going, there wasn’t much. A Wikipedian who’d suffered at the hands of Jay the Joke regulars wrote in testifying that Peterson’s entry was notable on the grounds that “Jaythejoke is incredibly popular in Chicago and has been featured on multiple news sources.” Then Peterson himself argued that if Wikipedia is committed to being a “free encyclopedia,” lack of notability is insufficient grounds for removal. “Facts are one thing. But who is to have the power to determine noteworthiness?”
Suppose he did apologize. He’d still have to deal with Georgie Anne Geyer, who made an appearance in that morning’s Tribune. “Even after [Hillary] Clinton lambasted Rumsfeld … one had to ask: Where has she been until now? With Clinton’s newest transformation, this time into critic of the war she consistently voted for … we enter a new stage of repentance. Forgive us, the late liberals are now saying, for the war was not fought as we thought. Forgive us and let us now become critics, for we are the truly good at heart. Well, sorry, but I’m not in a forgiving mood.”
A state appellate court ruled that the supreme court justices enjoy an absolute privilege and couldn’t be questioned on the Gorecki deliberations. But Thomas waived the privilege for himself, and then trial judge Donald O’Brien allowed written questions to be submitted to the other six justices that focused strictly on what Thomas said and did. Because McMorrow’s answers wandered into recollections of her own thoughts, O’Brien has ruled that the two sides can ask her to amplify them.
And here’s op-ed columnist James Martin in the same edition: “That makes [Gibson] the only person in history whose true feelings don’t come pouring out after having too much alcohol. Besides, someone who loves Latin so much should know that wine makes people speak the truth. In vino veritas, right?”
