There's nothing new about Tony Kornheiser hammering Mike Wise on his ESPN 980 radio show. Local browser histories groan under the weight of blog posts about their on-air jousts (e.g.: 1, 2, 3, 4), with the most recent chapters concerning Wise's coverage of Gilbert Arenas' fall.

At issue are two questions:
1) How good was Gilbert Arenas' birthday party, anyway?
2) Was Gilbert Arenas Mike Wise's source for his account of the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton confrontation?

The first point seems a bit trite, but Kornheiser, who competes against Wise's show on WJFK-FM, has been prosecuting it with characteristic passion, using it to make the point over and again that Wise is a carpetbagger with no sense of perspective about D.C. sports history. His evidence? Passages such as this one, in Wise's Jan. 6 open letter to Arenas.

Remember three years ago? The hottest ticket in town was that black American Express envelope, the one that contained an invitation to your 25th birthday party at Love, the club where Sean Combs and other hip-hop glitterati attended. Diddy came to Northeast for you.

Kornheiser has ever since battled the notion that Arenas' party was of any import. From his Jan. 19 show (though you could have heard something like this most other days this week):

Kornheiser: Now to begin today's show, I had a lot of time to think last night as I lay around being ill all day yesterday and probably still to some degree today. So I thought about what really mattered most. And what really mattered most to me was the appreciation that Gilbert Arenas had that party, and that famous rappers came to town, and, and, that created a buzz in Washington that has never before and never again will be seen or felt like that particular party at that club, whenever that was. Kevin, you were here.
Kevin Stanfield: Yeah I was here. I didn't get the invite. I was crushed, too, man, because I told you I was at Allen Iverson's party, at that point, that was the biggest thing that ever happened in Washington.
Kornheiser: Much bigger than the burning of the White House many years ago."

The second one is a bit more serious, at least as intra-journalist spats go. Wise's Jan. 7 article "Wizards' Arenas suspended indefinitely as new details emerge in gun incident" provided a remarkably complete account of the Joke That Ate the Wizards. "Two of the five people in the room" ran them down for Wise.

On his Jan. 7 show, Kornheiser read extensively from Wise's piece and, on reading that Wise's sources had told him "Arenas had originally not disclosed Crittenton's action to protect the little-used guard from prosecution and had told Crittenton he would assume full responsibility for the actions of both players that day," said:

"That shines a very nice light on Gilbert Arenas. If two of the people in that room, if there were five, and two of them are being quoted on background and anonymity, one of them is Gilbert Arenas, because this story is very, very complimentary to Gilbert Arenas."

Word-problem skills would seem to indicate Kornheiser is correct. Following Wise's narrative, the spotlight shines ever brighter on Arenas.

"Walking into the locker room two days after the dispute on the team plane, according to two witnesses, Arenas laid out the guns in Crittenton's locker. Two other teammates eventually sauntered in and, while Arenas was writing the note in front of Crittenton's cubicle, in walked Crittenton, according to their account."

That's six people: Arenas, the two witnesses, the two other teammates, and Crittenton. But since Crittenton contests the account and we've already heard that there were five people present, unless one of the people in the room left, one of the two witnesses speaking to Wise has to be Arenas.

Not the case, says Wise. "If I relied on Gilbert Arenas for all my information I'm not a very good reporter," Wise says. He says Arenas wasn't one of the witnesses quoted. I take him through my math, subjecting him to a reading of the diagrams I've made of the room. In this particular grassy knoll, there appears to be a third saunterer.

"That was a screwup," Wise says after my third attempt to explain my reasoning. There were only ever five people in the room. No one left.

And here's why I believe him.

Look at this sentence: "Walking into the locker room two days after the dispute on the team plane, according to two witnesses, Arenas laid out the guns in Crittenton's locker."

"Walking into the locker room" modifies "Arenas" ("according to two witnesses" is a parenthetical). But Wise says Arenas was in the room before the two witnesses. The next sentence begins "Two other teammates eventually sauntered in." So the correct sequence of people entering the room should be:

1. Arenas
2. Witness 1
3. Witness 2
4. Witness 3
5. Crittenton

If the "Walking in..." sentence is one of those "small but unremitting" errors bedeviling Wise's employer, then there are three people who could have talked to Wise, excluding Arenas.

Moreover, the prosecutors' description of the incident closely follows Wise's. "I can tell you the Post and myself feel very vindicated with my reporting after we read the prosecutor's report," Wise says.

This does not clear up the matter of the party.

"I wish I could tell you it was one of the greatest things that happened in D.C.," Wise says. "I wasn't there. I heard it was a great event."

"If Tony would like to participate in journalism again," Wise adds, "I'd love to have the discussion with him."

Photograph of Wise by Darrow Montgomery

Some cancellations to report:

First and worst: Boxer Jimmy Lange's scheduled July 25 fight in Greensboro, N.C., is off. A Lange spokesman told me over the weekend that the cancellation, first reported by the great local boxing clearinghouse boxingaroundthebeltway.com, came "out of the blue" after North Carolina  authorities refused to sanction Lange's opponent, Jimmy LeBlanc. Lange's camp surmises that LeBlanc's record (12–16–4, with 10 of the losses coming in his last 12 fights) had regulators fearing a mismatch with the former cast member of NBC's reality fight show, "The Contender." Lange, from Great Falls, had hoped to use the Greensboro bout, his first outside of Fairfax since gaining TV stardom, to expand his considerable fan base beyond the beltway.

And Bruce Smith's hometown of Virginia Beach has cancelled a festival to honor the former Redskins defensive end. The cancellation comes after Smith was convicted last week of DUI, following his franchise-record-breaking third drunk driving arrest in the last 12 years.

Also, there will be no Allen Iverson Celebrity Softball or Flag Football games around here this year. The former Georgetown star's events had been held for several years at Prince George's Stadium and attracted an impressive number of big-name sports celebs to our area. Iverson this year moved the party to the Tidewater region of Virginia, the stomping grounds, so to speak, of his youth. Iverson's three-day shindig, now called the CrossOver Celebrity Weekend, was thrown over the weekend.

Tom Sedlacek, a spokesman for Prince George's Stadium, says: "We were open to holding it here again this year, and kept dates open on our calendar, but apparently there was no interest from [Iverson] to do it here."

I wonder if Iverson let Josh Howard sing the National Anthem this year?

AFTER THE JUMP: Asian Bias™ resurfaces at OTHER U.S. Open? Brock Lesnar needs some time to heel? Dan Snyder vintage videotapes? ANOTHER Sean Taylor ode?

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Back to ignoring all that Post-Racial America talk: Turns out it's not just Congressional or the AT&T National that has an Asian Bias™! Yesterday's U.S. Women's Open golf championship had Eun Hee Ji banging home a long putt on the last hole to win by a stroke over Candie Kung. First round leader Na Yeon Choi fell to ninth. Defending champ Inbee Park managed 26th place. Past winners of the three-year-old AT&T National, remember, are KJ Choi, Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods. First rule of Journalism®: Three's a trend!

The LPGA Tour, unlike the men, tried to do something to eliminate its Asian Bias™ last season, in the process revealing a profound Anti-Asian Bias™ among the folks running the tour: Commissioner Carolyn Bivens briefly instituted an "English-only" policy after a meeting with South Korean players a year ago. Really! She did! I swear! It's one of the great sports stories of our time!

Bivens' Linguistic Cleansing™ scheme was scrapped almost as soon as the Liberal Media found out about it, and now as Cheap Seats Daily goes to press, she's about to be fired. Sic Semper Douchebaggius.

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My ultimate ultimate fighter, Brock Lesnar, retained the UFC heavyweight belt with an artless pounding of Frank Mir on Saturday night. Here's what LA Times' T.J. Simers wrote of the spectacle.

"But what does this say about us, people screaming with glee because blood is running down someone's face and he's still in there punching? What does it say about violence's voyeuristic appeal, the sight of someone being choked into unconsciousness reason for howling approval?

It's hard to believe public executions wouldn't do well. And just think of the reality TV show that's sitting there waiting to be done, instead of the weigh-in, the final meal.

When you watch something like UFC 100, there's really no reason to believe there are limits to what might entertain people."

Well, I would watch a street fight video before any highlight reel from any accepted sport. I'm not proud of that, but damn if it ain't true. But the Lesnar fight was boring until after he was done pounding Mir and told the crowd to fuck off, then told prime sponsor Bud Light to fuck off. Now THAT's entertainment!

Especially after UFC 100, anybody who likes MMA but sneers at pro wrestling is clearly of the douchebaggius genus.

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The Gazette reports that Rosecroft Raceway's bankrupt owners are proposing selling out to a guy who plans to make the racetrack a gambling center, with poker and other table games and, maybe, a little horse racing. Cheap Seats Daily has just set the odds of all this actually happening at 1,000,000,000-1.

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Hogs Haven posts some interviews with then-new owner Dan Snyder from 10 years ago. Watching them, and knowing how things turned out, is like listening to George Bush talk about the need to disarm Iraq in 2003.

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A fellow named Brooks J. DeGhetto is posting on Skins fan sites about "21 Sean," a song he wrote in tribute to Sean Taylor. The critic in me says the performance is Jim Morrison-meets-"A Mighty Wind" (sample lyric: "21 Sean your spirit carries on inside of me/Wherever you are you'll be a superstar, running free/You're running free for all to see, in burgundy/and gold." Ahem.) And the rest of me says: Enough with the tributes to a guy who had about the same number of good seasons as arrests. But it takes guts to put yourself out there like Mr. DeGhetto has here. Sean would like that.

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