When forced to deal with realpolitik or breaking news, sports reporters are usually exposed as fairly empty vessels. It is not their fault. Few anthropologists or poets can provide meaningful and instant analysis about matters of crime and punishment, or drugs and domestic abuse, so why should we care what Vin Scully thinks about Yusiel Puig’s effect on the Cuban embargo, or how Mad Dog Russo views the Miami Heat’s hoody homage to Trayvon Martin? Let’s face it: Peter King has nothing profound to say about Riley Cooper or Adrian Peterson. Do you really want to hear Mike Francesca pontificate on Michael Sam or listen to Harold Reynolds on the significance of Mo’ne Davis? Keith Olbermann, if you get past the prolixity and pomposity, can expose hypocrisies. Bob Ley is a reliable navigator on Outside the Lines and Frank Deford can hit the occasional homespun homerun on NPR.

Of all the on-air talkers, Kornheiser and Wilbon shine brightest when subjects are darkest. Their insights and commentaries are actually enlightening. Particularly about ethnicity and roots, which is by no means a PTI preoccupation; they don’t chase race, they are caught by it. Donald Sterling? No way around it. DeSean Jackson cut because of dubious ties to the Crips? Unavoidable. Danny Ferry talks smack about Africans?

Wilbon and Kornheiser get unusually personal when it comes to race. They have the security of their friendship, their histories, and their solid employment to remain undeterred by shyness or political correctness. Aided by time constraints, they hit their marks, make their points, move along. Pity the poor personalities who face hours of emptiness everyday. Take Stephen A. Smith and Skip Baylis. Please.

If Wilbon and Kornheiser are bros at a bar, Smith and Wesson, I mean Baylis, are bent on starting a brawl. They incite by bloviation. Assault with deadly hyberole. They use a rhapsody of bombastic words where one sweet tweet might do. Unlike K & W, Smith and Wesson, I mean Baylis, will overdramatize petty events to add heft to their own slim observations. It is nigh impossible, one presumes, for two men to have such dearly-held and opposing opinions about every little thing under the sun (including the position or power of said solar sphere). Over-caffeinated by half, you want to shove beta blockers, or perhaps a fist, down their throats when they start speechifying as if Quentin Tarantino were the writer/director of First Take. In yo face, under yo skin, up yo nose, raw, raw, raw, sis boom bah! Unlike a Tarantino movie, needless to say, they cannot use the N-word, even though Stephen A. Smith has twice had to apologize for speaking the unspeakable word he swears he never spoke, not even once, and despite the fact that people all over America heard him speak it, not once but twice.

Stephen A. Smith: I am a New Yorker and I speak very very fastly and sometimes my words are misconstrued…And if I were to say such a word, I would instantly issue an apology.

Which is exactly what he did, instantly issue an apology, for not speaking such a word, twice. Even if folks heard him speak such a word, twice. What? Any time the grandiloquent Stephen A. Smith is conversing with another African American reporter about Kobe Bryant, the Black Mamba, the context is so ripe, ears are so pricked up, that viewers can hear “my nigga” whether it’s spoken or not. We are adaptable creatures. Our brains have been rewired. Perhaps by social media even more than film and hip hop. Enough black athletes have sent “nigga” into the cloudy tweetosphere that white folks now have the impression that it’s a term of endearment, and few hackles are raised by its usage.

Last year, when Matt Barnes, of the Clippers, was thrown out of a game for physically defending a teammate (who needed no defending), Barnes tweeted to his 230,000 followers the following: “I love my teammates like family, but I’m DONE standing up for these niggas. All this shit does it cost me money!!”

So did the Tweet. $25,000 in addition to the $10,000 for the expulsion. His coach, the redoubtable Doc Rivers said, “That’s not a word I’m a fan of in all venues.” Not all venues, but some, right, Doc?

Wilbon elaborated the next day on PTI: “I, like a whole lot of people, use the N-word all day, everyday, my whole life…though not publicly.” It is not unreasonable to assume that a large chunk of the black community shares that linguistic philosophy, if not the mastery of self-control. As if to validate the assumption, Wilbon later said that he was contacted, “by public figures, professional athletes, politicians, religious leaders and they all said, and I am going say exactly what was said to me, ‘My nigga, I’m glad you said this. I’m glad you have this position.’ They texted it or wrote it or spoke it on a voicemail. It was absolutely endearing.” Endearing!

Most journalists are confounded by the N.word. When trying to report what a policeman said in Ferguson, Missouri or what George Zimmerman said in Sanford, Florida, they can’t use the actual words or they will be accused of what they are accusing the cop and the killer of saying, and thus become a criminal in the court of public opinion and maybe their bosses’ too. And yet, isn’t an objective media obliged to quote subjects objectively and accurately, required to give a true account of what was said or, in the case of Richie Incognito, texted?

Kornheiser: If I’m the commissioner of the NBA or NFL or MLB, I’m going to make the following stand: I don’t care if that word is used among friends, or in films or songs, we are not gonna use it here, publicly, any more. Wilbon: I have a problem with white people framing the discussion of the use of the N-word, including those I am related to and am close close friends with. (Gives Kornheiser a look.) The commissioners need to call in some people who look a little different from them to figure out how we are going to address it…They better not sit there like plantation owners and tell black people how to use a language that was forced on us.

Roger Goodell did not call in Chris Rock or Cornell West as language consultants before mandating that NFL refs penalize players for using the N-word during a game. Fifteen yards, same as roughing the passer or yanking at a facemask. Does that include a lineman who hugs a teammate and yells, “Way to go, my nigga!” If a black D-back gets a red flag and begs a ref, “Give a nigga a break,” does he get an additonal 15 yards for calling himself the N-word? What if a player exclaims “You F-ing N-word!”? Does that cross the line? And cross back again? Are those illegal letters? Words are funny things. And the NFL has no sense of humor, and precious little perspicacity. Banished words have a way of returning and finding their way up Uranus.

Kornheiser: Where did we go wrong, Reali?

What? Reali is gone? Really? Si. From PTI to GMA. From boy to man. His own private Italian bar mitzvah. The dude with the weirdest dual citizenship in the history of the small screen became a father and had to clean up his act. After hosting his own daily show, Around the Horn, with authority and elan, he had to instantaneously morph into a subservient second banana on PTI. Stat Boy. You watch this clever young Senator chair a subcommittee hearing in the morning and then become a wisenheimer Congressional page after lunch. From ringmaster to clown, albeit a complicated clown, a combination cheerleader, geek, judge, jury, arithmetic teacher, gofer, gooser, googler, and father confessor. Imagine Brian Williams anchoring the NBC news and then walking across the hall to turn letters on Wheel of Fortune.

“I don’t see race,” Reali once said, straight-faced. Strange, methought, since this guy sees everything, and awards or deducts points based on subtle smirks and hair-dos and bowties and twinkles in eyes. He sure sees everything Italian, and points it out, often in Italian. If Reali doesn’t see race, it’s about the only thing he doesn’t see. Me, I’m a horse of a different color from a different generation. I confess to seeing race, and age, and gender, and ethnicity, height, hairlines, limps, tits, tats, dirty fingernails, bad teeth, bad complexions, and bad attitudes. Risibly unevolved am I. Despite years of effort and analysis, assumptions and biases cling to my consciousness like deathless leeches.