Covering Sports in the Age of Trump

At the start of the week, I wanted to write about Sidney Crosby. I usually don't want to, because it always comes across as a ploy for clicks. But the dude is off to a great start since returning from a concussion, so I volunteered this idea to my editor, who was totally into it. Everything is better when Crosby is the best player in the world. I had thoughts about this and probably some jokes about how Crosby's excellence leads to a flustered Jeremy Roenick sweating on TV, which everyone can enjoy.

After the United States presidential election, it became really hard to muster any enthusiasm to do anything Wednesday. I'm sure Alex Jones would rip off his shirt and tell me I'm soft while pouring protein powder down my cuck throat because of this, but I don't care. I tweeted about how I'd manually masturbate animals in a vet clinic if it meant a job in Canada, so I'm not too worried about admitting malaise in this space. The idea of a Klan-backed president, Donald Trump, alongside a vice-president who thinks you can electrocute the gay out of teenagers didn't have me in a mood to discuss a potential 50-goal season and second straight Stanley Cup for Crosby. I'm comfortable admitting this.

Then I thought about what to write, because I have to write something. In the wake of news like this, sports writers tend to go in two directions—either "This Devastating News Shows How Unimportant Sports Truly Are" or "In Times Like These, We Need Sports More Than Ever." Both are among my least favorite types of content. They come across as either oblivious or as fabricated emotion. I hate them.

It's 2016. If you haven't figured out that sports are inconsequential to your life by now, you are probably also the sort of person who was an undecided voter until Tuesday morning. If you think watching Crosby knife through defenses or bank pucks into nets off goaltenders is the perfect distraction, you're probably not a member of the LGBTQ community, or Muslim, or black, or basically any American who isn't a white guy. There's no distraction for what has just happened.

If I came to you and said, "My friend, it's very possible that your reproductive rights will be completely out of your control by 2017, but Crosby's score-adjusted Fenwick is a rare sight to behold that can help ease your pending fears," you'd be within your legal rights to kick me in the dick and throw me off a roof. We have a president-elect who has bragged to Billy Bush about sexual assault. Less than 24 hours after Hillary Clinton's concession, I'm still in no mood to care about Crosby's chemistry with his linemates, let alone write about it.

If I, a straight white guy living in New Jersey, has had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach for 23 straight hours, then I can't even begin to imagine what everyone else with far more reason to be alarmed might be feeling. I spent most of Wednesday annoyed at people trying to be positive about the results and that was pissing me off. "Love can conquer anything." Didn't we just prove that it can't? "We can un-fuck this!" Based on what, man? Sentiments like those were sending me into quiet rages on the subway all afternoon. Even people retweeting cute pets were making me want to throw my phone on the floor.

I didn't want to see pets. Who the hell wants to see something about Crosby? "Oh, he has eight goals in seven games? You realize you might have to learn Russian soon, right?" Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm trying to delete it.

At some point, probably, things will return to normal. A new idea of normal, to be sure, but by next week, I think a lot of people will be through all the stages of grief. Not everyone, of course, but a lot of people. They're going to wake up Monday morning and want to cling to vestiges of normalcy—kittens, puppies, and words about the best player in hockey doing things the best player in hockey does. Normalizing bad things was sort of the theme of this election and it's already happening now and no matter what I type here or do anywhere else, it figures to continue.

I really wanted to write about how Crosby being the greatest is great for the entire hockey world. The NHL loves it because he's their poster boy, shining a beautiful spotlight on the sport. Pittsburgh fans love it because, well, he's the best player on the Penguins and they enjoy that. It's great for haters, too, because what's better than focusing your anger on an athlete at their peak? And it's great for casual fans because they can focus their scattershot attention on something great that only Crosby can offer.

My intention wasn't to do a "Crosby unites the hockey world" thing as some sort of juxtaposition to the real world, because it wasn't until about 10 PM Tuesday when I realized a guy with no impulse control around his Twitter account was going to get the nuclear codes. I'm not that clever and I have no ability to plan that far ahead or see the future. Even after I thought about that angle, I decided it was stupid to write it earnestly now and that rambling was somehow better. It feels better, to be honest.

So maybe this is all I can really offer—a distraction. I can't offer policy change or encouraging words about how everything is going to be OK because I lack the capacity to do or know so. I can't even offer a picture of a dog. I'm allergic. I'm useless. As my country teeters on the precipice of a dark and scary time with decades of progress threatened to be unraveled, I'm even more useless than usual because I can't even string together a decent column about Crosby when he deserves one.

I have a job, that when you get right down to it, is pointless. I try to never lose sight of that. I'm never going to write anything that changes the world. I'm happy to help turn your brain off for a little bit, maybe draw out a couple chuckles, and while I know this is a stupid skill, I just felt really stupid throughout Wednesday as I tried to concoct a usable idea for this space. "What if I wrote something in the voice of Trump and … man, no, that's the stupidest thing you could do."

And this is what I came up with—a pointless story about how pointless everything is. I can't think of anything that fits better into the moment.

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