Respectfully Decline

Why is it that sports guys are the only journalists with any guts? Keith Olbermann quit MSNBC when he just couldn’t take doing the Monica story night after night. Bob Costas refused to host Larry King last night when he was told he’s have to do another ridiculous navel gazer about Natalee Holloway:

Veteran sports broadcaster Bob Costas declined to fill in as host on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Thursday night because of the program’s focus that night on the missing Alabama teenager and on Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer.

Costas — who has been serving as an occasional substitute for King since June — bowed out of the Thursday show after he could not persuade producers to change the program’s lineup, which included an interview with Beth Holloway Twitty, the mother of the high school senior who disappeared in Aruba in late May.

“I didn’t think the subject matter of Thursday’s show was the kind of broadcast that I should be doing,” Costas said in a statement, adding that he “respectfully declined to participate.”

I’ve noted before that the sports writers are often the ones who call bullshit. I don’t know why this is so. Perhaps it’s because they aren’t dependent on the political media establishment for their daily bread. Or maybe it’s just a different occupational culture. Whatever it is, it’s clear to me that the political reporting fraternity would do well to take a lesson from their sports bretheren. Just say no.

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