Grantland Grovels Before the Transgender Community's Thought Police of the Left's Ministry of Truth

Look, sometimes the left's virtually murderous backlash is too much for publishers (or producers, etc.) to withstand.

So it's no surprise that we have the obligatory (and ideologically correct) "rebuttal" piece on the pages of the website, saying Caleb Hannan's journalism "figures to be a permanent exhibit of what not to do, and how not to treat a fellow human being." The piece is written by Christina Kahrl, an ESPN reporter who's on the board of directors at GLAAD. According to GLAAD's website, Kahrl's an "out trans* woman" who was "elected into the inaugural class of the Gay & Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2013." (She's officially approved to enforce sanctions against ideologically incorrect thought criminals.)

This essay by @ChristinaKahrl on Dr. V's @Grantland33 story is mind-bogglingly important. http://t.co/S9viG6vVM7
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) January 20, 2014

So proud to call @ChristinaKahrl an @espn colleague … http://t.co/1JicbSuWEs
— Kate Fagan (@katefagan3) January 20, 2014

calling this a "well-written" piece by a "curious reporter, nothing more" reads like a defense, but it's exactly the problem
— Amanda Hess (@amandahess) January 21, 2014

Young white man's career more important than trans woman's life. Where have we heard something similar before?
— Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) January 20, 2014

"It never occurred to us," and other great moments in white cis male privilege.
— allisonkilkenny (@allisonkilkenny) January 20, 2014

And then there's the official apology from Grantland's editor Bill Simmons, "The Dr. V Story - A Letter From the Editor: How 'Dr. V's Magical Putter' came to be published." As always, read the whole thing. Simmons is torn, anguished even. Deep down, you can tell, he still thinks publishing was the right thing to do. Over a dozen editors and copy editors read the final draft, as well as a handful of lawyers. No matter. He bows down low to the commissars of correctness, issuing the classic apology invoking the "mistakes were made" line (abominable mistakes, mea culpa, mea culpa!). Most important, the apology's appropriately spruced up with copious abject groveling to appease the blood-starved enforcers. Grantland's crime was that it got on the wrong side of the homosexual community's transgender mob. These are the same people who told Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" to "get in line."

Here's Simmons:

Whether you believe we were right or wrong, let’s at least agree that we made an indefensible mistake not to solicit input from ANYONE in the trans community. But even now, it’s hard for me to accept that Dr. V’s transgender status wasn’t part of this story. Caleb couldn’t find out anything about her pre-2001 background for a very specific reason. Let’s say we omitted that reason or wrote around it, then that reason emerged after we posted the piece. What then?

Before we officially decided to post Caleb’s piece, we tried to stick as many trained eyeballs on it as possible. Somewhere between 13 and 15 people read the piece in all, including every senior editor but one, our two lead copy desk editors, our publisher and even ESPN.com’s editor-in-chief. All of them were blown away by the piece. Everyone thought we should run it. Ultimately, it was my call. So if you want to rip anyone involved in this process, please, direct your anger and your invective at me. Don’t blame Caleb or anyone that works for me. It’s my site and anything this significant is my call. Blame me. I didn’t ask the biggest and most important question before we ran it — that’s my fault and only my fault.

Anyway, we posted the piece on Wednesday morning. People loved it. People were enthralled by it. People shared it. People tweeted it and retweeted it. A steady stream of respected writers and journalists passed along their praise. By Thursday, as the approval kept pouring in, we had already moved on to other stories and projects.

So what happened on Friday afternoon...

You can guess what happened. The left's totalitarian thought police got wind of the story and the jig was up. (Keep reading.)

And the bottom line? Well, the Grantland editors "made one big mistake." They failed to run the piece by the transgender lobby's Ministry of Truth. Frankly, as Simmons remarks, it "never occurred to us" to get the transgender commissars' permission slip. Had they done so, they'd have had the GLAAD commissars approving every word, with the handy politically correct GLAAD manual of pre-approved style thought.

And now Simmons is scarred for life:

To my infinite regret, we never asked anyone knowledgeable enough about transgender issues to help us either (a) improve the piece, or (b) realize that we shouldn’t run it. That’s our mistake — and really, my mistake, since it’s my site. So I want to apologize. I failed.

Really. Infinite. As in infinity? That's a long time, although I'm surprised that the "Dr. V" piece itself hasn't already been incinerated in the Ministry's official memory whole for published ideological crimes against the people. (I think, actually, it's being left up as Grantland's OFFICIAL WARNING, to permanently remind writers of the boundaries of the acceptable, of how "to treat a human being" according to official diktats of the totalitarian homosexual left.)

Added: A Memeorandum thread. Plus, at the Other McCain, "The #JusticeForDrV Madness: ESPN Offers Belated ‘Condolences’? Really?"