Cynics' carnival

Some days I look at it, this strange curdled place we're in, and I wonder when it happened.

I wonder when, and how, this hardened newsroom cynic got passed by the World At Large.

I don't remember the World At Large coming up on my shoulder, and feeling its straining breath ... and seeing it out of the corner of my eye ... and then the side of my eye ... and then right in front of me, drawing away with every stride.

I had such a big lead, I thought. No one was going to out-sneer me.

But today the happy news comes down that Bubba Wallace apparently was not the victim of a hate crime, that his team just happened to be assigned a Talladega garage stall with a pull rope that someone, last fall perhaps, had fashioned into a loop for convenience sake. Looked like a noose, yes, it did. Apparently wasn't.

Let the cynics' carnival begin.

What obvious shenanigans by NASCAR to gin up its ratings ...

How could anyone have looked at that and NOT known what it was?

Whole thing was a hoax, a farce, another "racism" false flag ...

There goes the Media again, jumping to conclusions ...

All that and worse. Bunch of people howling with far more passion than they ever did when we all thought it was a despicable act of hate directed at Wallace. Almost doing a gleeful little victory dance that it wasn't, because they knew all along this racism stuff was a big put-on.

Talk about cynical. But allow a now second-place cynic to back up the truck a bit on all this.

Here's the situation: You're NASCAR. You've just banned the Confederate flag from your venues, incurring a vicious backlash from the diehards and the rednecks and the heritage-not-hate folks. The guy who pushed you into banning the Stars and Bars, and brought down the backlash, is the only Black driver in your top series. And suddenly someone notices a pull rope fashioned into what surely looks like a noose in that driver's assigned garage.

Why, that couldn't possibly be a "message" aimed at your only Black driver, could it? Especially given the circumstances and the national mood right now?

So, yes, NASCAR's poobahs jumped to a conclusion, but it was an exceedingly short hop. And they released a statement -- which they probably shouldn't have done, but, again, the circumstances and the national mood and what other conclusion could rational minds have drawn?

So they sent out a statement. The media duly reported it, therefore making the same short conclusive hop. Maybe some reporter should have said "Ah, this sounds like BS" and taken 24 or 48 hours to thoroughly check it out -- but given that it looked, again, like a thoroughly credible story, and that every media outlet in the country was climbing over each other to break it, that's not really realistic.

After all, no one said "hold the presses, we've gotta make sure it wasn't just a mistake" when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Media outlets went with it instantly, because in this case a rush to judgment was hardly a rush to judgment.

So the media reported it, and then it reported that there was going to be an investigation, and then it reported what that investigation found. Please explain to me what they were supposed to do that they didn't do.

The irony here is the people shouting loudest about a rush to judgment are rushing to judgment themselves, and worse. Why, they just know it was all a setup by NASCAR. Look at the ratings the race got on Monday! Look at what great pub they got from that little sideshow before the race!

Well. I'm still cynical enough to think some of the folks saying all that might have their own agendas. 

In any case, however it played out, it doesn't diminish an iota the spectacle of every driver and crew member walking Wallace's car to the front of the field, because even if what happened wasn't an act of hate everyone believed it was. That moment was real. Bubba Wallace's tears were real. Eighty-two-year-old Richard Petty showing up to, as he said, "hug his driver," was real.

And if it was all a reaction to something that apparently turned out not to be true?

Irrelevant. Because it remains a clear, eloquent statement about where NASCAR is and where it's going, backlash be damned. 

Cynics, too.