Pre-emptive strikeout

 Kim Mulkey ought to know by now how all this works. But apparently not.

How it doesn't work, see -- how, in fact, it turns into a boomerang and smacks you in the gob -- is what LSU's lightning-rod women's basketball coach did yesterday.

What she did was hijack an NCAA Tournament presser to complain about, and threaten the Washington Post, over a story she hasn't read and that hasn't even been published yet.  Called it a "hit piece" (even though, again she hasn't read it yet) and she would sue for libel if she deemed it untrue.  Complained that the reporter working on it has been trying to interview her for two years, and that this week she sent a list of questions on Tuesday requesting her to answer them by Thursday "right before we're scheduled to tip off."

"Are you kidding me?" she said.

What a coincidence, Coach. That's exactly my reaction.

First of all: Two years? You've been ducking the guy for two years?

Gee, Coach, I don't know, but seems to me you've been given ample opportunity to present your side of whatever story the Post is working on. And you said, "Nah." And then claimed on Saturday that sending a list of questions during the first week of the NCAA Tournament was "an attempt to prevent me from commenting."

Two years, Coach. Two ... freaking ... years. 

I dunno. But that sounds like you're the one who's been preventing you from commenting.

Instead you're blaming this reporter, claiming the Post was just trying to "distract" LSU from the tournament. And trundling down that tired path about how this is what's wrong with media and why no one trusts it these days and blah-blah-blah.

To quote Mulkey herself: Are you kidding me?

Well, speaking as a former ink-stained wretch myself, I've had a bellyful of all this enemy-of-the-people stuff promulgated by a certain former president/wanna-be tinpot autocrat. It's an attempt to muzzle the free press -- a pre-requisite for any autocrat -- by cherry-picking media flubs and using them to smear an entire class of decent, earnest people just trying to do their jobs.

Which is to inform, enlighten, and, yes, expose. 

Surprise, surprise, it's the latter wanna-be autocrats get apoplectic about -- and there is scarcely any position more autocratic than that of a college basketball or football coach.

Well, to hell with that. And to hell with Kim Mulkey -- whose pre-emptive strike was actually a strikeout, given that it was so astoundingly, unfathomably stupid.

Nothing, after all, suggests an individual has some lively skeletons to hide than complaining about a rumored expose before it becomes an expose. And does so on a national stage, which gave the Washington Post more free pub than it could have dreamed. Mulkey couldn't have sold more copies of this reporter's story if she'd stood on a busy street corner shouting "Read all about it!"

General American craziness notwithstanding, not much renders the Blob more slack-jawed than how little people understand the function of journalists in a free society. And how even those who've spent their entire careers dealing with journalists don't get it.

When Mulkey said the Post was deliberately trying to "distract" her team, for instance, all I could do was shake my head and laugh. Egged on by demagogues and fear-mongers like the aforementioned wanna-be tinpot autocrat, people actually believe the Post reporter and his editor gathered in a boardroom somewhere and had this conversation:

Editor: OK, so how can we screw with LSU's women's basketball team?

Reporter: I know! Let's send Kim Mulkey a bunch of questions two days before the NCAA Tournament starts! That'll mess 'em up good!

Ay-yi-yi. And gee willickers and holy moley besides.

Look. I'm not going to sit here and tell you reporters and editors don't have biases. They're human, so of course they do. And the ones who don't do their jobs right occasionally let those biases skew their work to an embarrassing degree.

But those who do their jobs right try like hell to keep those biases out of their work. Because it's the work that matters, and obvious bias tends to diminish that work by making it less credible. 

That's a boon to the autocrats, because credibility is what they fear most. It's why certain former presidents and current women's basketball coaches declare the free press "the enemy of the people" and threaten to sue even before a story hits the streets. Because that sort of intimidation is their only weapon against a well-sourced, meticulously reported piece of journalism.

Yeah, well. Good luck with that, Coach Mulkey.

And way to sell those papers.