In the view of Sports Media Watch’s Paul Sen, it might be the former.
Tony Kornheiser seems angrier than ever, and not in a halfway-mocking, purposefully over the top way. Part of it might be due to guest host Dan le Batard, who has replaced Michael Wilbon this week; le Batard, who is jokingly referred to on the show as “hateable”, seems to legitimately be getting under Kornheiser’s skin. One need only look at today’s edition of PTI, where Kornheiser seemed genuinely angry by le Batard’s incessant referring to new Alabama head coach Nick Saban as a vaccum salesman.
Though we never heard about these sort of chemistry problems between Jason Alexander and Malcom-Jamal Warner, the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg (who, by the way, has some great stuff about Gilbert Arenas’ heroics against Milwaukee last night) had the misfortune of flipping on Sports yack radio in time to hear Tonio K. call him “cheese boy.”
Tony and his friend Andy Pollin are talking about Tony’s future. The transcript:
Tony: What will I do? I’d like to, I’d like to do something like I did before, that is very current, very sort of small and, you know, sort of idiosyncratic. But I notice, I notice in the paper now that in the space I used to have, they’ve given it to the Cheese Boy (laughter). So I don’t, you know, I guess there’s no room for me in the paper.
Andy: The blogger? [Naked contempt oozing out of the speakers on my computer.]
Tony: Yeah, the Cheese Boy.
Andy: Is that what you call Dan Steinberg?
Tony: Well he went to, he went to, where were the last Olympics? Afghanistan, Norway?
Andy: Yeah, something like that.
Tony: Wherever, Brazil. And he wrote about cheese every day.