Hearne: The (Burned) Bridges of Jason Whitlock County

How many more journalistic lives does Jason Whitlock have left?

If he was a cat, he’d have nine, right? But Whitlock’s’s too big to be a cat. In any case, the former Kansas City Star sports scribe has burned through at least four of his nine – at WHB, ESPN, 61 Sports and the newspaper. 

And truth be known, at least three more, raising his magic number to seven two remaining?

With that large of a media enemies list, the big guy was more than a little lucky he was able to dodge the getting fired bullet again recently after his Tweet about Jeremy Lin‘s you-know-what size and that because Lin had had a good game he was gonna inflict some "pain" on a NYC hottie.

The Asian American Journalists Association and a ton of fellow sports journos came crashing down on Whitlock like a ton of bricks however he was able to keep his blogging gig at Fox Sports by issuing an apology.

Then he dodged another bullet Sunday when CNN‘s "Reliable Sources" media critic host Howard Kurtz did Whitlock a favor by leaving him out of a segment entitled, "The Dangers of Twitter," about the "pitfalls journalists face when they take to Twitter."

You may recall, Whitlock had contributed to Kurtz’ show two months earlier in a story slamming ESPN – the company that had fired Jason although it was not disclosed by Kurtz during the broadcast – for its coverage of the Penn State scandal.

This isn’t the first time Whitlock has gotten away with political incorrectness murder.

Anybody remember when he traveled to an away game early on in his tenure at the Star and held up a sign for TV cameras that read, "Bledsoe, gay?"

That cost him a pretty good wrist slap and suspension at the Star.

In a lesser known incident Whitlock got in trouble at the Star for judging an Triple R-rated "homemade bikini contest" on former Q104 bad boy Randy Miller‘s radio show.

"That’s exactly right, he did," muses Miller. "He made several remarks. I remember one of the bikinis that year was made out of three little round Q104 stickers and I remember Jason said something about, that’s one sticker too many. And I remember he got in trouble at the Star and he told me he couldn’t judge any more swimsuit contests again, but he still wanted to get the pictures from the contest."

Seven down, two to go?