The Gray Lady, and gray areas

 There's nothing the Blob loves more than self-proclaimed bastions of free speech muzzling free speech. Hypocrisy makes my heart glow like a Yule log ember.

OK. So that's completely not true.

Actually, as a former bastioneer (or something) myself, it annoys the bejeezus out of me. Because the people doing the muzzling are people who ought to know better, but don't. Instead, they cling to notions of journalistic purity that read like they came from the quill of John Peter Zenger himself.

In other words, they're, like, 400 years out of date.

Which brings us to the latest anachronistic bastioneers (really like that word), the poobahs at the New York Times. After buying the floundering sports website The Athletic, they declared it would be an independent entity under the Times umbrella, and thus there would be no substantive changes in its content or philosophy. That of course was a lie.

Because now the Times has announced Athletic staffers will be banned from expressing their political beliefs on social media or any other platform. This presumably includes social or political commentary that pertains to sports (because the intersection is well-populated these days), but the Times says, well, no ... kinda ... maybe.

Thus does the Gray Lady wander into a vast gray area.

I mean, if, for instance, Steve Kerr sounds off again about gun control, are Athletic writers allowed to comment and/or expand upon it? Are they allowed to do more than simply serve up a lot of neutered pablum without pointing out that certain politicians of a certain bent are taking X amount of dollars from the NRA? And if they're not allowed to do that, what's the point of addressing what Kerr has to say?

And what about anthem protests against racial injustice? Will staffers be allowed to comment on those in any substantive way? If a Republican Vice-President conducts another staged walkout vis-a-vis Mike Pence at that Colts game a few years back, will they be allowed to comment on that?

"I don't personally view matters of race as politics," Times muckety Paul Fichtenbaum responded to questions about this.

Race isn't political? 

The hell is this man talking about? And from what planet is he talking about it?

The skinny is, this is destined to be one glorious quagmire, and it's entirely of the Times creation. They've so twisted themselves in knots trying to maintain outmoded notions of objectivity they come off sounding as gelded as Funny Cide. 

Lately, that's sounded like this: Let us not unduly piss off any political party, or that party's supporters, endeavoring always to treat all views with equal respect and gravity, no matter how utterly batshite they are.

That's a trifle more wordy than the Times current motto, "All The News That's Fit To Print." But it certainly seems more accurate these days.

Which would seem to be important for a newspaper, after all.