A controversial LA Times column that was lambasted by LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey as “sexist” was updated online by the newspaper early Sunday morning because it “did not meet Times editorial standards.”
In a piece posted before LSU’s March Madness win over UCLA in the Sweet 16 on Saturday, author Ben Bolch wrote that the Lady Tigers were “dirty debutantes” and called them “villains,” while he referred to the Bruins as “milk and cookies” and called the matchup “good versus evil.”
Bolch’s piece shows it was updated at 12:55 a.m. ET, with an update notice inserted at 1:10 a.m, and all of those phrases were removed, though the headline still includes “villains.”
“The one thing I’m not going to let you do, I’m not going to let you attack young people, and there were some things in this commentary, guys, that you should be offended by as women. It was so sexist, and they don’t even know it,” Mulkey said Saturday.
“It was good versus evil in that game today. Evil? Called us dirty debutants? Take your phone out right now and Google dirty debutantes and tell me what it says. Dirty debutantes? Are you kidding me? I’m not going to let you talk about 18-to-21-year-old kids in that tone.
“It was even sexist for this reporter to say UCLA was milk and cookies.”
Mulkey said Sunday morning she was informed about the column being updated, adding that nobody from the paper reached out to her.
The LSU coach, who led the program to a national championship last year, had already been in a public feud with the Washington Post before the publishing of a profile about her, as she threatened to sue the newspaper if it published a “hit piece” about her.
The Washington Post published its piece on Saturday, a week after the threat, and the article dives into her past relationships with her family and players.
The story said Mulkey clashes with players “about their appearances and displays of their sexuality,” while her lawyers said in the piece that she did not treat gay players “more harshly or differently.”