The Four Faces of Tony Kornheiser by Jay Hepner

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Thank you. Thank you very much.

And now, on with our show...

Newspapers are so such last century's bellwether of what's happening now, and myself so such the avid reader of said that, should I perchance miss a day's newsprint, I stand in grave danger of missing such minutia, tied as it is directly to the business and dealings of said last century's bellwether. All that verbosity by way of explaining that, in Googling up TK on the occasion of his 60th B-day--Happy 60th Tony! Just turned sixty and still so nifty!--This is the kind of slant-rhymed doggerel that passes for high art around here--I've only just discovered, courtesy of The Big Lead that your hero and mine, Mister Tony "TK Stack Money" Kornheiser has taken a buyout from the Washington Post, as reported by Dan Steinberg, nevermore to write there again.

I bite my tongue at you, Sir! It is true Sir, that I do bite my tongue. . .

Because we all know Tony will write again. He has only ever and always maintained, and I've got him on record, February 17, 1998, saying, "I'm telling you, Jay, it's all I ever wanted to do, be a sportswriter!"

Look at him now, Ma!

So herewith, please find an entire article, a little thing I call "The Four Faces of Tony Kornheiser."

I was both savvy and fortunate enough, way back in late '97, early '98, both to know the KornDawg was gonna be the next big thing, and to get him to agree to an interview, from which developed a modest friendship.

PTI is a smashing success--all props to Erik Rydholm for that, as Tony has attested. Tony's insights on MNF are far underrated by the hoi polloi sports fans who, let's face it, can't carry Tony's dictionary, even if his jockstrap doesn't prove too taxing--apologies in advance to all the hoi polloi sports fans who won't bother going to their dictionaries to find out what "hoi polloi" means. Hint: it's Latin guys, language of the gladiators.

But Tony won out over other competitors, notably a legion of ex-jocks, because of his insightful commentary, none of which this writer remembers, for most of which this writer has never heard.

Ain't got no cable! Ain't paying for TV!

But this writer has known Tony Kornheiser for the time period beginning in late 1997, and has always found him gracious, caring, megalomaniacal, somewhat dim in certain areas of pop culture, but mostly, one of the towering intellects in the field of sports journalism, as oxymoronic as that may be.

Really, it isn't.

But mostly, where this writer is concerned, and far superseding all the intellectual heft, Tony has been gracious and caring.


But let Tony tell his side--he's quoted liberally--uh, uh huh huh "liberally"--in the now available for the first time for general, public and free consumption--which certainly wasn't the writer's intention 10 years ago--the immortal masterpiece, of which TK himself once opined, "You pretty much got it right" :

"The Four Faces of Tony Kornheiser"

by

Jay Hepner



Passing the White House en route to interview Tony Kornheiser, I couldn't
believe what I was hearing on ESPN radio.

"Cincinnati doesn't take us live," Tony was complaining, "so all you
people in Cincinnati should go down and shoot the station manager!"

"No! No! No!" immediately responded Andy Pollin, Tony's co-host and
sports director at WTEM in Rockville, Maryland, where the Kornheiser Show
started seven years ago. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" asked Tony. "They should take the show live."

"Because somebody might actually do it!" the audibly shocked Andy replied logically enough, given the illogic of both the suggestion and the reasoning of anyone who might take Tony seriously.

"All right, don't shoot anybody," Kornheiser relented, "but tell 'em to put us on live. I mean we're better than whatever crap they're playing! I mean, come on!"

Is this guy serious? Or just another loudmouth given carte blanche by an entire radio network to speak and annoy? As I scanned K Street that soggy afternoon for a cheap empty parking lot near the Christian Science Monitor Building, Radio Free Kornheiser headquarters Monday through Friday, 1 to 4 Eastern, it occurred to me that there were four quarters in a game of Tony Kornheiser. Four impressionists in the Kornheiser Gallery of Art painting four faces of Tony Kornheiser.

* * * * * * * * *

Imagine this: A friend has persuaded you to forsake the tapedeck and the
FM and in favor of The Tony Kornheiser Show, at the time broadcast on one
of those solar-powered AM stations, hi-tech like a sundial.

You've enjoyed Tony's sportswriting in the Washington Post over the years, particularly his "Bandwagon" columns of the 1991-92 NFL season, which he calls "the highlight of my career." That year, the Washington Redskins had their greatest season: winning seventeen of nineteen games, the two losses by a combined five points; setting a league record for outscoring opponents. A Super Bowl juggernaut.

Tony had 'em pegged from the git. Following the 'Skins nationally televised 45-0 Lion taming on the Sunday Night opener, Tony's Tuesday column noted the meaninglessness of the Skins 1-3 pre-season, then breezed on "to more pressing concerns: airline reservations and hotel accommodations in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl." 45-0, Tony assured us, was "road kill." And the fact that Barry Sanders didn't play? "I can't believe anyone called his bookie and said: '...Get me off the Lions. Gimme the Redskins, minus 44 1/2.'"

Washington laughed, but not about the hotel accommodations. Kornheiser later insisted he was kidding.

"My plan was to pump up the Redskins to ridiculous size, like a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day Parade, then blow 'em up real good as soon as they lost," Tony writes in REDSKINS: A History. "It was after the Redskins [went to 4-0] that I started using the B word -- to conjure up fair-weather fans 'jumping on the bandwagon.' I was just waiting to savage them for jumping off when the Redskins began losing."

But the Redskins kept winning, and Kornheiser "rode the Bandwagon as hard as I could. If everybody suddenly thought that I had this astounding ability to call a Super Bowl winner like Babe Ruth calling a home run,…who was I to say no?"

In a season of happy Mondays, Kornheiser's Tuesday columns set the tone.

So turning to Kornheiser is natural, even if it does mean going AM.

You're driving, enjoying. He's funny, he's inside: you get it. He's Uncle Tony, your radio pal.

Then somebody calls up, says "Hey Tony, how ya doing?"

A tremendous explosion, then the bass voice of Charlie Steiner, Tony's Long Island pal since high school, currently calling baseball games on ESPN: "BANNED! From the Tony Kornheiser Show!" 1

What happened? Ya feelin' alright? Don't ask! Edgily replacing the mouthpiece on the receiver, you decide not to hazard a visit to Tony's radio playhouse.

Tony blithely saunters on, "Ronnie on line one. Peace and love, Ronnnie."

Peace and love? After the Hiroshima aloha you gave the last guy, this cat gets "Ode to Joy"? What gives?

Face Number One, "'Rip This Joint' Tony," named for both his abiding love of the Rolling Stones and his obvious delight in verbally eviscerating whatever irks him. Usually who.

He scares children. An intern at WTEM, describing a chance meeting with Kornheiser just outside the broadcast booth said: "He gave me this look like, 'Who the hell are you!?' I was scared to tell him I wrote a column for my high school newspaper."

Obviously a listener.

He alienates adults. Listen to one unfortunate who incurred the wrath of Kornheiser: "He is an arrogant, unpleasant human being. Very self-centered. But he'll tell you that himself."

And he will. Reclining in his air-chair in store-faded jeans, Oxford shirt sans tie and olive hiking boots cum sneakers--heakers--he does just that.

"I am unbearably self-absorbed," Kornheiser offers, finishing a half-liter of Poland Spring water. "I have got no patience for anybody at all except myself, and I run out of patience for myself very quickly. I do not want to have a conversation about you, I want to have a conversation about me; and that will bore me and I will leave. I want to be catered to on a million levels. I want everybody to drop what they're doing and pay attention to me...I'm very quick-tempered and extremely intolerant.

"And on all those levels, I am a complete asshole.

"And the only thing that prevents people from saying that out loud, is that I'm reasonably entertaining at what I do. If I weren't, somebody would've shot me a long time ago."

There he goes again, the only liberal in America for wanton gunplay.

But a funny thing happens as Kornheiser rips the disingenuous, the pretentious and the stupid, a few funny things. And you're laughing out loud, but not because Tony's bald pate, cucumber nose and slightly lurching gait compare favorably to those of Alice the Goon in old Popeye cartoons.

Listen to Tony on Marion Barry's accomplishments as mayor of Washington, D.C.:

First term: You were not busted for smoking crack.

Second Term: You were not busted for smoking crack.

Third term: Ooops....

Tony then laments, "The feds have stripped you of every meaningful responsibility...You aren't a real mayor anymore. You're strictly ceremonial now, like Mayor McCheese. You ought to wear a button that says: 'Welcome to Washington, D.C. Try our Filet o' Fish."

Here's Tony explaining why he might not have been a perfect fit at the New York Times: "I wasn't slavishly observant of the Times stylebook. For example, I once violated official Times style by referring to 'a small cylindrical object designated to surround and transport products or goods' as 'a box.'"

And who could forget Tony's gentle poke in the eye of Brian "Kato" Kaelin? "I have leftover lasagna that is better at abstract reasoning."

Lines like these illustrate why, had I been more prescient, I could have clipped, cut and pasted my own Kornheiser collections and made a killing selling bootleg versions of Pumping Irony and Bald As I Wanna Be out the back of a Chevy van.

And so, by puncturing the pomposity and posturing of fools, we see that Tony Kornheiser is, in fact, not an asshole.

He is however, an idiot. "Meet Tony Number Two, a co-ed majoring in domestic engineering…” Not exactly. The complexion of the Second Face of Tony Kornheiser is dominated by his total ineptness at all things mechanical and agricultural, i.e. "everyday man work."

This is a guy whose garden yields "a total of two usable tomatoes, the size of kidney stones." His jealousy of those who can grow fruits and vegetables? "Greenis envy."


A guy so star-struck that, when introduced to Jimmy Smits, could say only, “So, do you go to a gym?"

"If I Had a Hammer, (I'd Take Out an Eye)" says it all. Because he forgot to measure the staircase in his new home before moving, Tony tells us, "I now sleep in the dining room, near my clothes." Tony further informs us there is a technical term for a guy "to whom this sort of thing happens all the time. I am an 'imbecile.'"

When he took the radio show national because "ESPN backed up the Brink's truck," WTEM began running promos of Tony fretting he would be fired from the Post for neglecting his column: "What a moron I am!" he concluded.

Apparently the over/under on Kornheiser's IQ is 50.

Actually it's 150.

The Third Face of Tony Kornheiser is Mensa Tony.

Well, it was, until I asked Tony to confirm the preceding number.

"I had a really high IQ when I was a little kid,” he said, reiterating what he'd told me in our initial meeting, "but now it's about 120. You know, your IQ changes throughout your life."

"You're screwing with my premise here, Tony."

"Actually, it's down to eighty now."

He's delighted to learn the over/under was 50.

"So I beat it," he says, pleased. "Seriously, that's crap."

"Aww, you're just being self-effacing. Of course you're gonna say....[that]."

Tony interrupts me. "No! No, I'm not! Don't try to make me into Carl Sagan out here. I'm quick. I'm no fucking genius. I'm working in a field that is mostly populated by monkeys. I'm doing all right; I can use my thumb."

But Tony admits this much: "I can make you laugh and I can make you cry. I may have some incredibly intuitive gift for radio, and I'm one of the best sportswriters in the country. I'd like it to be that at the end of my career people look at the depth and breadth [of what I've done] and see me in the same light as Red Smith and Shirley Povich. But I'm lucky, to work for people at ESPN and the Washington Post who recognize my skills and say, 'Go ahead, do what you do.' But don't think I'm that special. I can barely put gas in the car."

Moron Tony rides again!

Still, despite his protestations, this is a guy who finished first grade promoted to third. A guy who considers a combined SAT score of “you know, 12, 13...Sorta average." (Anyone scoring 1300 or better is automatically eligible for Mensa.) Michael Wilbon, Tony's fellow columnist at the Washington Post says, “I think the secret of what he does is, he's able to make you question why what you saw [at a sporting event was] either important [or] unimportant. If it was important, what about it was important? He can...make you think on second, third, fourth levels...I know if I can get [an] idea past him, that I'm going to get it past the reader."

That's because Kornheiser can write as complete a sports column as anybody in America. When analyzing the fallout from the Latrell Sprewell-P.J. Carlesimo fracas last year, after noting that Sprewell, "said all the right things ... in all the right ways," and that Johnnie Cochran "isn't just another lawyer anymore than William Kuntsler was," Kornheiser wove in quotes from Chris Webber and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, interviewed two and twenty years before respectively, to address the idea that perhaps an unbridgeable generational and cultural gap existed between Sprewell and Carlesimo. Kornheiser came to this conclusion:

"Sprewell is a clean hit for the NBA. He committed an outrageous act, and although he is a fine player, he is a fine player on a terrible team--and not a marquee player--so the league can suspend him without causing a ripple in the standings or with the advertisers....

"Let's not lose sight of what happened here. Strip away the money, the color and the fame of those involved, strip away all the attendant theater, and here's what you have:

"Player A choked Coach B.

"Then, after showering and dressing over the course of 20 minutes--presumably taking time to think about what he had done--Player A came back and went after Coach B again.

"When people talk about fundamental fairness, it's the ‘again’ that bothers me." (Washington Post, Sports, Page 1, 12/11/97).

John "Junior" Feinstein, another Post colleague and author of A Season on the Brink, the best-selling sports book of all time, says: "Tony is very quick. He's obsessively prepared. There's never any wandering around for, 'What should we talk about next?’ He always knows. He's smart enough not to try to interview athletes, and the people he does interview he asks very good questions, because he asks them in much the same way he would as a newspaper reporter."

Wilbon and Junior are not only regular guests on the Tony Kornheiser Show; they're also beloved friends, reflecting the Fourth Face of Tony Kornheiser, Tender Tony, the Tony nobody knows.

Two days after Michael Wilbon got married, in April of '97, and with Wilbon safely out of town, Tony Kornheiser opened his show with a glowing ten-minute encomium. He told listeners that, while Wilbon would speak to schoolchildren for free, "I'll make you pay." Tony mentioned several other reasons why Wilbon was so wonderful, but only Wilbon has the exact text, and he's been reluctant to share it, calling it "embarrassing." Probably because Tony ended this way: "He's my dear, dear friend, and I love him."

In fact, my appreciation of Tony's appreciation of Wilbon, causing Tony to blush, was the highlight of our first interview session. 2

Overheard moments later talking to his kids, who had just returned from their first ski trip, Tony's voice took on the dulcet tones of the Tender One, ending each conversation accenting the "love" in "I love you."

When his cousin Ricky died this spring, Tony eulogized him beautifully and captured the feelings associated with such a loss. Why though they weren't "particularly close" Kornheiser one day found himself “sitting alone in my house, at the dining room table, crying.
"Maybe it's because Ricky was younger than I am...Half of you grieves for him, the other half for you, because you might be next."

When Tony calls Ricky after hearing how sick he is, Ricky tells him, “It's okay, really. I know I'm going to die. I've made peace with that. I'm not afraid."

"I make my living with words," Tony continues, "but at that moment I didn't know which ones to use."

The memories flood. Tony as counselor, Ricky the kid liked by all: "the wild ones ... even the mean one." Ricky, the florist with a steady weekend gig as a band's piano man. "Flowers and music, everything Ricky did made people happy." And Ricky and brother, throwing a baseball in the yard, Berra to the other's Mantle.
"I'd give anything for a catch," Ricky responds.

Tony goes home early, gets his glove down from the closet shelf, takes his kids in the yard and has a catch.

To match the one in the reader's throat.

* * * * * * * * * *
"Here comes Tony's mailbag/Got your e-mail, faxes and your notes/Here comes Tony's mailbag!/Gonna read some for all of you folks!"

Tony's back after a week of golf, including a trip to Pinehurst. In his absence, co-host Andy Pollin has permitted the forbidden phrase that slays, "How ya doin'?" Tony must once again lay down the law, enforce and explain, much to the chagrin of at least two listeners.

"Mr. Kornheiser's ... rude and sour attitude," writes one, "along with his lack of knowledge regarding college athletics, are a turn-off."

"My lack of knowledge regarding college athletics," replies Tony, "is something I'm proud of. And my rude and sour attitude is ... pretty much what I've been going for."

The other complains, "It's a shame your Mama never taught you no manners. When I pass someone in the hall at work, I'll smile and say, 'Hello. How are you doing today?' I'll speak whether I know them or not."

Tony responds, "You see, . . . in New York City, where I'm from, that sort of thing can get your throat slit!"

That's our Tony. Smart enough to want listener input--his was the first call-in show on ESPN, gleeful at the chance to rip a guest moments after the phone call. So out of it he's got two teenaged kids and doesn't know who Jennifer Love Hewitt is. Sweet enough to tell another man he loves him.

And so damn happy--and thankful--he gets to be what he always wanted.

"I'm a sportswriter. I won a contest as a sportswriter in high school. I was a sportswriter in college. It's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a sportswriter and get my picture in the paper; write a column; that's all I ever wanted to do. I'm telling you, Jay, it's all I ever wanted to do....I don't know how many people out there get to be what they wanna be. It's what I always wanted to be ... now I write the most idiosyncratic sports column in America, but I'm still a sportswriter in my own head. I'm not a humor writer ... not a radio guy, not a magazine writer. I'm a sportswriter. It's what I do."

Unless you happen to be a station manager in Cincinnati....


Footnotes

1 Your friendly correspondent was the first to be "blown up" when the Kornheiser show debuted nationally on ESPN Radio, Monday, January 5, 1998. Having recently established a phone correspondence with Tony, but not having heard from him or talked with him for several weeks at that point, it was only natural to ask how Tony was doing.

Not that that mattered.

Also, when I was "blown up" that day, there was no explosion, no Charlie Steiner basso profundo. That cart hadn't been built yet; just dead air for a moment or two, then Tony explaining what had happened. To my everlasting credit, Tony referred to me as both "...a long-time listener, and a good guy." You could look it up....


2 As Tony has mentioned, Erik Rydholm deserves all the credit for harnessing the power of the Kornheiser/Wilbon chemistry, but let the record show, he wasn't the first to notice it.