Sports

ESPN, not content to cover sports, wants in on the burgeoning social-justice market as well. In “Waiting for LeBron," an ESPN magazine essay, Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow pondered why Cleveland Cavaliers basketball legend LeBron James backed off his brief anti-gun activism. Saslow’s histrionic analysis of James “the athlete and the activist” makes it clear that LeBron has (somehow) let…

ABC and CBS's evening newscasts on Friday spotlighted the friendly transatlantic trash-talking between the British and American heads of state. However, the programs failed to cover the latest too-close intercept of American military assets by Russian aircraft. On World News Tonight, ABC's David Muir touted "the royal mic drop — the Queen and Prince Harry responding to the First Family's…

The NFL draft has become must-see-TV for a lot of people, and New York Times pro football writer John Branch does not approve. In fact, he implies that excessive public focus may have ruined Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel's NFL career and life. Branch gained valuable space on the front of Monday’s New York Times with "In Manziel, a Draft Machine’s Human Cost.” Branch excoriated…

On the April 19, 2016 edition of Real Sports, HBO's Bryant Gumbel urged the top executives of the NBA, NFL, and the NCAA to penalize North Carolina over H.B. 2, which he underlined has been "labeled the most extreme anti-LGBT measure in the country." Gumbel claimed that the new law "uses the guise of bathroom concerns to deny certain rights to gay and transgender people, and effectively green…

Confess! Confess! Curt Schilling, the Boston Red Sox pitching ace turned sports media personality, was canned by ESPN after sharing a post on his Facebook account against allowing transgenders to choose which bathroom they use. New York Times reporter Richard Sandomir wrote up “ESPN Fires Schilling Over an Offensive Post” for Thursday’s sports page, then put on his moralistic liberal columnist…

I didn't realize this, but then again I played youth sports back in the Mesozoic Era. When an exasperated coach called us "sissies" for not trying hard enough, whining about routine bumps and bruises, or (in baseball) not sliding, they were, according to today's ignorant PC police, hitting us with an anti-homosexual slur. Horse manure; no they weren't. They simply didn't want us to act "timid or…

Justin Moyer contended that ESPN's firing of former baseball pitcher Curt Schilling "seemed destined" in a Thursday article for the Washington Post, which detailed the supposed "radicalization" of the former Phillies player turned "conservative loudmouth." Moyer spotlighted how "Schilling went fangs out" after Tweeting out a controversial image that "many deemed transphobic." However, the…

Bob Ley, ESPN's longest-serving commentator, was in Cuba yesterday after the Tampa Bay Rays defeated the island nation's national team 4-1 in an exhibition baseball game. Shortly after the conclusion of that game, ESPN had Ley report from a rather nice-looking streetscape in Havana (not your typical avenue in the workers' paradise). As he did, a demonstrator interrupted him. ESPN, acting as if…

ESPN has had a hoot playing the role of sports Pravda during Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba.

It’s been ten years since the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, an occasion marked by “Fantastic Lies," the latest entry in ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 documentary series, which aired last Sunday night. Former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent made an appearance, but evidently spoke in only general terms about the media frenzy, while the New York Times’ own sorry complicity in the saga didn’t get…

Former PBS fixture Moyers recently touched on Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth, but not with an eye toward whether or not Cruz is eligible for the presidency. Rather, it was to contrast Canada-born hockey enforcer John Scott with Cruz, who’s “another kind of enforcer.” Each has a large and enthusiastic following: fans voted the journeyman Scott into this year’s NHL All-Star game, and Cruz, of course,…

Roxanne Jones sang the praises of Beyonce in a Tuesday op-ed on CNN.com for her "perfectly timed, bold, Black Panther-inspired halftime tribute." Jones touted how the "pop icon used her star power to shine a light on the problem of race in America," and how the Super Bowl halftime show forwarded "a vision of an America that I aspire to live in one day." She later attacked the singer's critics for…

The headline at Nathaniel Friedman's Monday column at Salon.com is unmistakably clear: "Racist vitriol pours down on Cam Newton: Single-minded haters rush to judgment after a rough Super Bowl." Naturally, I went there expecting a long series of hateful tweets, social media references or other comments. Friedman's column content, however, has no reference to "racism" at all — or to "racists," or…

When CBS News assigned Gayle King, a donor, supporter and friend of the Obama family, to interview the President and his wife before the Super Bowl, the network guaranteed one of the softest interviews in the history of this administration. Asking not one serious question on Sunday, the journalist instead highlighted her favorite photo of the President and his wife. King also brought up dance…