TALKIN' SMACK: It used to be that in order to be suspended and/or fired as a columnist for the Boston Globe, you had to plagiarize (Jeff Jacoby), make stuff up (Patricia Smith), or both (Mike Barnicle). But now, longtime Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan has been suspended by the paper for a month without pay for saying on television that he'd like "to smack" Joumana Kidd, the wife of Nets superstar Jason Kidd.
No question that it was an incredibly stupid thing to say out loud, let alone on TV, and Ryan's refusal to take it back at the time was far beneath his well-earned reputation as a respectable journalist (Ryan has since apologized). But look at the ironies here: Joumana was, of course, smacked (literally) by Jason himself, and he was arrested for spousal abuse in January of 2001 (working for a league-affiliated publisher at the time, I stood in NBA headquarters two days later and watched as editors frantically removed Jason Kidd's likeness from the cover of the following month's issue of Hoop Magazine). And while Ryan was suspended a month for talking about smacking Mrs. Kidd, Jason Kidd actually did smack her and was not himself suspended, neither by the league nor by his then-team, the Phoenix Suns.
Ryan made the remarks on a local news show Sunday night, apparently angry that Mrs. Kidd has promoted herself to such a degree that she had begun using the couple's son, T.J., as a "prop" while attending her husband's games. She did the same thing last year when the Nets played the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals, leading to chants by Celtics fans of "wifebeater" at Kidd, and supportive quotes from coach Byron Scott and teammate Kenyon Martin that the well-publicized history of spousal abuse was Kidd's "own business." Boston-area sports radio host Glenn Ordway memorably commented at the time that "the Yankees are playing at Fenway this weekend, and we haven't gotten a single call about it 'cause you people only want to talk about [sic] Jumanji." With the Celtics and Nets now once again playing each other in the playoffs, Boston-Joumana tensions have flared up once again.
While the anti-Joumana feeling in Boston is, I feel, mostly driven by a desire to get under the skin of opposing player Kidd, I believe that Joumana is hated for much the same reason that Hillary Clinton is hated: since she has chosen to remain married to a powerful man who everyone knows has mistreated her, she's seen as opportunistic and power-hungry by those already predisposed, for whatever reason, to dislike her. Indeed, numerous media outlets have reported that keeping Joumana happy is a big part of the Nets' strategy for getting Jason to re-sign when he becomes a free agent this summer; it's been rumored that she will be offered her own show on the YES network.
(Note: this post appeared on New York Press Daily Billboard on 5/13/'03)