A disciple of a legendary Washington sports reporter originally from Maine has manufactured a new arena for bashing Trump – the Kentucky Derby.
By all logic, Kevin Blackistone, who says his beat “focuses on the intersection of sports, race, and politics,” shouldn’t be one complaining about freedom.
After all, he grew up privileged, an admirer of acclaimed Washington Post sports writer Shirley Povich, whose family immigrated – legally – to Maine in the early 1900s from oppressive Lithuania. (Shirley’s son, Maury, became a TV personality in his own right).
Former president Richard Nixon once told the owner of the Washington Post: “Shirley Povich is the only reason I read your newspaper.”
Yet now, as a Post columnist and journalism teacher at a Maryland college’s program named for Bar-Harbor native Povich, angry Blackistone is using that perch to go after Republicans, President Trump specifically, claiming they are abridging his First Amendment rights.
Rights to speech are the same privileges that attracted the Poviches to 1900s’ America as an escape from what soon became terrain dominated by Nazis – the mass killers to whom the Democrats frequently compare Trump.
The excuse for Blackistone’s lecturing Trump in WaPo?
The 151st running of the Kentucky Derby that occurred Saturday.
Doesn’t take much.
So Blackistone, needing an anti-Trump straw horse – of course – for his column, came up with the idea of cheering for “Journalism,” the actual name of the losing bay colt in the weekend derby whose owner despises Trump.
Yet, he first quoted veteran Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman as having told interviewer Studs Terkel in 1974 that anyone who cheers at a sporting event for one contestant over another belongs in the seats, not in the press box.
Holtzman’s 1973 book, based on interviewing big-name sports writers including Povich – whose family later settled in Bath – was titled “No Cheering In The Press Box.”
No cheering in the press box of course also means no jeering in the press box. It’s called non-partisan journalism, which Blackstone is claiming he practices.
But in a perversion of physics he actually decided to reverse Holtzman’s dictum by penning a column saying that he was not only going to be sitting in the derby press box but would also be cheering – for “Journalism.”
The point of his column apparently was that even though reporters are supposed to be apolitical he was going to beg exception so that he could go after Trump by supporting a horse named Journalism.
Then he went ahead and blamed Trump for journalism being “under siege.”
See how this works?
Honestly, how can anyone even mildly sentient read “journalists should be non-partisan” and translate that to “President Trump is to blame for journalism being under siege?”
That’s what real journalism is up against – fake reporters like Blackistone claiming they must be non-biased while simultaneously debasing a president whom he simply doesn’t like because…why?
Blackistone decided that since he admits bogus journalists are under fire from Republicans that he would parlay that theory into a way to become a press-box cheerleader for “Journalism.”
Aron Wellman, who owns the losing horse, had said he intentionally decided to name it “Journalism” to help rescue the profession from Trump.
“In this day and age, when freedom of speech and journalistic integrity is under attack, it’s pretty poignant that a horse named Journalism is receiving so much hype and attention as one of the main players for the country’s biggest race,” Wellman told Blackstone.
Wellman clearly is no fool, which is a promotion for a Democrat. He named his horse to get publicity and that’s just what he got.
Wellman knew the way to get attention was to name his horse in a way that would engender publicity from the legacy liberal press to bash Trump.
Sadly, in Blackistone he found someone gullible enough to swallow his horse hype as a way to promote not only Wellman’s but Blackistone’s political agenda – mixing “sports, race and politics” into one story.
It’s liberal clowns like Blackistone who, come hell or high water, will parrot the Democrat bible no matter whether it makes sense or not, whether it marginalizes minorities or not, whether it courts illegal alien liberal converts to cross the border or not.
A reporter who describes his beat as “race and politics” has one goal – even if on the way to the finish line he hijacks the press box to savage the Republican president.
Fake Journalism lost Saturday.
Real journalism (in the name of a horse called Sovereignty) came in first.
How fitting.
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what is most fitting is that Journalism was beat by the horse Sovereignty 🤣😂.
Not sure of the actual date that journalism died in the United States but for me it was probably 1973 with “Bob” Woodword’s hideously corrupt coverage of Watergate. Today’s “journalists” simply haven’t realized that they destroyed journalism from the inside out.
When Scott Pelly on the CBS Evening “ News “ showed the picture of the thug from Ferguson Missouri , Michael Whatever , wearing his high school cap and gown , I stopped watching CBS and I haven’t watched it since .
Remember the lies about “ Hands Up Don’t Shoot “ ?
I was a journalist back when who-what-when-where-why were supposed to be named in the lede paragraph. I won a few national awards for magazine writing. That was when journalism was unbiased… well, largely.
Journalism is now — as Dickens would say — dead as a door nail.
Thank you, Maine Wire, for being steadfast and true. Such reporting is hard to find nowadays.
Journalism turned into a real donkey.
Its hilarious how these people who no one has ever heard of feel the need to open their mouths to feel relevant (in their own mind). I suspect in the near future most of these people will come to their demise by bleeding ulcers. A fitting end.
Blackistone used to write for a Dallas newspaper before he was let go. He wound up on ESPN’s ‘Around The Horn” sports commentary program, where he provided a reliably leftist viewpoint.