Forget the Republicans. Forget the Democrats. If you want to see the art of spin performed at its highest form you need look no further than the New York newspapers and their sports section during the 2004 World Series.
The story of the playoffs thus far has been the Boston Red Sox and their quest to end their long period of futility. In their quest they have become the first team to ever come back from being down 0-3 in a seven game series. No team, in any sport, had accomplished that, and for the Sox to pull it off against their most hated rival, the Yankees, made it even more satisfying. Now they find themselves up 3-0 in the World Series against an overmatched Cardinals squad. You would think that after the historic collapse of the Yanks that the New York sportswriters would shift their focus to the next series of moves the team will conduct, how much money they will throw at the top free agents on the market? While this has happened, there is an unexpected undercurrent that be felt as well.
In the coverage of the World Series, and especially in light of the fact that the Sox are poised to possibly sweep their opponents it seems that the sports writers have fallen into full spin mode. “The Cards aren’t that good” the headlines read, “Anyone could beat them, the Sox are lucky they get to play them” is another topic. At first you may think it is just one writer who is voicing his Yankee-tinged opinion, but then you see other writers adopting this stance. As incredulous as it sounds they are actually knocking the Red Sox, a team that just thwarted the mighty Pinstripers and are pissing all over their success in the series, figuratively speaking. They can’t just give the Boston team their due and say they were the better squad this time around. No, they have to say that if they win it won’t mean much because their opponents weren’t that good. Funny how one year ago, the Marlins were huge underdogs and took care of the Yankees pretty easily and all of these same writers were describing the Marlins pitchers as the next coming and Pudge Rodriquez was the greatest catcher of all time.
In light of the high voltage political climate we find ourselves in, the fact that sportswriters are stooping to adopt the tricks of the trade usually reserved for the likes of Karl Rove and Bob Shrum shouldn’t be surprising, but it is. Fully realizing that the catch of a columnist is to express his opinions in context of the subject, what is happening now goes so beyond that notion that if you didn’t know any better you’d swear the Mr. Steinbrenner was writing the articles himself.
Much like the Swift Boat Veteran Ads the current selection of Red Sox articles in the New York papers represent the worst type of information distribution. However, one has learned to expect such jaded versions of historic events from Political ads. We expect more from our newspapers, excluding the New York Post of course, they probably already have the “Bush Wins” feature article written and ready to print.
