Is Chicago’s tribute to Boston no more?
We all saw the touching tribute by the Chicago Tribune following the Boston Marathon bombings. On the front page of its sports section, there was an image which said, “We are” followed by the logos for the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, Patriots and Revolution.
Pretty awesome, right?
Well, it was until recently. With the Bruins facing off against the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Final, the Tribune ran a revised version of the picture, with the Bruins logo ripped out and the headline, “Yeah, not right now we’re not.”
Chicago and many other cities showed respect for Boston following the Marathon and the aftermath. Ballparks across the country sang “Sweet Caroline.” The Tribune even bought Boston Globe reporters lunch at the end of the exhausting week. In that time, everyone was Boston.
There isn’t a problem with rivalries or competition. Obviously if your team is in the finals in any league, you’re going to root against the other team. That’s pretty much the natural order of, well, the world. There’s absolutely no issue with rooting against a Boston team. At the end of the day, everybody’s going to have to face a Boston team again. But there’s a huge, huge problem with the manner in which they decided to do this.
To appropriate something that was intended to be a kind gesture to a city filled with heartbreak and suffering into something malicious is totally uncalled for. It basically says, “Just kidding, we don’t care about your grief anymore.” They could have expressed this rivalry in a multitude of ways, and they chose to rip apart an extension of gratitude.
Classy. Real classy.
(Is this as bad as the Toronto Stronger sign, though? I don’t know. It’s pretty close.)
