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The arrogant thinking of liberal sports writers


WestVirginiaRebel

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WestVirginiaRebel
arrogant-thinking-liberal-sports-writersThe Week:

"Today, sports writing is basically a liberal profession, practiced by liberals who enforce an unapologetically liberal code," writes Bryan Curtis at The Ringer. He's right.

 

You can see it in the way sportswriters police a consensus against the Washington Redskins' name, or for on-field political activism. They tweet against President Trump, and for undocumented immigrants. They pile on populist loudmouths like former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, and may even be punishing him for his politics with their Hall of Fame ballots. They proudly admit that they are at a remove from their readers. HardballTalk's Craig Calcaterra owns it: "It's folly for any of us to think we're speaking for the common fan."

 

Curtis is generally pleased with sports journalism's leftward shift, and treats the possibility of non-conforming writers as a potentially amusing but unnecessary curio. "Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports writing, making wrongheaded-but-interesting arguments about NCAA amateurism?" he asks. "Sure. As long as nobody believed them."

 

Well, I think I may be this curio myself.

 

I run a subscription newsletter about baseball — The Slurve — that is deliberately constructed to be an escape from politics for my readers (and for me). But I'm still a conservative who does a lot of sports writing. Besides The Slurve, I've written a few sports pieces in ESPN Magazine, and occasionally inflict my wrongheaded (but interesting!) sports arguments on readers here at The Week.

 

Predictably (and perhaps self-interestedly), I think the increasing ideological uniformity of sports writing is bad for sports journalism and for sports themselves. And in the way that it encourages conformism and intellectual laziness, it is probably bad for causes dear to liberals in sports.

________

 

I'm not surprised. They come from the same journalism schools as the rest of fake news.


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