c. 1999 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 _ How are the two men who are destroying the Chicago Bulls _ owner Jerry Reinsdorf and basketball operations director Jerry Krause _ like the Republican majority in Congress?

Let me count the ways:

1. Both the Jerrys and the Henry Hydes and Trent Lotts have absolute power in common. The one Jerry owns the Bulls; the other one works for him. They can do whatever they want. The Republicans have a majority in both chambers of Congress and can use the right-wing”Christian”pressure groups to enforce that majority.

2. Since there is no point in having absolute power unless you use it, both groups have abused their power. The Jerrys have wiped out, in an ecstasy of destructiveness, the greatest basketball team ever. They forced out Coach Phil Jackson and with him Michael Jordan. Now they are getting rid of virtually everyone else on a team that won six championships.

The Republican leadership has attempted a coup d’etat, an assassination by investigation of a popular and in many ways successful president in an attempt to undo the will of the American people. Moreover, they did so in a lame-duck session of Congress because they didn’t have the power to do so in the new Congress.

3. The Jerrys couldn’t care less what the fans think. They get rid of Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and Luc Longely,regardless. Neither do the Republicans in Congress care in the slightest what the American people think. They know the principle that an impeachment should be tried only when there is bipartisan and popular support. They have neither and they don’t care. They realize their image is declining with each passing day of the folly going on in the Senate, yet they persist in dragging it out.

Why? Both the Jerrys and the Republicans still get their faces on television and their names in the papers. You don’t pass up your 15 minutes of celebrity when it’s offered you.

4. Both groups have total contempt for the fans. The Jerrys will tell you they have a long waiting list of applications for season tickets and the United Center will be filled. Have they looked at the sparse crowds in Comiskey Park lately? Sure, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Republicans think the public will forget all about the impeachment story before the next election. They too must be out of their minds. The public is going to forget the affront of the last year of salacious nonsense? Gimme a break!

5. Both the Jerrys and the GOP are convinced they’re doing the right thing. The Jerrys think they can produce a winning team at least by next year with shrewd wheeling and dealing. Did they not build a winning team before? Just like the Big Jerry bought a winning White Sox team? Just like the little Jerry drafted Michael Jordan? (He didn’t, by the way.) The Republicans are convinced they must do what they believe is right, even though it turns out their two indictments were flimsy pieces of nonsense the president’s lawyers had no trouble shredding.

At this point, one wonders why the Republicans, knowing how angry the public is and how fed up it is with seeing them on TV, nonetheless trotted out as their”managers”a crowd of self-righteous hypocritical zealots, men with the glowing eyes and slick smiles of Bible-thumping preachers. Why did they let the public know the”Christian”right was trying to take over the country?

I have a mildly paranoid hunch they want George W. Bush to lose the next election, so the country will be ready for Dan Quayle or, who knows, one of the”managers.” Can one draw a conclusion from this model? I think so: Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. They make them mad by intoxicating them with their own power.

DEA END GREELEY