Real news

I skim Deadspin headlines for interesting sports stories, and I generally dismiss 90 percent of what they write. However, interestingly this story has a legitimate opinion that veers into politics, slightly.

The AP Is Gay For Stupid

The point the writer makes is that in a story the AP does about the UConn hockey team doing a PSA about homophobia and not bullying homosexuals, the reporter felt the need to get an opposing viewpoint.

He says it well:

What is this shit?

I'm not even talking about Peter Wolfgang, who by all appearances is just a dime-a-dozen bigot wrapping his boring old chauvinism in cheap faith and whiny grievance. I'm talking about the AP, which feels compelled to phone up that dime-a-dozen bigot to get his side of a story with which he has fuck-all to do. This is like covering a flower show and asking a Boston Terrier for his opinion. Why does Peter Wolfgang get to toot his own stupid bugle for two paragraphs? The answer: "Balance." "Objectivity." Gayness is a "controversy," you see, and all controversies have two sides.

I know it's just two throwaway paragraphs in a wire story—it's a small miracle for the industry that the AP is even willing to send a reporter to Storrs, Conn.—but this kind of craven shit is how the weasels get invited into the national living room. This is how we get a little bit dumber. A reporter or editor somewhere decides that all real knowledge can be found only at a point equidistant between two competing claims, no matter if one of those claims deserves as much attention and respect as the guy with the shopping cart screaming at the contrails in the sky. Crazy gets normalized. Stupid gets a hearing. You know how you can tell we're in an election year? Even the sportswriters are acting like Politico.

Kudos to Deadspin for hard-hitting commentary.