Jackie Robinson = Michael Vick

So says William Rhoden of the New York Times and Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, born in 1941, has been a civil rights activist for most of his adult life. He said that in some ways, Vick’s attempt to re-enter the N.F.L. was similar to Jackie Robinson’s entering Major League Baseball.

Although their situations were drastically different, Jackson said, the challenge was the same: Which owner would have the courage to make a controversial signing?

Viewed from a 2009 prism, that comparison seems blasphemous. Robinson became an American icon because of his courage and perseverance. The only thing he did wrong — in some eyes — was to be born African-American.

Papers, especially national ones, and magazines love nothing more than to add “seriousness” to sports sections. One way is to hire liberal columnists and let them hand-wring about race, sexism or other societal and political issues and inject them into sports as much as possible. These columnists are almost exclusively minority, because in the publisher’s eye, this gives them a moral imperative we plain white guys don’t have.

Not that there isn’t a time and place for that, it makes one wonder whether some of them even like sports. The Times has Rhoden, and had Selena Roberts, while ESPN continues to employ Jemele Hill and Scoop Jackson. Every story or column is swathed in racial and societal subtext, usually of the most liberal and judgmental variety.  It wouldn’t look as bad if non-white male columnists such as Jackie MacMullan, Jayson Whitlock, Terrence Moore (who in a travesty of justice is unemployed) and the late Ralph Wiley didn’t kick their ass on a daily basis.

White columnists even jump into the fray, with Rick Reilly’s occasionally dealing shams out. One example, his “Dean Smith is great because he’s liberal and makes his players visit death row inmates” column, which inspired the brilliant rejoinder from a reader: “Why didn’t you visit any of the death row victims’ families?” But more often than not, the Scoop Jacksons and Rhodens make an entire schtick out of it, then somehow remain employed when the rest of the writers on staff, those who actually write about sports, are cut loose.

If the grievance culture – somehow still in business with Tiger Woods as sports’ most popular athlete, Barack Obama as President, Sarah Palin as a Presidential front-runner and Will Smith the biggest movie star in the world – wasn’t running on fumes before, Rhoden and Jackson must be sucking hard on the hose to invoke Jackie Robinson in reference to Vick.

“Democracy does not guarantee success,” Jackson said. “Democracy guarantees an opportunity. It’s not fair to de facto try to lock him out of his right to compete. If he can’t make the team, don’t let him play. If he can, let him work.”

He has a right to work? McDonald’s is hiring. There was once something called the right to assemble, and 32 NFL teams didn’t want to assemble with Vick.

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