Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

When Dennis Rodman left the egg he hatched from and descended from the moon some 35 years ago, none of us in sports journalism realized what a problem we would one day have on our hands.

For a sports editor, he is the ultimate Catch-22. Call me Yossarian.

How do you report on the various activities of such a person without, in so doing, glamorizing those activities? But how do you not report on the various activities of such a person when that person, almost as a sidelight, is one of the best rebounders and defensive players in the history of pro basketball?

Are there really some screws loose with this guy, or is this the greatest case of fraud fruit-caking since Tiny Tim and his guitar? Is this guy Jerry Lewis or Carl Lewis? Or maybe Lewis Carroll? Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

A decision to publish lots about Rodman offends those whose sense of the normal order of things includes a dislike for public profanity, tattoos, nose rings and men in dresses. A decision to publish nothing but the bare minimum of information about Rodman offends those who see him as a rebel with a cause or a gimmick with a game plan and therefore someone with high readership and interest value. It’s the swamp or the moral high ground.

Or maybe it’s neither. Maybe we need to take Rodman as we take one of those big fat pills: One painful gulp at a time, with the additional joyous thought, like the headache you take the fat pill for, that he, now 35, will soon just go away. At least away from the sports pages.

One key element in our daily journalistic Rodman watch is that we make it clear to him and all his fans that we know what he knows. We know that his act is calculated, premeditated and done for the sole betterment of his pocketbook. Another way to phrase that is to say he is pursuing his American dream.

So go ahead, Dennis. Offend us. Insult us. Con us. Laugh at us on the way to the bank. But don’t think for one moment that we are a bunch of country bumpkins. We bought this Edsel because we wanted to.

Of course, why we wanted to is a mystery. Maybe we are a country devoid of the good-taste gene. Maybe it’s something in the water. This is, after all, a country that made Hulk Hogan a rich man, that loved the Hula-Hoop.

Maybe it really doesn’t matter that much anyway, since the worrisome stuff, such as Rodman’s being a role model, is misguided, anyway. Athletes aren’t role models. Charles Barkley, Phi Beta Kappa of the NBA, told us that a couple of years ago.

Thinking more deeply about this, the journalistic quandary is easily handled. Whatever mistakes are made in publishing or not publishing stories about Rodman will be answered the way we answer all matters of excess and quirkiness in the newspaper business.

We’ll blame television.