Tim Thomas, who sounds like the NHL’s first mobbed-up goaltender (“I going to use my right to remain silent”), gets very different treatment in the Boston dailies today.
Boston Globe columnist Kevin Paul Dupont cuffs Thomas around on the sports page under the headline, “Thomas needs a save to restore his legacy.”
Lede:
It can still end well here for Tim Thomas. Right now, the Facebook-posting, self-imploding goaltender is shoulder to shoulder with Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez regarding how Boston will remember him. Not just as a player, but as a person, a key player-citizen in what is the unique nation of Boston sports.
Through a trio of Facebook postings issued over the course of 19 days, the 37-year-old Thomas has told the world that he wants to be heard. He feels the need to get his thoughts out there, and we are left to believe he wants to stimulate thought and conversation.
But he doesn’t want the media talking to him about it, and he told a gaggle of reporters, bloggers, and photographers Thursday at the Bruins practice facility in Wilmington that he’ll simply stop talking whenever he is asked about the personal beliefs he is posting for the world to see.
Dupont can’t decide whether Thomas is naive or delusional in posting statements such as “I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom,” but either way, Dupont writes:
“[H]is ‘going Facebook’ is not going to wear well here, not in a town where fans and media invest deeply, perhaps care too much, in every little thing relating to their professional teams and athletes. Not only will fans and media quickly get fed up, but far more important, so will teammates, Bruins management, and ownership.
In other words, How to Get Defriended in Three Easy Posts.
Meanwhile, L’Affaire Thomas lands on the news pages of the Boston Herald in the form of a Howie Carr column headlined, “Freezin’ of speech.”
Lede:
What if Bruins goalie Tim Thomas had posted on his Facebook page that he was in favor of gay marriage?
He’s be up for a Profiles in Courage award, even though it required no courage, just Political Correctness.
But instead the Boston Bruins goalie wrote these 11 fightin’ words: “I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom.” Such hate speech! Such misuse of capital letters! How dare he!
You get the picture. But Carr sees a very different reaction, at least from the fans, than Dupont does.
After the White House tempest-in-a-teapot, the pom-pom boys [news media not named Howie Carr] forecast that Thomas would be booed when he returned to the Garden. Wrong again. He got a standing O.
Your conclusion goes here. The hardworking staff is off trying to friend Tim Thomas.
Campaign Outsider 
Imagine what would happen if a Bruin posted on Facebook that the government should nationalize the banks, and that religions should have to pay taxes — then refused to discuss it when the media asked questions.
He says he stands with the Catholics? Doesn’t he mean the Catholic hierarchy? Their predecessors are the MEN who came up with these theories of how they have the right to regulate sexual activities among their followers.
Howie should get himself introduced at a Bruins game.
Whenever right-wing Americans side with the Catholic church I always wonder if they’ve given any thought as to why it’s “ok” in America to have antipathy towards the French.
You’d think someone named “Thomas” would get the connection.