The Refs

Okay, Okay, New Orleans, we heard you the first time.

Y'all were robbed, ripped off, shafted, screwed, cheated and you had a Super Bowl stolen from you due to something called Spontaneous Blindness on the part of the referees

I'll let NOLA.Com, the New Orleans online news paper describe what happened.

"With 1 minute and 45 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and the game tied 20-20, the Saints faced third-and-10 at the Los Angeles 13. Quarterback Drew Brees threw a pass along the right sideline to wide receiver Tommylee Lewis, and Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman leveled Lewis before the ball arrived. However, none of the officials threw a flag."

It was textbook pass interference.  It wasn't a "judgment call". It was pass interference because Robey-Coleman did what he had to do to prevent a possible touchdown, just like he's been taught all of his life.


But, there was no flag. New Orleans lost the game to Los Angeles. And New Orleans went bonkers.

You have never seen bonkers like a New Orleans bonkers. Like everything New Orleans, it was way over the top involving law suits, speeches on the Senate floor and your basic whining. The good times stopped rolling in The Big Easy.

It would be easy to tell the good folks in New Orleans to get over it. But, they have a point. If a ref can't see that, what is he doing in the business?

It is sort of that way with the news media.

It is important to have a free and independent news media.They are the referees of society. They  are the ones to let us know what is going on at City Hall, the County Commission  and all the way up to the White House.  They are the ones entrusted with letting us know what all of those knuckle heads are really doing-not what they say they are doing.

By the way, I hate that quote from  "Mr. Dooley":  "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".

No, it is not. The job of the news media is to tell the story as accurately as possible. 


Two recent stories have revealed a new purpose of the news media.  The purpose of the news media is to somehow get rid of The How In The Hell Did He Get To Be President, President Trump.

Buzzfeed reported the latest blockbuster news that President Trump told his lawyer, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.  Lying to Congress is a clear impeachable offense. The problem: Buzzfeed said their source came from inside Robert Mueller's Independent Counsel's office.  Mueller's office issued a tweet stating that it was not true.  Buzzfeed stands by their story. Good luck with that guys.

The second story is the now all-too-familiar story of The Covington Catholic Kids at The Lincoln Memorial.  It had all of the elements of a great story  Race. Wise Indigenous "Elderly Man" (wait, he's only four years older than me). MAGA hats. Smirking.

I did not realize smirking was such a big crime in America. 

A lot of Blue Check Mark people of Twitter condemned these kids and one, in particular, that was pictured standing in front of the   "Elderly Man" beating a drum.  According to the Blue Check Mark people, this one kid was smirking.

That infuriated a lot of people.  How dare he smirk at an elderly man beating a drum in his face!

One journalist said this:

"And to all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go [expletive] yourselves".

Twitter was going on a couple of minutes of the tape. Other tapes show something different, which it wasn't this gigantic crime against humanity that the original story portrayed.  As late as Wednesday night, some in the news media were still trying to demonize these kids, who were just living their own personal Bonfire of The Vanities.

By the beginning of the week, we learned that the news media totally botched this story, basically making a mountain out of a molehill.  The first story in  The New York Times was titled: "Boys In 'Make America Great Again Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March.”.  The next story they ran, after the fog of baloney dissipated, was titled:  "Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students.”

This story was just too good to investigate.  It checked all of the boxes, particularly the new odd one that we have to fear roaming bands of Catholic School boys.

It all goes back as a reflection on Trump and how he "empowers" hate groups by making them wear red hats and smirking at elderly men

The problem is the news media for years have been picking the good guys and the bad guys. You can tell the good guys by their drums, the bad guys by their smirks.

When the press totally messes up a story like this one, it is like the refs missing a pass interference call in the football game.  It doesn't make you trust the refs.

Catlin Flanagn says this in The Atlantic:

"I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will casually harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory."