Safe Zone Violations

Jay Nordlinger writes about how political commentary is creeping into everything, including sports reporting where politics clearly doesn't belong:

It’s an old story, but one that deserves retelling now and then: I’m talking about the injection of politics — partisan politics — into sports columns. And into other areas where partisan politics have no place. As I’ve taken to lamenting in recent times, there is no “safe zone.”

A reader of National Review Online sent me an e-mail whose Subject line read “Safe-Zone Violation!” (I get many such e-mails.) This reader had been enjoying a sports column in the New York Post about a local PGA tournament. The columnist was complaining that Tiger Woods was not sufficiently open to the media. He wrote, “It’s not like we’re trying to pull President Obama aside for a couple of questions while he’s trying to save our country from itself.”

Was that really necessary? Psychologically, for the columnist, it may have been.

I did a little note about this on NRO, and it struck a nerve — struck it hard. Readers responded with an avalanche of mail, much of it anguished. A typical letter went (something like), “I always loved reading So-and-so” — Bill Simmons of ESPN.com, for example. “But finally I had to stop because he was constantly insulting my political views with little asides. Why do they have to do that? Why do they have to alienate half their audience, or at least some part of it?”

Jay gives a number of examples where political comparisons or commentary were completely unnecessary. His readers have since offered hundreds more.

I guess the best advice for the wannabe political pundits: Shut up the tell us the scores.