Stay Classy, Sarah Schorno

Sarah Schorno and some of her friends spent the day Googling themselves, found my stuff, and responded to my response to her HuffPo piece. There are a couple of comments devoted to the content of her original piece and my criticism of it but they appear to get far more enjoyment out of calling me a pedophile and then congratulating each other on how clever they are.

Classy.

Unfortunately there a lot of funny bloggers out there. What we have is a shortage of ones who can make a cogent argument. Since one good fisking deserves another, let's see what Sarah has to say.

Regarding my comment that she stole her NBA ref riff from Simmons:

Actually, my column pre-dates Simmons’ column so I suggest you “mailbag” him. Had I wanted to mimic Simmons, I would have live-blogged about listening to Pearl Jam in Vegas with Kimmel while mentioning no less than 5 “celebrity” friends.

Only Schorno and HuffPo's web publisher know for sure, but the time listed on her article is Sunday at 9:49 pm. While the currently-listed update time on Simmons' is from today, the post was live midday Sunday.

Regarding my comment that she was wrong to say that MLB failed to acknowledge the steroids problem until BALCO, she says:

Acknowledging a problem and solving a problem are two different things. Which was kind of the point of my column. No, actually it was the point. Or was it the counter-point? Have we gotten a ruling yet?

Note the moving target? In her column yesterday, Schorno said "Major League Baseball didn't start taking notice of their own steroids problem until federal investigators got involved." Now "kind of the point" of her column was that the problem wasn't solved. The problem with "kind of points," Sarah, is that you need to actually, you know, express them, or at least be somewhat consistent with them, before being outraged at people for missing them.

Regarding me calling her a hack for believing that Bonds was the alpha and omega of the steroids story:

And I never said or implied that Bonds was the only steroids issue in baseball. I said his was the case that made people outside of the league pay attention. I also said he was a douchbag. What? I didn’t? Well, I meant to.

She has written exactly three articles containing the word steroids since the advent of her blog. One was about horse racing (which contains a Bonds joke), and the other two were yesterday's piece and today's counterpoint piece to my criticism. Sarah, if you think the steroid issue is more than an excuse for you to vent your hatred for Barry Bonds, write something substantive about it. If you don't, how about not moralizing about the league's failings on the subject? And if you can't spell douchebag, it's probably not a good idea to call someone one.

Regarding my assumption that she has no problem with the way the NFL has handled steroids:

You know what happens when we assume, Shyster? You start the night out talking to what you “assume” is a pretty, single blonde and you wake up 4 Zimas later next to a tranny hooker. What does that mean? I don’t really know. I just wanted to use a tranny hooker reference.

Again, funny, but she fails to say that I was wrong to make the assumption that she believes the NFL has handled steroids better than Major League Baseball. After all, if she didn't believe that, she couldn't possibly have said that the NFL has its house in order and baseball does not, could she?

Sarah, you're funny, and if you don't believe me, just ask your friends who comment on your blog to tell you that you are. But here's a suggestion: leave the pedophile, Scientology, and tranny hooker jokes to the people who do them well. And while I would never suggest that someone stop writing stuff about the social issues facing sports -- even those who do it poorly -- I would suggest that you grow a thicker skin and respond with substance rather than resort to schoolyard smears whenever your positions are challenged.