Breaking Down the Sprewell News Spree

For those who are certain that the overcooked response to the Latrell Sprewell case has a racist component (are you reading this, Jesse Jackson?), here’s a four-word refresher course that I hope will change your minds. Let’s call it Media 101:

We overreact to everything!

It’s our job, our sacred trust, our unique neurosis, our neighborhood, our personalized ZIP Code. As affirmed by the existence of the column about the Sprewell incident that you are now reading, it’s what we live for in this age of panoramic knee-jerk hyperbole. Turning hills of beans into mountains is what we are divinely appointed to do. It’s what makes us so lovable.

Why does the magnification seem so much greater today? Because it is. The Newzac title that critic Malcolm Muggeridge gave the exploding media some years ago is even more applicable today.

There were fewer outlets for embellishment in TV’s callow days. There was no Larry King or wall-to-wall “Dateline NBC” or MSNBC or Fox News Channel or you name it to join with the morning shows, local news and everyone else in fattening and endlessly schmoozing about a story until finally it becomes an obese blob that can’t be budged, crowding out reason and worthier topics.

So welcome to the funny farm, Latrell Sprewell.

But race has nothing to do with it. Our bluster is equal opportunity.

To review: The hot-headed African American Sprewell, a gifted professional basketball player, was fired from the Golden State Warriors and suspended by the NBA for a year after physically attacking and threatening to kill his hot-headed white coach, P.J. Carlesimo. Sprewell issued a two-stage apology, one day to the planet, on a subsequent day to Carlesimo. He also claimed that the NBA hadn’t granted him a proper hearing before giving him the kibosh, and that his punishment was too severe. Sprewell is appealing his suspension in what is turning out to be a “Rashomon” saga that sports reporters will try to sort out in coming days.

In any case, the Sprewell incident has generated sky-scraping headlines in newscasts and newspapers, kept talk radio buzzing and drawn commentary from nearly everyone but Saddam Hussein. Friday, for example, brought an op-ed piece in The Times by Jackson, euphemistically defining Sprewell’s attack as a workplace “blowup” and saying that “the overreaction by the league and the outcry from the public and the media cast a spotlight on the volatile state of race relations in America.”

Oy!

For words about the NBA, consult the sports pages. As for swollen responses from the public and the media, though, I refer Jackson and like-minded observers for starters to last month’s Story of the Decade. That would be the births of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa, an occasion celebrated so effusively and extensively on television, day after day after day, that you’d have thought multiple births were the ultimate family value instead of the McCaugheys going on the dole after creating their own population burst in an already crowded world.

Not persuaded? Then try Louise Woodward, the British au pair whose second-degree murder conviction in the death of 8 1/2-month-old Matthew Eappen was reduced by a judge to involuntary manslaughter accompanied by a sentence of 279 days, equal to the time she had already served.

Did you get enough of that story as it endlessly hurtled across the airwaves, as if somehow the issue of British au pairs in the U.S. had been on a short fuse just waiting to explode? On the contrary, prior to this case, when had you given a thought to them?

Want more? There’s Marv Albert, the NBC sportscaster and voice of the Knicks and the Rangers, who lost those jobs after pleading guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge of assault and battery against a woman during a felony trial whose undertones of kinky sex were massaged nightly by TV. To the extent, in fact, that by comparison, Sprewell to date looks like a footnote.

And there’s more.

The JonBenet Ramsey murder case has to come up in any discussion of media, especially TV, suckling a story even when it’s dry, in this case wildly speculating for more than a year about 6-year-old JonBenet’s family and the identities of her slayer or slayers. We kept hearing that the coverage was blowing the lid off of child beauty pageants. What lid?

Last January’s whipped-up, celebrity-driven coverage of the murder of Bill Cosby’s son, Ennis, fits this scenario too. As do the newscast Santa Anas driving those infernal freeway chases, the helium-pumped reporting lavished on the live episode of NBC’s “ER” and the night-by-night hand-wringing attending the previous edition of the Lakers failing to win an NBA championship.

Saving the biggest for last, moreover, there was that total eclipse of media reason accompanying the on-going enshrinement of Princess Diana. But you know all about that.

Convinced? Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a noted author, media critic and eloquent foe of ethnic stereotypes, isn’t. “While no sane person would condone Sprewell’s behavior or suggest he shouldn’t be stiffly punished,” Hutchinson said by phone Friday, “Sprewell is hardly the only bad citizen in sport to act up. Many whites do, too. But when they do, the double standard quickly kicks in.”

Double standard?

“When black athletes are accused of or are guilty of wrongdoing,” Hutchinson charged, “their punishment is swift and harsh, the public is merciless, they are pounded pitilessly by the media, and they become the eternal poster boys for deviancy.”

The same isn’t true for whites, added Hutchinson, citing as one example the case of New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe and guard Max Lane, both white and both among those being sued by a woman claiming to have been seriously injured when the footballers and some rock musicians allegedly landed on her after jumping from a stage at a Nov. 13 rock concert.

“Will the media call them thugs and gangsters, too, and beat up on them to the millennium?” Hutchinson asked.

Probably not. But a vast chasm separates their case and Sprewell’s. Although Lane has not been heard from, Bledsoe’s agent claims the quarterback did not hit the woman when jumping from the stage. But what if he and Lane did? You could fault them for stupidity and recklessness, but not with seeking to hurt someone, given the police’s stated intention not to file criminal charges in the case.

Sprewell, on the other hand, has not denied intentionally wrapping his hands around Carlesimo’s neck and also hitting him.

Meanwhile, I was glad to learn from Jackson’s piece in The Times that, despite murmurings by others about possible provocation by Carlesimo, he didn’t buy the Sprewell matter as a racial incident. I agree. It’s absurd to think that Sprewell attacked Carlesimo because the coach was white.

As for whether the media would have responded just as noisily if Sprewell were not black, I think the answer is yes. We won’t know for sure, however, until a coach is throttled by a prominent white player.