point/counterpoint: No joke for Owens

The show currently known as T.O. is finally something worth talking about. Terrell Owens just doesn’t know it yet.

For the last 11 years the wide receiver was known mostly for his eccentric ‘funnyman’ antics. He was praised for his speed and pass catching abilities. He was blasted for his irritating selfishness and for his problems making and keeping friends. He was a spectacle with a disarming smile. An outsider surrounded by money and the media. He was the Michael Jackson of the NFL.

But that was before he swallowed a bottle of hydrocodone. Before he allegedly told police he tried to kill himself. Before he sat in front of an eager press and smoothly shrugged it off as a misunderstanding. It seems people are always misunderstanding T.O.

This time the story is much larger than him.

What we’re hearing now is just noise. As the Owens story broke, the circus of writers and critics that spill ink on paper and spittle on their shirts simply missed the point.

They missed the nearly 800,000 Americans that attempt suicide every year. They overlooked the friends and families of the people that are successful.

And whether or not Owens is being honest about this whole affair, he has potentially pushed the topic into American discourse. That gift may be the most unselfish thing he has ever done.

That is, if the message can make it through the Owens-media cruft. Sure, Owens hasn’t done for suicide what Ellen DeGeneres did for homosexuality, or what Magic Johnson did to help people understand HIV. But Owens has unwittingly opened a great opportunity for us all to have a discussion.

A discussion that Owens would rather not be about himself.

The real story, the 32-year-old claimed, was that he had an adverse reaction from a mixture of all-natural supplements and painkillers he was taking for a broken finger. He called it a bad allergic reaction.

However, according to a police report leaked to the media Wednesday morning, officers were dispatched the night before to “a call by Dallas fire and rescue regarding (a person) attempting suicide by prescription pain medication.”

After he was stabilized, Owens was taken to a hospital. It was in the hospital that, according to the report, officers learned from a female companion that Owens was depressed. When they asked if he had taken the pills specifically attempting to harm himself, Owens allegedly said, “Yes.”

Later he claimed that he answered the police officers’ questions the way he did because he was not aware of what he was being asked.

“I really wasn’t as coherent as they probably thought I was,” Owens said. “It’s very unfortunate for it to go from an allergic reaction to a suicide attempt.”

But it doesn’t matter. On purpose, on accident – Owens and his supplements and multimillion-dollar contracts, his glue-like hands, his embarrassment – it doesn’t matter.

What matters are the people that die everyday – the ones the police cannot save.