At the boiling point

If you remember where we left off last time with the Jay Mariotti situation, you'll remember that he has gone off into blogging and TV world (not so much the blogging quite yet) after leaving the Chicago Sun-Times.

We are now in Chapter 2 of the Mariotti saga taking place in a sauna where he is met by former colleague and organizer of the departure of the disgruntled columnist, Rick Telander. "Well let's bury the hatchet," Mariotti says. Too bad Telander only had a scalpel.

The site that originally posted this information, On the DL, also shows another aspect of perhaps the larger problem of the Mariottis in the world.

ATH exists because of PTI which exists because of The Sports Reporters which exists because of The Sportswriters on TV, which he was a regular on. Now every media market in the country has a round-table newspaper kvetch-a-thon. Did he help create a monster?

The question posed has a point. Reporters/columnists have now abused their privelege of what being on TV was supposed to be about. Instead of having a good discussion about the national sports news and analyzing teams, it's become a bitch-fest where columnists now try to piss as many people off as possible.