Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993 TAG: 9308220155
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chuck Culpepper
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I did it. Maybe you did it. People to whom I spoke did it. All in eager conversation. Worse, some clowns even took it to print, or to television, smearing the irresponsibility all over.
We treated the news of James Jordan's disappearance, and then the news of his death, like we were winding into the final moments of "Murder, She Wrote" and . . . let's see if we can beat Angela Lansbury to the punch line this time.
Anybody heard my theory on the Jordan case? Well, I think . . . foolishness.
"Murder, She Wrote" was the high-rated Sunday night show that trivialized murder by staging one each week so that it all came off as a tidy one-hour board game. Fun stuff. It was the kind of game we played with James Jordan's death and maybe that, although deeply tacky, is human nature. But heaven help the people who gave it extra legitimacy by writing about it or allowing on television that the disappearance "may or may not" have been linked to Jordan's notorious gambling habit.
Clever, able to tie shreds of "information" together in a single bound, worthy of air time on "A Current Affair" for our psychic abilities, we went about our way deciphering the case.
Never mind a nagging little bit of wisdom that anybody who wanted to make "a statement" about Michael Jordan the gambler was going to create the highest possible suspicion.
We couldn't factor that in; it detracted from the titillation.
Jordan browbeat the conspiracy theorists Thursday with a diatribe that vented steam. It was hardly even necessary. The gusher of evidence about the two young men arrested for the murder piled up day by day, burying the gambling tie in embarrassment.
Yet even if there had been some conspiracy exposed, it wouldn't have justified the reckless speculation over something so sad as murder. It shouldn't have made this opinion any different.
Do we know what a murder is? Do we still get it? Do we make our assumptions before we have a handy-dandy item called evidence?
The public-figure deal doesn't carry to speculation about a father's murder. The idea that Jordan's exalted status somehow entitles everyone to probe the mystery (especially in public) is a bunch of baloney. We may say what we want - we have the right - but we also may earn the just description as wrong in the process.
Do we want to be idiots?
\ AUTHOR Chuck Culpepper is a sports columnist for the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.
by CNB