Well, it’s finally out in the open. Thank goodness.
I am speaking, of course, about cognac abuse. One minute you’re raising your snifter to the glories of the free-market system, the next you’re at an Aperitifs Anonymous meeting saying, “Hi, I’m Joakim, I’m a cognac user and who made these dreadful hors d’oeuvres?”
Bulls center Joakim Noah was busted over the weekend after Gainesville, Fla., police saw him allegedly drinking alcohol on a public sidewalk. The alcohol reportedly was cognac, and officers later allegedly found marijuana on him.
A lot has been made lately about pot use in the NBA, but what a wonderful opportunity this is to address the growing problem of cognac consumption in the league. You stuff millions of dollars into the pockets of impressionable kids, and what are they going to do? That’s right: First they start wearing velvet smoking jackets. Then they build up quite a collection of ascots. And before you know it, they can’t lay off the Hennessy. They start calling each other Chumley or Bink or Topper.
It was only a matter of time before the scourge of the mean streets of Winnetka started poisoning the rest of the upper crust. And though we’re certain to hear cries of rich-guy profiling, we better address the bigger problem head-on:
After-dinner drinks don’t get people arrested. People get people arrested.
Because I’m middle-aged and — hold it, let me look at the column photo again — white, I had no idea cognac, a type of brandy, is incredibly popular in hip-hop culture. Mike Downey, my fellow “In the Wake of the News” columnist, informed me of this. By the way, Mike now wants to be referred to as “DJ Thuggsy Bogus.”
Anyway, the cognac industry, once made up almost entirely of wealthy white people, was in a steep decline in 2001 until Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy cut “Pass the Courvoisier.” A few lyrics:
“Give me the Henny. You give me the Cris. You can pass me the Remy, but pass the Courvoisier.”
Those lines won’t ever be confused with, say, “The Sound of Music,” but Courvoisier cognac sales shot up 30 percent the following year. African-Americans now make up the majority of the cognac market in the United States. The ties with hip-hop remain strong. Jay-Z has a club in New York with a VIP room named for Remy Martin, his favorite cognac. Hip-hop producer Dr. Dre has a deal with a company to market a “super premium” cognac.
Now, it very well could be Noah simply was doing what many 23-year-old hip-hop lovers do these days, but it’s a lot more interesting to identify cognac consumption with prep-school snobbishness. It’s a lot more fun to imagine a wealthy man being liqueured-up than it is to imagine a basketball player drinking cognac in imitation of his favorite rapper.
It makes you wonder whether Bulls general manager John Paxson will check up on Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley for any possible dessert-drink issues before he makes a decision on which one he will take with the first pick in the June draft. It also makes you wonder whether Noah might be susceptible to other maladies of the fabulously wealthy, such as silk intolerance or yacht itch. The NBA is turning into a tough, tough place.
Joakim’s father, former tennis star Yannick Noah, expressed surprise about the publicity surrounding the arrest.
“I don’t understand all that fuss for just drinking a beer on the street,” he said.
Dear, old dad’s heart was in the right place. He obviously wanted to embarrass the kid straight. Imagine what it must be like to be Joakim as he tries to live down the shame of having fellow NBAers believe he drinks something as ordinary as beer. Yannick might as well have said his son likes porridge. You can’t get better until you hit rock bottom.
Lifting the lid off Noah’s problem is just a first step for the league, but it’s an important first step. The veil has been lifted. No more will NBA players be able to dribble a basketball without someone wondering whether those fingernails have ever had dirt under them.
Just watch the floodgates open on the Big NBA Lie. Everything will come out now — the clandestine polo matches, the debutante balls, the honorable pistol duels, the J. Crew catalog shoots. They must really have thought we were dumb with their earlier tales of barroom fights, gambling and weapons violations. As if we were going to buy that.
Next up: Butlers for NBA stars speak out!
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