ADVICE FOR CHARLES BARKLEY: AVOID PRIME TIME, STICK TO BASKETBALL

Pampered by network bosses and media writers who’ve ignored his slurs and crass behavior, the sports commentator will risk his cushy media career if he attempts news and political punditry on CNN

     When sitting on the set of TNT’s “Inside The NBA,” Charles Barkley could detonate a nuclear weapon and no one would care. He could praise Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Judas Iscariot and no one would protest. He could stare into the camera and drop 100 F-bombs, followed by 200 MF-bombs and 500 N-words. He could do a naked strip tease, causing millions of viewers to go blind.

     And no one would balk. Teflon? Heh, this man is protected by some higher being who’s out to get the rest of us.

     Cancel culture doesn’t apply to him. The basic laws and norms of daily life don’t connect to his conscience. He is protected by network bosses who seem to be afraid of him, though they’re paying him $17 million a year. He’s hired by companies to endorse products, though he has slurred women, spit on a little girl, hurled a man through a glass window and told a cop he ran a red light on New Year’s Eve because “I was gonna drive around the corner and get a blow job” from his passenger.

     As a basketball analyst, Barkley is fawned over by smitten radio hosts and website fanboys — they call themselves “sports media writers” — who take robust exception to mere peccadillos committed by other broadcasters. He has insulted the women of San Antonio so often, the city should have built a Barkley statue for dogs (and humans) to defecate on. “There’s some big ‘ol women down there. That’s a gold mine for Weight Watchers,” he said. “Victoria is definitely a secret … they can’t wear no Victoria’s Secret down there.” Yet, beyond locals and the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, no one made a fuss.

     “I don’t want to be one of these assholes on TV,” Barkley said last month over a live mic, to the applause of Skip Bayless haters everywhere.

     So why would a man who has achieved rare status in the whipping winds of American media acceptance — acclaim as the most prominent talking head in sport’s Big Boom era — want to risk it all by trying a news-based CNN show in prime time? According to Barkley, who doesn’t keep corporate secrets well, Warner Brothers Discovery wants to boost its fast-cratering news network by pairing him with CBS morning-show host Gayle King. He says he’ll be too busy with the NCAA tournament and NBA postseason to do a nightly show, but he’s prepared to drift weekly into the murky political seas where divided Americans choose between Fox News, MSNBC and other flammable options.

     “I just want to help the company because obviously it’s a shit show right now,” Barkley told the New York Post. “Anything I can do to help.”

     Does he not realize that the minute he utters a syllable on CNN, he no longer is protected? Suddenly, politicians and legitimate media critics will pounce on his every word, foul or otherwise. Though Barkley claims to be something of a centrist, the two warring rhetoric wings will attack him nonetheless. If he even dares to call people fat or go down other ugly paths — in 2019, he told female reporter Alexi McCammond, “I don’t hit women, but if I did, I would hit you” — Barkley falls into the hot pot with Tucker Carlson and a phalanx of polarizing pundits. His endorsements evaporate. He is reviled instead of revered on social media. Bill Maher and Chelsea Handler take turns hammering him. Suddenly, those slurs and violent tantrums and spitting moments and blowjob quests are dredged up. And if his ratings aren’t any good, he’ll be removed from the time slot and demoted like Don Lemon, whose demise has created a nighttime opening for network chairman and CEO Chris Licht.

     Social justice issues? It wasn’t long ago when Barkley was blasted for separating the Breonna Taylor case from other police killings of unarmed African Americans. “I don’t think this one was like George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery and things like that,” he said on his NBA show. “I am worried to lump all these situations in together.” Does he want to go there again on a news program, where the backlash will be much more intense?

     I remember when Barkley said this: “I’m a black man. I use the N-word. I’m going to continue to use the N-word with my black friends, with my white friends, they are my friends. In the locker room and when I’m with my friends, we use racial slurs. What I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me, what’s appropriate and inappropriate.” If he repeats it now, on CNN, it doesn’t matter if the measured King is beside him. He’ll be slaughtered. Is that what he wants? If he does, then he should abandon sports entirely. He can’t go back. He’d be one of THEM, another loathed lightning rod with an unhinged election year approaching. And if his ratings happen to be good, Licht will come to him with more money and a larger platform he can’t refuse, with Joe Biden and/or Ron DeSantis as his targets — imagine Chuck vs. Donald and the Trumpers — instead of Draymond Green and LeBron James. Licht, after all, is the creative who helped Stephen Colbert take over the late-night wars. He’s talking to Barkley for a reason, not for giggles. Gulp.

     All Lemon did to find hot water was say presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, 51, is “past her prime.” For Barkley, that would be a 1 on a scale of 10. CNN is such a mess, his addition would cause even more dissension behind the scenes, another daily problem when people leak internal issues to gossip sites.

     No, he should stay where he is, where he can say this and no one blinks: “Maybe I’m old-school, but I’m never going to like that little girly basketball where you have to outscore people. I’m biased against girl basketball.” Or where he can say, “They don’t let many black people in the governor’s mansion in Alabama, unless they’re cleaning.”

     In the dumbed-down world of sports TV, he is considered a blunt, fearless commentator and comedian. His acerbic stances are softened by “Inside The NBA” producers who have fun with him, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith via host Ernie Johnson. But in the killer world of prime-time news talk, he’ll be a disaster. He’ll come crawling back to his old studio, thrilled to tell Green, as he did the other night: “The Golden State Warriors are cooked.”

     “That's crazy,” Green shot back. “You said that last year, but we all know you don't know what you're talking about.”

     "Y'all are cooked now,” Barkley went on. “Y’all are done ... I'm telling you, y'all are done.”

     Ukraine is not his lane. Climate change is not his speed.

     His lane is Luka Doncic and his speed is Victor Wembanyama, once he figures out how to pronounce their names.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.