I'm not really a sports fan, but I read King Kaufman--Salon.com's sports columnist--as often as I can find something redeemingly interesting in the topic. That is to say, I am unlikely to read a column with a dek that hints at an exploration of the minutiae of rules in rugby, but I may very well click on a column concerning the intersection of sports and something else. Like Britney Spears.
I read his stuff because he writes very well and he has a way of making sports accessible to me. Sounds stupid, I know, since sports are popular because of their wide accessibility, but there it is. When you grow up in a house in which the only sporting event ever likely to grace the television is--maybe--the finals at Wimbledon and the occasional Cat-Griz game, First and 10 sounds like some kind of new branch of Physics. (Do you know how long I had to think to come up with a proper sports term? And I probably used it wrong.)
Anyway, I was enjoying my skim of King's column from earlier in the week when I came across this paragraph in explanation of his feelings about the last dance of the University of Illinois mascot, Chief Illiniwek:
"...there's often some name-calling, branding those who want to get rid of the chief as "politically correct," sort of the last argument of a scoundrel. Politically correct is what some people call you if they don't like it when you ask them to have some respect for other people."
If that doesn't sum up entirely my feelings about the oft-hurled-at-the-left epithet "P.C.", I don't know what will. And to think I found it in a sports column!
Maybe I ought to be paying more attention to ESPN.