I don’t care which public bathroom anyone chooses or uses. Just as long as they wash their hands when they’re done. As a matter of public policy and health, that’s what matters.
It doesn’t seem sensible that someone who has a woman’s genitals would even try to use a urinal. That person, regardless of what they regard as their gender, would use a toilet stall with a door that latches.
And most of us are disinclined to try to unlatch such stall doors to see what’s going on inside.
And presuming there are no urinals in bathrooms marked “Women,” everyone, as a matter of practicality, should end up in the right place — and to no one’s distress.
How would I know — and why would I care — if a transgender person is seated behind that stall door? Or should I scope for open-toe shoes and toenail polish?
How did this issue avoid applied common sense to become an issue?
Again, as long as you wash your hands afterwards, preferably with hot water and soap, you’re the kind of person with whom I would prefer to share a lavatory.
Naturally, that brings us to ESPN, which has to be the most confusing place to work.
It rushed to hire Ray Lewis — still a person of interest in an unsolved double homicide, still a person who couldn’t find the blood-soaked clothing he was seen wearing at the scene of the murders, still a person who copped an obstruction of justice plea in the murders, and still a person who reached a financial settlement with the families of the murder victims.
ESPN hired Curt Schilling and put him on Sunday night baseball, from where he talked so much, he began to sound like someone was mowing the lawn next door — for hours. ESPN did not or could not have him cut that out or at least cut it down.
Yet Schilling was censured, then fired, for expressing his beliefs in tweets.
The first was his belief that radical, mass-murdering Islamists are much like World War II Nazis — a history-supported opinion that ESPN, remarkably, claimed was not the company’s position. Whom did ESPN feel he offended, ISIS or Third Reich Nazis?
Then he was fired for suggesting people use the public bathrooms that correspond to their body parts.
“That’s it, Schilling! You’re outta here!”
On the other hand, ESPN has long suffered the presence of NBA “Insider” Chris Broussard, a man of unshakable spiritual conviction, though his beliefs apparently don’t include “Thou shalt not steal.”
Broussard regularly has been nabbed “liberating” the work of others, then presenting it to national audiences as a product of his toil and skill in service to ESPN.
Last week, Broussard was nailed, again. He was working the Mavericks-Thunder series that included the ejection of Kevin Durant for smacking Dallas’s Justin Anderson.
Dallas Morning News sports editor Damon Marx saw Anderson and Durant shaking hands after Game 4, took a picture of that, then posted it on Twitter.
Broussard took a picture of that picture, then sent it out as if he had taken it, as if he again had been Johnny-on-the-spot.
Six hours later, Broussard added that the picture wasn’t his work.
Such has become a regular habit of both Broussard’s and ESPN’s, which for years has been giving itself full or partial — “ESPN confirms” — credit for stories lifted from outside entities.
At least Broussard’s lifts of others’ work are accurate. His exclusive report last year that Mark Cuban literally was stalking free-agent DeAndre Jordan was one Broussard eventually retracted.
Broussard also has exploited his ESPN credentials and status to preach from a religious pulpit. He feels homosexuals “openly live in unrepentant sin” and represent “an open rebellion to God.” And, given these are his beliefs, he is entitled.
But ESPN has been far more tolerant of Broussard’s beliefs than Schilling’s. Schilling was punished, then fired, because his beliefs don’t correspond to ESPN’s. Does that mean Broussard’s do?
It is difficult for ESPN employees to toe such crooked, confusing lines, especially when some lead to the exits, others to bathrooms. Oh, well, as long as they wash their hands — of everything.
How long before Mike Francesa gets one right?
Even more lost tapes: We remain blessed by the presence of Mike Francesa. There is no one who has been so wrong, so often; yet he continues to consider himself Erasmus the Second. Three from last week:
1) No way — absolutely no way! — Francesa previously had insisted, authoritatively, that the “No. 1 pick will not be a quarterback.” Result: The first two picks were QBs.
2) No way — absolutely no way! — Ryan Fitzpatrick scored a 48 on the Wonderlic aptitude test; the highest possible score, he hollered, is 40! Result: Fitzpatrick scored a 48; 50 is tops.
3) In 2008, as Zenyatta, a filly, began to make news and noise, Francesa, horseracing expert (who never has picked a winner before a race), dismissed her as “media hype,” ignore her.
Result: Zenyatta won 19 of 20 starts. Her only “loss” was her last and most memorable race: After a horrible start in the 2010 Breeders Cup Classic, she came from dead-last, 18 lengths back, to finish second, losing by inches.
Last week, “media hype” Zenyatta was elected to the Racing Hall of Fame.
Bring on the Sean
If Sean McDonough replaces Mike Tirico — Tirico’s off to NBC — on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” that should be good for those who prefer honesty to pandering.
Raul Ibanez, so easy to root for because he played the game in defiance of the too-cool-to-care, “The Game Has Changed” style, has joined ESPN as a studio analyst.
Laughable to hear Craig Carton rip anyone as a coward when he regularly rips people, then kisses their fannies when they’re with him on the air.
Sunday night’s ESPN-ordered 8:05 start is Yankees-Red Sox. Last Sunday was Red Sox-Astros. It went 12 innings and an impossible 5:03, ending here — and in Boston — after 1 a.m. Then Boston flew to Atlanta, Houston to Seattle, for games the same day/next night.
Monday, Yankees-Texas on YES, Ken Singleton and David Cone listed Rangers’ 1990s sluggers, including Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro. No mention of how they became sudden sluggers.
After being benched for the biggest game of the season, you would think Ranger Dan Boyle might have chosen to leave quietly, with some dignity.
By the way, I know exactly how it feels for Tom Brady to be so incredibly handsome that he’s mocked as a “pretty boy.”