Sports journalism normally doesn't get tangled up in First Amendment issues. It is our colleagues working in City Hall or are otherwise engaged with the "real world" who have to battle their way through freedom-of-speech issues. But a pair of situation have just come up that pose an interesting parallel. The first is in China (where admittedly the concept of a First Amendment is pretty alien) but the second is in Phoenix, Arizona, where they should have heard of it.

* In China at the Beijing Olympics, reporters are being barred from some Internet access, particularly Web sites that the government believes to be critical of its policies, say discussion of the unrest in Tibet. Among Web sites that reports have been unable to reach is Amnesty International. The overarching philosophy being: "It's my country and I'll lie if I want to." And to the argument that reporters should have no beef because they should follow the rules of the host country, I’ll point out that Beijing had to "win" the right to host the Olympics. And being in a competitive situation with other world-class cities, China had to be persuasive in convincing the IOC to allow the Games to be held there. Reportedly, the IOC tried to make sure certain fundamental principles of Internet access were part of the overall atmosphere of the Olympic Games but there seems to be differing interpretations of what was agreed to.

* Concurrently, we have what is certainly a much pettier discouraging of free speech in Phoenix. Apparently, there's a swanky golf country club out there and incredibly, still in the 21st century there's a policy in place that bars women from the club's grill room. It may seem like small potatoes but it's also a known haunt for the city's power lunches so quite obviously, this is another way of keeping in place a gender glass ceiling. But even that's not what's really galling. One of the club's members, and reportedly a pretty good golfer, Rusty Brown, spoke to a newspaper making the point that he didn't like the policy and he thought some fellow club members were equally unhappy with it. Brown has been kicked out of the club.

Here's the point I want to make. If you’re proud of what you're doing, usually you don't have any problem with people talking about it. And usually, when you have reason to be ashamed, that's when you want to keep it quiet. On grand and petty scales, that's the lesson to take away from Beijing and the country club.