Asking Dez Bryant if his mom is a prostitute is national news; him saying he doesn’t like his mom being gay is not

Today, it has come out that Miami Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland, while conducting a pre-draft interview with Dez Bryant, asked if Bryant’s mom was a prostitute.  Naturally, this has caused uproar in the national sports media outlets.  That type of question crosses every possible line that could exist for a pre-employment job screening interview and is completely irrelevant to assessing a player’s athletic abilities.

Yahoo Sports broke the story.

The Huffington Post picked it up. 

It was a topic on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.

National sports media writers are tweeting over it:

Jemele Hill, Peter King, Michael Smith x2 x3.

I don’t mind all of this coverage.  It all needs to be said.  Ireland’s questioning was unacceptable.  Teams should not be able to show such disrespect for players and their private lives during the pre-draft process.

But, I HAVE to ask:

Where was the national media coverage when Bryant had to talk about his mother’s sexuality AND when he said “I didn’t like it. Really, I still don’t”?

That tidbit was just a blip in a much larger article in the Dallas Morning News about Bryant’s overall maturity level.  From what I saw, it never made it beyond a post on the Outsports blog.

I realize I can’t dictate what stories become news and those that do not.  But I cannot believe that a story about a high-profile draftee being so homophobic, directed specifically at his own mother, gets ignored while another question to that same player about his mother is creating such a scene.

There is also a second part of this overall story that could be extremely disturbing, if true.  I have no way to confirm this, but I did consider: could Bryant’s mother’s sexuality have influenced Ireland to give more clout to the prostitution rumor?  Would he have asked the question if she were straight or would he tossed the rumor aside as nonsense?

I would love to be able to ask that of Ireland and to get a truthful answer.

Dallas Morning News, Dez Bryant, ESPN, Huffington Post, Jemele Hill, Miami Dolphins, Michael Smith, NFL, OutSports, Pardon the Interruption, Peter King, Yahoo Sports