Magic Tweets

@moreimportantthanyouthink

“So let it be written/so let it be done” ~ Pharaoh/Metallica/ESPN

Earvin “Magic” Johnson keeps a Twitter account. It is, unsurprisingly, of no use to me or you – unless, for instance, you’re MJ’s post-workout oatmeal and protein shake (in which case, you get a namecheck. holla!).

Magic, as with most athletes, is not particularly engaging to begin with. His turns as NBA analyst or, for that matter, his short-lived vanity project The Magic Hour, suggest as much. He is something of a slow-talking oaf, which, admittedly, plays better on TV than “unqualified egomaniac” (Matt Hasselbeck, Trent Dilfer), “self-parodying Beastie Boy wannabe” (Stuart Scott, Neil Everett), “invalid” (Lee Corso), “dipshit” (Jon Barry) or  ”blowhard” (everybody else, minus the transcendent Barry Melrose).

Confining a man like Magic to 140 characters does not strike me as a particularly wise idea. After all, concision is not his strong suit. Nor is humor. Nor, really, is anything not involving running a fastbreak with James Worthy and Byron Scott.

Still, Magic tweets. It is what is.

What’s fascinating to me deals not with the content of said log of transience, but how the Worldwide Leader employs it to fuel its cottage industry of sports nougat.

On Wednesday, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – a dude who makes Andre Dawson look like a glitter-flecked teddy bear by comparison – caused a minor dust-up in La La Land upon picking a fight with Lakers management over his absence, in cast bronze form, outside the Staples Center.

In short, Magic has a statue. Kareem doesn’t. Somebody’s jealy.

But this is neither – as I’m beginning to realize with the entirety of this post – here nor there. The here and there is this: SportsCenter dedicated an entire segment to Magic Johnson’s tweet… when he was already miked for NBA Countdown. In other words, the likes of Linda Cohn could’ve just panned over to MJ for his thought’s on Kareem’s statue. He was, unlike the majority of the profiled Tweeters, in-studio.

The horse’s mouth was ready to go all Mr. Ed. Instead, they read his Tweet.

Why does this matter? Well, because it implies one of three scenarios: A) Magic temporarily lost the ability to speak B) ESPN feels Magic is more effective when limited to nine words or C) Twitter assumes precedence over the recorded, spoken word because it is deemed, consciously or not, a historical log of permanent record.

I vote for C.

Now you can pass ESPN’s social media fetish off as a transparent ploy to connect with a younger audience (which it is). Or you can argue that this is just part and parcel with the superficialities it passes off, euphemistically, as “analysis” (which it is). But this is also an instance in which the 9,000-pound gorilla in the newsroom emphasizes a written modicum – no matter how seemingly ephemeral, abridged, or inconsequential – over a gasbag’s worth of hot air.

As a journalist, I feel both horrified and oddly heartened; as an impulsive keyboard junky, just plain horrified. For good or bad (bad), this is public record. Forever. ESPN doesn’t have to say so… And that’s kinda the point.