Jay Mariotti, the Sun-Times sport oracle, had left a message on my voice mail, and, ooh, was he mad.

It was, maybe, a dozen years ago when I was an editorial board member and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. As a White Sox fan, I had written something (I presume it must have been nice) about the team and its owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Mariotti disagreed. Furiously.

Don’t you know, Mariotti raged, that “they” are talking about “it.” By “it,” it turned out that Mariotti had written a contrary column on the same subject (I hadn’t seen or heard about it before I wrote mine) and “they” were, presumably, his sports writing colleagues who were having a chuckle that someone from the same paper would disagree with His Majesty.

Most of the rest of the irate message is lost in the fog of my memory, except for this ending: “The next time you write about it, check with me first.”

I had received scolding messages before from some colleagues, but never one from a fellow columnist demanding that I first get the skinny from him before I touch the keyboard. Not even the legendary Mike Royko would have made such a demand. Even a non-journalist doesn’t have to be told that Mariotti’s demand broke some unwritten rule of comity, which is, don’t bitch about my column and I won’t bitch about yours.

Naturally, I called Mariotti back. He didn’t answer, but I left my own message ending: Next time you write something, you should check first with me. Of course, I never heard back, but he still keeps a watchful eye peeled for error, into which I fell a couple of years later, for again failing trash Reinsdorf. Word soon filtered back that Mariotti was telling people I was on Reinsdorf’s payroll.

I was reminded of Mariotti’s hauteur when I recently read in the Tribune a story about how Himself feels free to insult his colleagues, but how a fellow columnist was forbidden to come to the colleagues’ defense. He had written, with accustomed modesty: “As you may have noticed through the years, I am the Blizzard’s only critic in the Chicago media, mostly because my soft colleagues either fear Guillen’s wrath, enjoy how he rips me, work for one of the Reinsdorf-controlled broadcast outlets or are afraid of getting on the chairman’s bad side.” (The Blizzard is Mariotti’s nickname—as in “the blizzard of Oz”—for White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, a man outspoken in his opinions, but perhaps not as outspoken as Mariotti himself.)

Mariotti’s attack on his colleagues prompted fellow Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander to rise to their defense, but editor-in-chief Michael Cooke spiked the column. Telander tried again, with a different version that reportedly mentioned the “bleatings” of “mini-dictators” who are “terrified of accountability,” an apparent reference to Mariotti’s reputation of not facing the people he lacerates by staying out of the team’s clubhouse. Mariotti says he stays away because he has received death threats. Cooke spiked that column too.

Welcome to the newsroom folks, where personal and professional acrimony rarely makes it into public view. Occasionally, you’ll see a remark in a column that is a thinly disguised reference to a colleague held in low esteem. Sometimes it’s just an honest difference of opinion, but while a lot of columnists can dish it out, some—Mariotti being the most obvious example—are too thin skinned to let it pass. A couple of times I have, in passing, disagreed in print with colleagues, without mentioning names. They returned fire by devoting entire columns to me and my blunders. Fair is fair. And they spelled my name right.

Early in my column-writing career, the late Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett and I found ourselves in a public squabble about I forget what. Column after column, we went after each other, until an editor stopped it, saying it was getting masturbatory. In later years Jarrett, a wonderful man if you met him in person, and I grew closer.

At least back then, the Sun-Times gave us an opportunity to respond to each other. The people at the Sun-Times that Mariotti attacked did not. These are the “hard-working, talented journalists at the Sun-Times like Chris De Luca, Joe Cowley, Toni Ginnetti, Gordon Wittenmyer, Carol Slezak and Greg Couch,” Telander told the Tribune.

As if sheltering Mariotti from criticism wasn’t enough, editor Michael Cooke compounded the insult to his staff by proudly announcing that he had signed Mariotti to a three-year contract extension. The timing was a stick in the eye and a fine example of how not to nurture staff loyalty.

Apparently, Cooke isn’t all that interested in selling newspapers. No doubt Mariotti, with his acerbic style and can’t-miss placement in the sports section, has plenty of readers. But, many readers have with Mariotti the same kind of compulsive fascination that MoveOn.Org has with President George W. Bush—they hate him, but can’t stop reading. Like Bush, Mariotti’s approval rating is worm-high. So, if Cooke had unleashed Telander on Mariotti, throngs of readers would have queued up to buy the paper. The Sun-Times might even have returned to profitability. Watching Mariotti get his would have been more fun than watching an auto de fae.

But by denying his colleagues a response, Cooke put a lie to Mariotti’s assertion when he agreed to his contract extension that the Sun-Times’ “sports franchise” is “the one place for independent, politically unimpeded sports commentary in Chicago.” Independent and politically unimpeded? Laugh it up.

Mariotti’s stock in trade is demanding that someone be fired. After that, his creativity is exhausted. Sometimes he gets so mixed up that he contradicts himself, which, to extend his logic, should prompt him to call for his own firing. Early in the 2003 season, Mariotti called for the sacking of White Sox manager Jerry Manuel, to replace him with someone who could “shake up the culture of a sleepy clubhouse and a sleepier ballmall.” Reinsdorf did exactly that, giving the job to Guillen, a sparkplug of a manager, who brought Chicago a rare World Series championship. Now, Mariotti wants the sparkplug fired because he’s got a mouth on him. Even though the Sox are in first place.

The irony of it: If having a mouth is cause for firing, then Mariotti should have been long gone.

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Dennis Byrne is a member of the Chicago Daily Observer editorial board.