All of These Columns Have Been Fit to Print

The New York Times ran an editorial calling on Tiger Woods to stay home in April and skip the Masters, noting that a “tournament without Mr. Woods would send a powerful message that discrimination isn’t good for the golfing business.”

Selena Roberts, a sportswriter for the New York Times, set the stage for the editorial five days earlier last month with a stinging column directed toward Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson: “Listen, you old coot,” Roberts wrote. “(Sorry if you loathe that description). You cannot win this fight.”

In the weeks that have followed the New York Times’ unusual editorial, Roberts’ blast and several other stories on the same issue, we’ve now learned two more Times sportswriters, Harvey Araton and Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson, had columns killed because they disagreed with the editorial page opinion of the newspaper.

Here at the Los Angeles Times, of course, it’s pretty obvious the newspaper agrees with everything I have written for the last three years because it has never stopped me from scribbling a single word.

Obviously it’d be hard for anyone to argue that Sports Editor Bill Dwyre isn’t old, stingy, boring, a tennis honk and a whiny Notre Dame fan who is stuffing his face with hot dogs when he’s not playing golf or Salma Hayek isn’t a babe, but I presume this also means the newspaper agrees 100% with my editorial position that most guests appearing on “The Jerry Springer Show” have some connection to USC.

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I GUESS you could also come to the conclusion that none of the bosses around here read Page 2.

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WE DO have several editors here, however, who used to work for the New York Times, and while that certainly makes them a little odd, they seem to be fitting in all right. In fact our managing editor used to work for the New York Times, and I can tell you from personal experience he was nice enough once to say hello to me.

Let’s be honest, though, you’ve got to worry about people who come from a newspaper with the credo: “All the news that’s fit to print so long as it agrees with our editorial position.”

Would you really want the Los Angeles Times to speak with one voice? Now would that be Pucin’s voice or Plaschke’s? I know I’d have to buy earmuffs.

If the Los Angeles Times’ editorial page starts gushing about the Trojans, does that mean I have to do the same? (I’d want to do that anyway, of course, but on my own.) By the way, the boss in charge of the editorial pages is a graduate of USC, so it goes without saying she must have gotten advanced education elsewhere.

Fortunately there remains an air of independence here between the editorial page and sports -- unless you’re reading Newswire this morning in this space, and this column has been killed.

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YOU PROBABLY don’t even know this, or remember, but the Los Angeles Times, like the New York Times, weighed in on the Augusta flap on the editorial pages weeks ago, even working in a hackneyed reference to a “sand trap” in the first paragraph.

I agreed with every word of the editorial because there was no mention of Tiger Woods, and really no compelling point to the editorial, which is all this brouhaha about getting a rich woman into a private Georgia club really deserves.

Tiger Woods is only a golfer, and I don’t really care what he has to say beyond getting me 10 yards longer off the tee and farther away from Dwyre. Tiger is a nice young man, very intelligent, quite witty, and I find watching him on a Sunday afternoon with a five-stroke lead trying to make it 10 over the other dullards on the golf tour about as much viewing fun as I can have.

For some reason, though, the New York Times would like to make him more than that, turn him into a crusader. And how odd is that -- the newspaper then doing an abrupt about-face and shutting up its own writers, who are paid and trained to be the crusaders?

How long before Mr. Woods is being asked to fix the problems in Iraq?

Come on, we’ve already made incredible strides at the Masters -- making it a commercial-free golf tournament this year -- which admittedly will make it more difficult for me to communicate with the wife while the tournament is on, but that’s why I advocate every home in America should have two TVs and the Lifetime channel.

(I’m guessing by now -- one or two of my columns would have been killed by the New York Times if I were working there.)

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FOR THE record, the Associated Press reported Wednesday that the New York Times is saying now the sports columns were not killed because they disagreed with the newspaper’s editorial page, but because they failed to meet newsroom standards.

Just an off day, the newspaper would like you to believe, for the Pulitzer Prize winner.

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WILL THE Chargers sell out when they move here?

For the week of Nov. 25-Dec. 1, the No. 1-rated TV show in the Los Angeles area was a Monday night football game (Eagles-49ers). The No. 2 show was the USC-Notre Dame game. No. 3 was a Sunday morning NFL game on Fox. “CSI” and “The Simpsons” tied for fourth.

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I HOPE it doesn’t get to the point where I have to start traveling with the Lakers now to keep the heat on Coach Phil Jackson. I’d still like to think that’s Jeanie’s job.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from George:

“I remember when you were spending a lot of time with Eric Karros and he was hitting and really doing well. What happened?”

I began spending time with the Angels.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com