THE PLAIN DEALER that landed on my breakfast table Saturday morning carried a story and photograph on the front page that were big enough to be reserved for notions that the economy had rebounded, the temperature in Northern Ohio would rise to the 80s by mid-day and our involvement in far-flung wars would end within 24 hours. Unfortunately, it was none of those magical events. Instead, we were asked to read at great length that a mere football player who had contributed so little to the Cleveland Browns had been traded. Side by side with a long text by sportswriter Terry Pluto, who laboriously reassured us the team had to make the deal, was an enormous photo of the underachieving outcast, Kellen Winslow. Even to the sports fan that I've been known to be, it was a much larger epic than I needed to restore my confidence in the front-page "news" part of newspapers. Kellen Winslow. after all, was no Jim Brown or Otto Graham.
Skipping to the sports page to find some traditional news - even a lost-dog story, always a best-seller - I encountered another oversized photo of Kellen separating two full length columns by usually perceptive sportswriters dissecting the philosophical and pragmatic overtones of the trade. (In return the Browns got a couple of lower inconsequential draft picks - I don't remember offhand the rounds .)
What's going on here? It's a good thing this didn't happen on the day of President Obama's inauguration or the PD would have been challenged by a critical decision: Obama arriving, or Winslow departing? You know as well as I do how it would have been finally resolved. Jeez.
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