The Kentucky Derby is the undisputed crown jewel of a sport that has been diminishing in national notice for decades now, but it can stand in line on that. Kids just don’t go to the track any more, which is a shame because it remains a great place for young people to learn to smoke cigarettes and leave the butts in someone else’s beer. The only real lure for fans outside Churchill Downs is the occasional Derby party, which is also the only time anyone drinks a mint julep. It’s an industry that screams old folks’ amusement.
You know, like the favorite in this year’s race, Journalism.
Yes, Journalism. And hilariously, the race also fields a 20-1 shot named Publisher, thus pitting two natural enemies against each other in what really ought to be a joust in which only one rider gets a lance.
It’s a quirk that amuses people in the J-dodge, particularly when you note that the owners of the 20 horses in the field are all owned by people whose wealth suggests the P-dodge. Even Journalism’s owner, Aron Wellman, who talks a good game about his devotion to the journalism biz, was the editor of his high school paper before deciding that the money in journalism is mostly in being what he actually became—a lawyer.
“I’ve often been accused of being a disgruntled sportswriter because of all the writing I do for Eclipse for our partners and our horse updates and weekly newsletter,” Wellman told the Louisville Courier-Journal‘s Jason Frakes last week. “So journalism is something that I value very much, and I appreciate responsible and diligent journalists.”
Frankly, any journalist worthy of the name would see, feel, and maybe even smell the bullshit in that sentence. Not that Wellman doesn’t believe what he said necessarily, but there is a very short list of rich folks who actually believe in the people whose jobs include watchdogging the wealthy. They are, as a class and for obvious reasons, far more inclined to back Publisher, or maybe another 20-1 shot, Citizen Bull.
One supposes there can be an obvious if conflict-drenched exacta to play here, though playing the favorite and then a longshot surrounded in the gate by other longshots is as excellent a way to lose your money as tying it to a brick and dumping it off a bridge. The favorite hasn’t won this race since 2018, and last year’s favorite, Fierceness, finished 15th, so Journalism’s exalted place and post position (eighth) is probably a metaphor-in-training for ultimate failure Saturday. No journalist worth a damn doesn’t have a well-developed sense of fatalism, especially given the ways in which layoffs and closures have left the industry a haunted shell of itself. Frankly, betting on Journalism seems like spitting directly into the wind for any number of reasons.
Besides, one of the most efficient ways to hate your money is to bet it on a horse based on its name. True, the current economy allows you an endless array of ways to hate your money; disrespecting yourself out of pocket, one convoluted prop bet or in-app purchase at a time, is one of the few growth industries we’ve still got. But as this particular forfeit only takes two high-energy minutes, it can truly be considered one of the most efficient ways to learn how to hitchhike. A horse named Journalism almost feels like a scam with hooves on that alone, with all due respect to Wellman. Then again, he walked among horse wealth before he was an editor-turned-lawyer; one of the guests at his bar mitzvah was the famous jockey Willie Shoemaker. In other words, journalism was mostly something Wellman did in high school until something more lucrative and luxurious came along. The same could be true of nearly anything, and so the horse might as well be named Taking The Bus, or Eating At Subway.
So to those journalists who see magic in the fact that the favorite in the Derby is one of theirs, we offer this helpful reminder not to be a dope. Journalist is a decent enough horse by any equine assessment, but it’s still a horse rather than a journalist. This means that unless you grew up wanting to be a horse, you’re not really getting or generating any psychic value for yourself through Journalist’s success; if you grew up wanting to be a horse and wound up a journalist instead, you have our support, and by support we of course mean pity. But if on the other hand you decide to bet on Publisher, well, may you go broke and end up sleeping in a dumpster just for reasons of karma. There is power in a name, just not the kind you think.
