BARKLEY UNCHAINED: Today's Off the Record column in the "New York Observer" leads with a report of employee discontent at "Sports Illustrated" over that controversial Charles Barkley cover. Apparently many minorities were offended by the cover shot of Barkley in chains. (No comment on whether any employees were offended by Barkley's ill-informed caricatures of the racial attitudes white Americans hold in the year 2002.)