Because the sports fans of America - who each week watch their mailboxes for updates on the NFL, Major League Baseball and NASCAR - know the one thing they're missing is the opportunity to look at a 66-year-old dude who's trying to look like a woman.
Au naturel.
Sports Illustrated started losing me more than 25 years ago when it decided in its self-importance that it needed to dive into environmental activism. It sealed the deal with this monstrosity, which was easily the worst piece of sports journalism in the history of the world. I decided to give it another try a few years back because I thought my son might enjoy it and I got a free Vikings jacket out of the deal. But there was never any hope. I wonder if the Rev. Philadore H. LeMay, who used to write angry letters every year in protest of the swimsuit issue, is alive to witness this:
Caitlyn Jenner will reportedly pose nude on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
According to a US Weekly source, the 66-year-old will be featured on the cover of SI wearing only an American flag and her gold medal.
Now let's see if we're really understanding what nude means here. Because real nude is what Playboy used to do before they finally figured out that no one needed to pay for an image of a naked woman on paper with millions of them available on the Internet for free. Real nude would answer a few questions about what exactly Bruce has done to himself - questions to which I frankly do not need the answers, thank you very much. But if I wanted those answers, just telling me would be fine. Showing me is decidedly not necessary.
But they're not really going to do nude. Because if you're "wearing" anything - even an American flag, strategically covering up whatever has become of your once-proud anatomy - that's normally called a tease. In this case, SI's overwhelmingly male readership may well have the same reaction as if Bruce had really taken it off, which will be the most massive trek to the toilet since the days of the Roman Empire's vomitoriums, as depicted on Saturday Night Live when it was funny back in the '70s.
It's not hard to understand what this is all about. Pop culture media now feels completely safe not just excusing homosexuality and transgenderism, but pushing it, hard, on its audience/readership and then brutally chastising any segment thereof that would prefer to just, say, read about sports.
The trickier question is why the editors of a long-established sports magazine like Sports Illustrated would possibly think it advances their business objectives to do something so mind-blowingly unappealing.
I think a number of things are at work here. First, these people are not as bright as you might think would be required to lead such an institution. They see the cultural trends and figure they might as well get on board because hey, why not? Everyone's doing it! ESPN gave Jenner a "courage" award for putting on dresses. Surely SI can find a way to be more idiotic than that in its pandering.
Second, it's a way of insuring itself against future boycotts and protests. The next time an article in Sports Illustrated inadvertently uses a word or phrase that upsets the little dears, SI can point to the Caitlyn nudie cover as evidence of its fealty to the gender-bending, end-of-times revolution that's got men peeing in the ladies' room and women undergoing addadichtomes.
Welcome to sports journalism 2016. I think I'll just watch the games and remember them in my own special way, but if you want to see an aging, confused dude play stripper, sir, the world of big-time sports journalism is here to serve you.
Try to get to the toilet fast enough that you have time to put the seat up. It's harder to hit the little hole than the big one.
Because the sports fans of America - who each week watch their mailboxes for updates on the NFL, Major League Baseball and NASCAR - know the one thing they're missing is the opportunity to look at a 66-year-old dude who's trying to look like a woman.
Au naturel.
