Wealthy sports stars such as Jason Taylor aren't like you and me, but that doesn't mean The Miami Herald can take license in writing about who they are and what they think.

The Dolphins defensive end has been the focus of a media barrage for weeks on whether after 11 years as a potential Hall-of-Famer, he will stay with the team. Coming off a successful stint on Dancing with the Stars, the handsome and well-spoken Taylor says he wants to play pro football for only one more year before going into the movies.

Journalists are at the apex of two colliding social revolutions: an obsession with celebrities and a freewheeling blogosphere pushing attitude over facts. The pressure is to turn celebrities into two-dimensional cartoon characters. And why not? The celebrities are rich at the public's expense, aren't they? We pay them to perform, and they in turn use the media to manipulate us and generate more popularity and money. It's all part of the game.

Enter Taylor. Through his agent, he told the Dolphins in January that he wanted to be traded so that he might have a chance in his last declared year of playing football to join a team with a better championship shot.

Since then, the story has been a dance between Taylor and the new Dolphins management under Bill Parcells over whether and how Taylor might be traded and whether, in the meantime, he will participate in preseason training.

It has been unfolding much like any union, political or diplomatic negotiation, with each side making incremental statements and then speaking off the record with reporters, often to add a spin.

Finally, last Sunday, Taylor himself met in Hollywood with the media in what he said was an attempt to clarify his position and deflate an unintended confrontation that has been growing with management.

Miami Herald reporter Jeff Darlington wrote an excellent story, summarizing and analyzing what Taylor said and did not say. Darlington drew a fine line between Taylor's saying he requested, instead of demanded, a trade, and quoted Taylor as saying: ``If [a trade] doesn't work out, then I'm a Miami Dolphin. I love this place. I love Miami. I love the fans. I love everything about it. If it doesn't work out, then I'm here.''

There has been nothing in Taylor's 11 years with the Dolphins to make me doubt the sincerity of that statement. Greg Cote in an accompanying Page One column Monday agreed. Cote added that he thought Taylor's finely-stated position would help maintain Taylor's support among fans. I wonder. I don't think saying you want a chance to win elsewhere is a particularly popular thing to say, and thus requires some bravery. But that is my opinion.

Dolphins columnist Armando Salguero, however, took a totally different view in his blog. ''Although Taylor lies'' -- and here Salguero puts a line through ''lies'' as if to edit it out but leaves the word for readers to see, and then picks up -- ``states he would be happy playing for the Dolphins in 2008, the fact remains he wants to play for a winner.''

Salguero repeats the edited ''lies'' technique later in the same paragraph, writing: ``it is about the chance to go out with a ring and he doesn't think he has that chance in Miami no matter what he lies says to protect his image.''

I agree with at least one blog participant who called the ''lies'' technique a cheap shot. Striking it out but leaving the word all but accuses Taylor of lying, and clearly insinuates that Salguero thinks he is.

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