c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Even though he plays for the hated Wisconsin Cheese Heads _ sometimes known as the Green Bay Packers _ I must rise to the defense of Reggie White against the legions of self-anointed special prosecutors.

These vest-pocket Kenneth Starrs are determined to prove White a bigot and deprive him of an sports analyst’s job with CBS after he retires from football because in a speech to the Wisconsin legislature he didn’t use all of the proper nuances of politically correct vocabulary.

It is unfair to demand that an ordinary person _ even a professional football player _ know all about the political correctness favored by sophisticated academics and elite journalists and, it seems to me, the feeding frenzy against Reggie White by those who are skilled at the canons of politically correct speech is pure hypocrisy.

They, for example, are not troubled by their own bigotry against suburbanites, the white middle-class, Poles, Italians, the Irish and illegal immigrants. It is only fashionable victim groups who fall under the protective mantle of political correctness.

White would have been home free if he had limited himself to saying that the white middle-class is racist, that suburbanites are cultural idiots, that Catholics drink more, party more, and take longer vacations than other Americans rather than saying whites”know how to tap into money.” It is clear from the context of his entire remarks that White was describing the phenomenon of American pluralism and, indeed, he was arguing against bigotry, no matter how unfortunate his language might have been.

But the sharks don’t care about context. They insist on parsing a man’s remarks with the same manic fundamentalism that characterizes some styles of biblical interpretation.

White said Hispanic Americans have strong family lives. This is a stereotype? Or is it a statistical truth? The Latino family bonds are strong indeed, though this assertion is patently not true of all of them.

He said African-Americans are a deeply spiritual people. This is a stereotype? As a group blacks are the most profoundly religious subpopulation in the country. He said African-Americans love to sing and dance. If he had been a little more careful and used the sentence”African-American culture is permeated by what we call soul,”would he have been wrong?

He said whites make a lot of money. Is this false? Or on the average is not white income higher than that of non-whites?

He said that homosexuality is a sin. What else would an ordained fundamentalist minister say? Was he supposed to have forsaken his religious heritage in the name of political correctness? Should he be denied employment for his religious convictions? Isn’t that against the law?

Most stereotypes are perhaps 20 percent true. Some Mexicans don’t have strong family values; some blacks are not deeply spiritual; some whites are poor; and some Catholics don’t drink and don’t take vacations at all.

If White had chosen his words more carefully and inserted frequently the phrase”tend to be,”it would have been much more difficult for the hypocrites to launch their feeding frenzy, especially against a man whose whole life has been a paragon of opposition to bigotry.

However, he is a celebrity _ and heaven forgive him for his successful pursuit of Bear quarterbacks _ and the name of the media game today is to destroy celebrities.

Feeding frenzies are particularly tempting to sports writers who envy the income of athletes and don’t have much else to write about, except such substitutes for watching paint dry as baseball.

You destroy Reggie White, who comes next?

The sports columnists of the New York newspapers for several years have tried to ignite such a frenzy against Michael Jordan, even to the extent of suggesting his father’s death might be linked to Michael’s love of gambling. They have failed, but it doesn’t follow they won’t try again.

To bag Michael’s scalp would be as great a triumph as that which their colleagues in the other pages would enjoy should they bag President Clinton.

What kind of sickness is it that compels so many journalists to seek to ruin the lives of other human beings?

DEA END GREELEY