Younger readers probably wont comprehend how important magazines like Sports Illustrated were in pre-internet culture. Most sports news wasfound in local papers and in short segments at 10 p.m. on the nightly news. Sports Illustrated was oftenthough, periodically, competition would pop upthe sole venue in which a sports fan could find deeply reported, well-crafted features and profiles, not to mention often-remarkable photography (the swimsuit issues, naturally, sold best). The magazines circulation hit around 3.5 million in the mid-1980s, with another million copies being bought on newsstands.

In my late 20s, I brieflyworkedfor the company (well, the website, which was then called CNN/SI.comperhaps a portend of terrible things to come), where I occasionally interacted with one of my writing heroes, Frank Deford. What a dream it was. I would have done it for free. I guess I almost did.

Ive largely ignored the magazine for the past decade or so, not for any philosophical reasons or any animosity, but with all the choices it simply fell off my radar. But after running across an astoundingly nonsensical pieceheadlinedWhen Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy, Im glad I did.

Ostensibly, the feature is about Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a SCOTUS case regarding a school district punishing a football coach named Joseph Kennedy for a 30-second silent prayer on the 50-yard line after every game. The pieces subhead describes the case as so:

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the case of a football coach at a public high school who was told he wasnt allowed to pray on the field in front of players. The expected result is a win for the coachand the further erosion of the separation between church and state.

In frontof players? Can you imagine? How will our brittle democracy survive an open display of religiosity? Greg Bishop, who could easily have written this piece for The Nation, offers no explanation of how a prayer is eroding separation of Church and State. Even this atheist, after all, understands that the Establishment Clause doesnt ban praying in public placesnot in schools, and not even in Congress, where prayers are recited before every session.

Bishop anoints Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State his proxy, allowing her to frame the debate over Kennedy in the most preposterously hyperbolic, partisan terms imaginable, even though the only thing her organization excels at is losing cases. The bad-faith retelling of Kennedys story is crammed with partisan platitudes about democracy being under attack on issues like voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Now, its unimaginable that a major publication would allow areporter to throw around phrases like voting integrity, religious freedom, and protecting the life of the unbornwithout quotation marks intimating that the ideas arent realand thats probably always been the case. Though the piece brings upRoethree times, no one explains how a court (concerned solely with the constitutionality of laws) is undermining democratic institutions by giving abortion rights, unmentioned in the Constitution, back to voters. Washington State, home of Bremerton High School, sadly, will not be restricting abortion any time soon.

In any event, Bishop also uses appeals to authority, tapping independent scholars or legal experts who hold no vested interest in the outcomeone of the only names offered isconspiracy theoristLaurence Tribe. He warns readers about the nefarious, big-money forces propping up Kennedy. First Liberty($7,255,961in assets), writes Bishop, is a powerful Christian conservative law firm, part of apowerful right-wing machinepowerfulis the key word herewhile Americans United for Separation of Church and State($11,141,577in assets, not counting in-kind contributions from places like the Meredith Corporation, which has $6.727 billion in assets), are simply terrified and transported to an alternate universe of disinformation and propagandaand, in that world, even democracy is in danger.

Disinformation? Its all just progressive mad libs. Thats what happens when democracy is a euphemism for achieving political ends in whatever fashion happens to be convenient. Sometimes, when the numbers are there, it means crass majoritarianism and centralized federal power; and when the numbers arent there, it can mean compulsion or a court dictating rights by fiat.

In this case, a school district, not the coach, is attempting to limit speech. There is no prohibition on praying in public institutions. Such a prohibition has never existed. Any scholarand Bishop claims to have spoken to many for the piecewho claims that the Constitutions authors would have found the act of kneeling after a competition perilous to foundational American ideals is a complete fraud. Then again, When Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy is a microcosm of the incurious activism that dominates journalism these days. Its one thing to put up with relentless bias thats infected virtually every area of mainstream culture, but another to see once-respected magazines putting out such banal, predictable propaganda.

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Sports Illustrated Is Now A Bullhorn For Attacks On The First Amendment - The Federalist