The kiddie police

Look, I get the beef. How many times do old people (i.e., "people in the Blob's general demographic") break out pictures of their grandchildren, even for total strangers?

Even the total strangers wind up oohing and aahing, because, really, what kind of boorish jackwagon says "I don't want to look at your damn grandkids"?

So when a handful of national media types started carping the other day about Steph Curry bringing his 2-year-old daughter Riley to the NBA Western Conference Game 1 postgame, I understood. The media types are trying to do a job. It's a professional setting. Kids might eat for free, but that doesn't mean they're allowed in the bar area.

On the other hand ... she was six kinds of cute.

And so I found it hard to feel anything for the (gentle) gripers but a profound pity, because, really, they weren't gonna win this argument and they were too dumb to know it. There's only two ways this can end when you start grumping about people's kids, after all, and neither are good.

1. You sound like Mr. Wilson.

2. You sound like just another self-absorbed media tool.

Nobody ever liked the former, and the latter is a cliche to the 10th power. So you wind up 0-for-2.

The other downside, and no one often admits this, is that rarely do the kids disrupt the Gettysburg Address. In four decades as a sportswriter I've sat in on umpteen thousand formal postgames, from the state basketball finals  to big-ticket college football to the Final Four. Very rarely do you get much more than TranscriptSpeak. Most of the good stuff you get later, in the breakouts and one-on-ones.

So I had no issues with Steph's daughter the other night, speaking as a veteran of these wars. In fact, I thought it was kind of cool. You're always looking for fresh angles in this game, and right there in front of everyone was an angle straight from the wrapper. Had I'd been there, I'd have been turning handsprings when Six Kinds of Cute admonished the NBA MVP to "Be quiet, Daddy."

Boom. Column lede.

And, thanks, kid. You can eat on my dime any day.