Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro got friendlier obituaries in the New York Times than the NFL coach who took the Cincinnati Bengals to Super Bowl XXIII.

I guess that makes sense. After all, say what you will about the men whose genocidal actions killed literally millions of people, but at least Castro and Chairman Mao never barred a female sports reporter from a men’s locker room.

“Sam Wyche, who led Cincinnati to the Super Bowl, dies at 74,” reads the headline to the obituary the New York Times published this week.

The subhead then adds of the late NFL coach: “He was praised as a hard-driving coach willing to go against the grain. He was also fined for keeping a female reporter out of the team’s locker room.”

The first paragraph of the New York Times' Wyche obituary is also keen to remind readers that the late coach was a problematic person.

“Sam Wyche, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team’s locker room, died on Thursday at his home in Pickens, S.C. He was 74,” it reads.

As it turns out, some journalists will try to cancel a guy even after he is dead.

Sam Wyche, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team’s locker room, has died https://t.co/A2cnDDYbQu — NYT Obituaries (@NYTObits) January 7, 2020

The issue here is not that the Wyche obituary goes straight into highlighting what the author believes is a problematic chapter in the coach’s impressive career. Supposedly unflattering details are fair game. The problem is that the New York Times has a bizarre history of selectively praising and condemning the recently departed, emphasizing supposed transgressions for some while ignoring actual war crimes for others. Just look at how the same news organization marked the deaths of Castro and Mao.

“Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary who defied the U.S., died Friday. He was 90,” reads the headline to the New York Times’ Nov. 26, 2016, obituary for the Cuban tyrant.

The article's opening lines state, “Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died on Friday. He was 90.”



Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary who defied the U.S., died Friday. He was 90. https://t.co/2j6LKmaoz7 pic.twitter.com/fX8JlDCVCT — The New York Times (@nytimes) November 26, 2016

Earlier, on Sept. 10, 1976, the New York Times published an obituary for Mao, titled simply, “Mao Tse‐tung: Father of Chinese revolution."

"Mao Tse‐tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history's great revolutionary figures," the opening line reads.

The obituary's opening paragraph adds (and I promise you I am not making any of this up):

"Born at a time when China was wracked by civil strife, beset with terrible poverty and encroached on by more advanced foreign powers, he lived to fulfill his boyhood dream of restoring it to its traditional place as a great nation. In Chinese terms, he ranked with Chin Shih‐huang, the first Emperor, who unified China in 221 B.C., and was the man Chairman Mao most liked to compare himself to."

No mentions of Cuban death squads, mass executions, man-made famines, or gulags in the opening paragraphs to the Castro and Mao obituaries. No mention of the disastrous and fatal Great Leap Forward. No mention of the great evils they unleashed on the world. No mention of their literally millions of victims. Just glowing hagiographies and larger-than-life characterizations.

But Wyche? Well, he is problematic. The defining moment of his career was when he kept a female reporter out of a room where male football players dress.

In case the point is not clear enough, consider this: Six hours before the New York Times shared its Wyche obituary on social media, it shared one for an Iranian terrorist titled, “Qassim Suleimani, master of Iran’s intrigue and force, dies at 62.”

Look, I am not saying you have to murder a lot of people to get a glowing obituary from the New York Times. But it probably helps.