By Bud Yardline
JOTR Sports Writer
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Ain’t that Luke Warm a cool hand with a column?
Only one problem from this side of the press room: He may be a college prof, but he’s still full of you know what.
Who’s he think he is, tryin’ to indict The New York Times for bullyin’ Tiger Woods?
Oh, I know, he seems to be praising the media, but I got a sinkin’ feelin’ he’s makin’ mock of us.
So what if the Times and a whole bunch of other media are tryin’ to intimidate Tiger into talkin’ when he don’t want to yap?
So what’s new?
There are rules to the game, Luke baby, and this is the way they’re played: You got a press card, you got special privileges. You go where you want to go and bully whoever you need to bully. You’re press, see, and you got a job to do.
Hey, I read Native Son by Richard Wright, too. Luke boy tries to make out like that rancid fictional murder yarn’s the same as Tiger’s bumpin’ into a fire hydrant in a private subdivision and then stayin’ mum while reporters try their usual tricks, Constitutionally-approved, I might add, to pry some words outa his mouth.
Well, guess what, who was it found the murdered girl’s body in the ashes of the furnace in Native Son?
Who was it, Luke my boy?
The press!
The reporters, ding dong!
The press solved the blinkin’ murder, for Chrissake!
So what if they were not exactly polite?
What’s that ol’ sayin’, ‘you want scrambled eggs, you gotta bust some eggshells?’
No point bein’ polite about it — when there’s news to be broke, you gotta bend the rules.
I mean, for Chrissake, journalism ain’t sports. Where’s the ref?
Hell, in news, there ain’t no ref, Luke!
We got no ump, so we make our rules up.
And then, if we don’t like ’em, we chuck ’em.
No rules are the best rules is what I say.
Just forget about playin’ by ’em entirely.
You know what my ol’ pal Robert Service said:
There are strange things done
In the deadline sun
By the men who moil for print.
Luke Warm is a bit too fancy dancy and la-dee-dah for my taste.
You’re a journalist, you gotta get that story. Period. End of story.
What I mean is, the story is the be all and end all.
If you don’t get it, some other moiler in the deadline sun will cremate your butt.
Better it be you, so you get that raise, all the credit and laurels an’ that pint a booze in the file drawer, and some other midnight toiler gets the boot.
An’ that’s all I got t’ say.
