The American mainstream media mob is at it again.

From the Duke lacrosse case to the let’s-get-Michael-Vick-back-into-jail drama over the shooting at his birthday party, the big American mainstream media is an odd little monster.

They’ve made Mark McGwire a steroid pariah in 2010, but they’ve completely forgiven their buddies Alex Rodrioguez and Andy Pettitte (hell, they’re Yankees, after all). With Rodriguez chasing his 600^th home run, they have forgotten completely that A-Rod only half-admitted his own steroid use, but they still shit on McGwire because he doesn’t want to talk to them about it.

These people stink, and their sick little stench is now on Brett Favre.

The latest media mob war in the United States is to paint Favre as some kind of “diva,” (their word) because he’s 43 years old and he’s probably not going to fully commit to playing for the Minnesota Vikings this season until after the third week of training camp.

Like that’s somehow a surprise.

Take Dan Wetzel’s latest column at yahoo.com, entitled “Favre Stars as NFL’s Biggest Diva.” It was dripping with sarcasm and cynicism, but sounded more like a guy who was pissed that Favre wasn’t calling him every 10 minutes with the next scoop.

Then there is Mike Florio’s NBC column entitled “Favre is more diva than good ‘ol boy.” It’s nasty and probably farther off base than it needs to be.

And now we have Tim Dahlberg’s Associated Press column that says of Favre: “There was major flooding this week in Wisconsin, a state where Brett Favre used to ply his trade. It was getting pretty deep once again in Mississippi, too, in what has now become an annual rite of summer. The drama queen of the South was giving interviews and accepting selected visitors, including one who for some reason still wants to coach him this season.”

That just reaked of, “Please call me, please call me, Brett. I’m important, too.”

It’s kind of sad watching the American news media act like a snooty 13-year-old girl, drooling all over herself, calling Favre “a drama queen,” while hoping beyond hope that when the big decision to play or not play is made, he’ll call her first.

If Favre is a “diva,” and my experience (which is only about a dozen post-game interviews in a controlled team environment) suggests he’s not, it’s because the big U.S. media machine has declared him a diva.

Let’s not forget, you can’t be a “diva,” unless you’re allowed to be a diva and nobody enables Brett Favre like the American mainstream media machine.

Not only is mob wrong far too often, it’s way too whiney.

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Now let me get this straight: First base umpire Gary Darling blows a call (what else is new?), Baltimore's Ty Wigginton argues, inadvertently bumps the umpire and gets a three-game suspension, but the guy who screwed up the call gets no penalty at all?

Major League Baseball has truly messed up priorities.

Replay, please.

It's been quite a week in Crazyland and it's not even close to being over yet.

Between the incredulous reasoning for dumping veteran captain Mike Keane, and the injury to Blue Bombers quarterback Buck Pierce that started out as one game and turned into "two-to-four weeks," (if Mike Kelly had kept a player out of post-game interviews as Paul LaPolice did with Pierce after last week's 28-7 loss in Hamilton — which is certainly the head coach's right — he would have been publicly eviscerated for "trying to control the message."), we've had the Canadian Football League admit that both its on-field officials and its replay officials "erred" on a play that ultimately cost the Bombers a football game.

Tom Higgins, the league’s director of officiating, admitted on Monday that the league’s "replay command centre" (love the pomposity of that name) officials in Toronto "erred" when they reviewed a Bomber challenge claiming that Ticats quarterback Kevin Glenn had indeed fumbled on a run around the left side in the  third-quarter.

“This is going to go down as an incorrect ruling, because we didn’t allow enough time for the fumble to be recovered,” Higgins said in a written statement. “It’s a shame, because that’s what we have replay for.”

A shame? More than a shame, it's a firing offence..

Got this response from regular reader Fort Rouge Ted:

Here's today's question: Have we watched the point in professional sport — outside of golf, of course — where we're going to make up the rules as we go along?

The NFL and NBA have been making up the rules for a long time. Hockey has no rules, or to be more fair, despite a number of changes and league directives, the rules are still different in the third period than they are in the first. Major League Baseball has reached the level of pure, unadulterated joke (Why bother having a strike zone? Play call your own. Don't waste the money on a homeplate umpire). Officiating in the World Cup was comical.

And there is the Canadian Football League.

Just watched the PVR of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-7 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Watched the live version at Assiniboia Downs on Friday night and have just re-watched that debacle once again.

There is NO justification for calling the Kevin Glenn fumble in the third quarter a "non-fumble." It was a fumble. The textbook definition of a fumble. If you look up the word fumble in the CFL rulebook, you are asked to go to www.tsn.ca to watch the replay of that fumble. And yet, even with video replay, there was some sort of excuse made up to make it a non-fumble.

It happened, of course, at an extremely important point in the game and may have changed the outcome (on the next play, Glenn threw a touchdown pass to make the score 21-0). The CFL should be ashamed.

The Bombers lost and fell to 1-2 on the season, tied with Hamilton for last in the East. It's really not that big a deal. After all, this 18-game season is only three games old and the Bombers get the lousy Eskimos in front of the beer cup snake at Canad Inns Stadium next week.

But it just makes the league look bad and nobody needs that.