You’d think Gloria Steinem and the “Cassidy Butches and the WNBA Kids” of the Women’s Sports Foundation would be swinging from the chandeliers–their brush cuts remaining stiff in the breeze–over the 35th anniversary of Title IX.
Emphasis hers. Vomit dripping from the blockquote mine.
Somehow, Debbie, any willingness I might have had to listen to you about flaws in Title IX was pretty much scuttled by that rhetorical stunt you just pulled. You’ve really reached a nadir here, by f-
Every season in its miserable, money-hemorrhaging history, I’ve written an attack piece on that Weird Nuisance Brought on America, that Waste of National Broadcast Airtime, that fake basketball played by 7′2″ she-males who still can’t slam-dunk, otherwise known as the WNBA.
…
You know what? I’m not even going to keep reading that other post, I have too much Title IX bullshit to wade through. But damn.
Title IX has been wielded to dump world class, Olympic Gold Medal-producing programs like Men’s Swimming and Diving at schools like UCLA and USC. It’s been used to eliminate males from competing in track and field at dozens of colleges. And, yes, it’s even the cause of dumping college football programs at some schools. All in the name of important, audience-attracting, popular sports like badminton, lacrosse, and crew. You know, the sports that NBC and ESPN are fighting to show on Saturday afternoons.
But, oddly, you didn’t hear much about it from the chick activists. There was no lacto-ovo, vegan tofu cake with environmentally-friendly candles and a castrated male figure on top. Nope, no celebrations from man-haters with uteruses.
Hee hee. Nice try on the veggie lingo, Schlussel, but you just missed. Anyway, everyone say it with me:
Title IX does not require that any men’s sports be dropped. The only monetary requirement by Title IX is in proportional scholarships*.
…is it really in the nation’s interest to encourage girls and young women to “play hard, play often” in sports no-one cares about–not even them–and emulate men but not be able to beat them in the only important arena: the marketplace?
Any female athletes in the audience want to enlighten Ms. Schlussel about just how much you didn’t care about your sport when you were in college? You know, getting up at 4 am to hit the pool or the field or the court every single day and staying in the weight room until midnight in order to “emulate men”? Such a lark, right? A dilettantism? Man, it’s too bad Debbie wasn’t around back then to remind you not to cave into the liberal feminist system forcing you to participate in a sport you hated.
The truth is, anyone familiar with college sports knows where all the money is going, and it ain’t women’s sports. Sure, football “makes all the money”, but if, as Ms. Schlussel wishes, college athletes are to compete in the marketplace, then how about we take college football off the Title IX radar altogether, declare players professionals, and pay them a salary? If the revenue created by a sport is the most important aspect - of college sports! - then we might as well act like it. Start paying football players for their likenesses, use in advertising, appearance fees, and everything else.
The revenue brought in by the average 1A football school - hell, sometimes by a single game (a single game at Ohio State or Michigan or Tennessee brings in upwards of, as a quick-and-dirty calculation, $50 million eleventy bajillion $7 million in ticket sales) - is easily enough to make up for the 85 women’s scholarships Title IX requires* to offset the football program. One could easily argue that it would offset all of the women’s scholarships, and that’s not even counting the donors, who out of the goodness of their hearts usually give all their money directly to the football program, who would clearly be starving otherwise.
(This bloatedness of the college football programs usually does not extend to the athletes themselves, who often receive a $200 stipend and a pair of free shoes - a pair of free shoes which the coach is often being paid seven figures a year to advertise. Of course, like all scholarship athletes, they’re also getting a free education, but it comes with the caveat that an athlete may earn no additional money of any kind, not that it doesn’t stop the boosters from trying all kinds of tricks…for the football players.)
Hmm. Full scholarships. Free educations, equally available to both genders. Could it be that there’s a hidden reason why Debbie is so down on female athletes? See the title of this post for a clue.
* Truth is, it’s not even that simple - that is, even THAT requirement is flexible - but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s reduce it to that.
80 Responses to “Debbie Schlussel hates women”
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i see. that all explains the huge, ROWDY-ASS crowds at houston comets games every summer. no one cares about that, right? they certainly don’t get TV time…oh, wait.
is this chick trying to out-crazy coulter? because i don’t know what else she could be up to. i almost want to laugh.
makes me think of one of my students from this past year. beautiful girl, iranian, had a hispanic boyfriend, she was a big timer on the soccer team and she had in fact played football (yes, on the boys’ team) at her previous school. 14 years old and talks like an adult, she always had the highest grades in my AP class. but, you know, she’s NEVER going to make it in the world without title IX backing her up, right? i’m sorry, but i foresee many of those male jocks working for HER in the future.
I go to a 1A school. While I “appreciate” Debbie’s concerntrolling, our football program makes enough money in one game to pay for… uh…. our entire athletic department, pretty much. And our female sports are in some cases more popular than the male equivalent. My dorm actually goes to the “less popular” games [drunk of course] to bring some rowdy support for the female end of the athletic spectrum
I think you should get funded based on the number of students who show up and show interest which would be fair but not necessarily equal.
That is how it should be adminisitered but in no way shape of form should the law be repealed.
Of course that would mean as much money as you spent per player on football and basketball you should be spending on all other male and female sports as well.
36 years ago my mother played college basketball.
36 years ago, thinking about women’s sports was so backwards that she had to play under the half-court rule: women were not allowed to run the full length of the court. Defensive players had to stay on their team’s side, offensive players had to stay on the other team’s side.
At least most complaints about Title IX stick to lies about how it has to be enforced and how much money men’s sports generates for the average school.
Debbie sounds like she thinks the half-court rule didn’t go far enough.
You know, at the point that they are in college, I think you can call them men.
Do all these sexist idiots think using terms like “males” and “females” - when the more accurate terms would be “men” and “women” - think that it makes them sound all scientific and authoritative and shit?
Since when did Gloria Steinem have a “brush cut”? She’s a heterosexual lady with long, flowing hair.
Not that there is anything insulting to any sane person about being mistaken for a butch lesbian with cropped locks, but it’s just so WTF?!?!?!? I
Holy freaking hell.
Heaven forbid a school should want to emphasise any sport other than American football. My undergraduate college had really great soccer teams - if I recall correctly, some members of the women’s team were on the gold medal team in the 1996 Olympic games - and NO football team.
Sorry about that! What I was going to say was that I’m going to call Debbie Schlussel “Shirley Temple” from now on, because she doesn’t have red or curly hair, and she never starred in movies or served as Ambassador to Ghana.
That ought to show her.
Fuck college football! and basketball! and hockey!
I’m sick of these three revenue sports and their athletes. They miss more class time than they attend (I’m talking primarily D-1, here…the D-3 schools I’ve been at have been different). The receive special privileges not open to other students (I’m thinking of a case where an athlete accused of rape had a university lawyer in the student disciplinary hearing while the victim had no one).
fuck these sports and the culture of privilege they produce.
She hates sports too, or she wouldn’t be arguing (as she basically does throughout the article) that athleticism should be encouraged only for people who’ll either win medals or make money at it.
Shirley Temple was Ambassador to Ghana? *google*
…wow.
“Every season in its miserable, money-hemorrhaging history, I’ve written an attack piece on that Weird Nuisance Brought on America, that Waste of National Broadcast Airtime, that fake basketball played by 7?2? she-males who still can’t slam-dunk, otherwise known as the WNBA.”
Translation: “Waaaah! I always got picked last in PE!”
Debbie S. doesn’t hate all sports for women. She loves figure skating and gymnastics because the athletes look pretty and dainty and she can forget that they’re highly competitive people who work their asses off.
Speaking of asses, she is one.
Debbie S. is a sick fuck. I wish I had more than that, but I don’t think I need more than that.
There is precisely one (1) player listed at 7′2″ in the WNBA (Margo Dydek of the Connecticut Sun). No one else in the league is taller than 6′7″. Schlussel might as well go ahead and tattoo “I’M JEALOUS OF WNBA PLAYERS” across her forehead.
Sure, the WNBA hasn’t turned an annual profit yet (they hope to get there this season). But it’s not like starting up a professional sports organization is so trivially easy that not being able to turn a profit after a decade should be much of a surprise. MLS isn’t profitable either, and it’s been around two years longer than the WNBA.
Hell, the XFL couldn’t even make it through a single full season, and this is a football-crazy country.
I’m just stunned at the disdain she shows for women athletes. Did she get picked last for dodgeball as a kid or what? Made fun of in the girls’ shower? I’m just guessing there must be some kind of deep-seated source for that level of venom. It’s creepy.
Most of the evidence she presents seems to be pulled out of her gym shorts, so it’s not even worth disputing, but if we’re only using anecdotal evidence, I’ll offer this. Two of my best (girl) friends from high school went to college on basketball scholarships (and both also went on to earn PhDs). They were serious athletes who would be very surprised to hear they didn’t care about their sport.
Even my 75-year-old father, who no one will ever mistake for an enlightened feminist, would be surprised to hear that no one cares about women’s basketball. He follows the women’s team at our alma mater as closely as he follows the men’s.
Do you realize you probably tripled her traffic? This response post currently has five times the comments of the Robot Sexist you are analyzing.
Fish. Barrel. Gun.
Just sayin’.
Wonder what would happen if somebody told her about curling. Might be more fun to watch than the event. Men with brooms? Uh-oh.
Why would big fat moneymaking circuses like football need funding at all?
Damn, I get tired of arguing this.
Hate speech is hate speech. There’s no threshold below which I won’t address it, if it catches my attention.
As a lifelong female jock, Schlussel wouldn’t make the end bench on any team I’ve been on since grade school even on a trash talking scholarship.
Saying that a female athlete is a lez? Muffy, please.
My eyes aren’t just doing a roll but a tumbling line that would make Nadia Comaneche gnash the remnants of her enamel-free tooth points in envy.
Schlussel, to the showers and don’t come back unless you have some real trash talk to share.
By the way, Ms. Schlussel is a not-infrequent appearer on Fox News and has a column which appears in large-circulation conservative newspapers on a fairly regular basis.
She’s not some crazy voice shouting from a soapbox on a street corner, although she certainly should be.
I think a while back, Tbogg commented on something about that. Of course, I’m too lazy to go look for it, but the gist of it was that for some colleges, football was a looser, money-wise, for them. It was sucking all of the money out of the other athletic programs. Colleges that dumped the football and focused on other sports - soccer, etc. - not only stopped loosing money from it, but also started to make money.
What makes me wonder when someone trots out all of the tired arguments against Title IX, is why most of the arguments always boil down to “What about the menz football?” Is “maleness” so wrapped up in football, that these people can’t imagine men playing such silly little fru-fru dainty games like soccer or rugby? I just don’t get it. I also don’t understand the obsession that if a woman plays basketball, it’s a sign of the end times. And so what a woman gets a scholarship for a sport - if she’s a good player, then by all rights she should. But I suppose that line of thinking would be tough if you don’t think women are human beings, I guess.
Seriously, I’d rather watch the athletes of the WNBA than a lot of the NBA anytime. They actually play basketball like it is supposed to be played, where you have a team as opposed to five individuals.
Oh, and calling out Schlussel and her ilk is a service to all of us. The meme that keeps getting spread round that women’s sports are worse than men’s is a large part of the reason that there is a drastic financial difference between the two. Using one to prove the other is circular. But idiots keep on believing it, so don’t worry about justifying yourself, Auguste. Idiots don’t deserve our silence.
“Waaaah! I always got picked last in PE!�
“I’M JEALOUS OF WNBA PLAYERS�
Sounds like we are able to turn the tables on the “liberals hate sports and anything with winners and losers, look at how fat the Gang of 88 professors are, they must have never been too athletic” argument that was used by the right in the case which should not be named.
There was an article recently in Salon, I think, about Debbie Schlussel and how she makes almost no money from her wingnuttery, no matter how hard she tries.
And with all the Scaife money being spread around? My guess is that she’s trying too hard to be Ann Coulter, when there’s already one Ann Coulter, and she isn’t young enough, pretty enough or ethnic enough to distinguish herself as anything but a Coulter wannabe.
Oh, and if Debbie thinks women’s sports are of no interest to anyone but themselves, she clearly hasn’t spent any time in Connecticut during basketball season. I used to take the bus from Rocky Hill to Hartford a few years after the UConn women’s team won the NCAAs, and there were a group of men on the bus who were rabid fans and discussed the women’s games in great detail. And this is when the men were doing pretty well, too — it was just that they hadn’t gotten into the Final Four yet at that point, so.
Shirley Temple was Ambassador to Ghana? *google*
…wow.
Yeah, in the 70s, I think. She went by her married name, Shirley Temple Black. She’d left the whole Shirley Temple persona behind and made a rather good transition to adulthood.
Dear DEbbie I wonder if she plucks or shaves alll the extra hair those testostorone pills give for that can only explain such male-centric illogic.
My father is rather keen on basketball, which is what the WNBA plays. The NBA, otoh, plays some strange sport where traveling (running without dribbling) is NOT against the rules, is a contact sport, and people jump instead of throw the ball at the hoop. He has no interest in the NBA, but thinks the WNBA is pretty good.
My husband is sick of athletes who assault coaches and people in general. He was, however, impressed by the kindness of a WNBA player who comforted an injured player from the opposite team after a collision.
The Kings constantly try to blackmail my city into paying them money to stay. The Monarchs have at least one player who turned down more money from another team because she has too many friends here, including her teammates. This has resulted in repeated letters-to-the-editor in our local paper from fans saying they were tired of the Kings and the costs involved with them, and would get their basketball fix from the Monarchs.
Times are changing.
Did she get picked last for dodgeball as a kid or what?
Probably, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Debbie’s disdain extended (and extends) to the brainiac girls, the drama club girls, the gothy girls, and the art club girls, and the student government girls - in short, to any female classmate who did more than sit around buffing her nails and making witless, cruel comments.
Whenever anyone whines about Title IX, I simply tell them that I would solve the problem by getting rid of all athletic scholarships. They distort the entire US educational system. They corrupt the grading system (”But you can’t fail him or he’ll lose his scholarship!”) and perpetuate a social hierarchy that seems to exist to antagonize students focused on learning. Those countries that we complain are doing better than us in school? They don’t have athletic scholarships.
Shuts ‘m right up. And they never have a good answer as to why we have them.
The boys at SadlyNo! have been lovin’ them some Debbie for quite some time now. One that I like is her review of “Live Free or Die Hard” It’s a thing of beauty.
From abdiel (A good islamic blog BTW. Worth your time to check out.)
Oh, it’s not that hard if you think about it. and…
Because unless they are it’s so much harder to know who to hate. And my fav
I’m not sure that means what she thinks it means. I prefer to laugh rather than cry, though she is certainly tragic, because I believe her time is almost over. I have to believe that.
Poor Deb sweats the day that female team sports turn a profit. Hee hee.
I wish I had archived a popular “boy crisis” article from awhile back, in which some social analyst lamented that Title IX was responsible for male diminishing interest in high school government, and other extracurricular leadership opportunities. The gist, I shit you not, was that there was a time when success in sports translated into other school leadership roles. Now that girls are getting some recognition for their athletic endeavors, they are more likely to be seen as overall leaders, and are winning the leadership positions in their high schools once guaranteed the boys. This was a bad thing….
There are more than a few women’s basketball programs that are revenue sports — and more than a few football programs that aren’t. After all, the football team needs to go to a hotel before home games (to minimize distraction), needs to fly charter jets, needs the free training table, needs a big office and travel budget for the head coach, maybe even a private jet. The women’s program needs a bus. Sometimes.
Any non-revenue sport cut — women’s or men’s — can be laid at the foot of an AD too scared to take on football. Not that I blame him (it’s 90+% likely to be a him). After all, the whole damn system’s afraid of damaging the fragile egos of football boosters. Better to blame cutting $3 million by cutting men’s gymnastics on the $3 million you’re spending on women’s lacrosse, instead of the $100 million you’re spending on football.
Is “maleness� so wrapped up in football, that these people can’t imagine men playing such silly little fru-fru dainty games like soccer or rugby?
Well you know, US women are actually good at soccer, so it’s clearly a sport for pussies.
I was surprised to discover last year that my mother was a huuuuuge WNBA fan. She was horrified to discover I had no idea a) that it was the playoffs or b) who was in them or c) if NY or NJ even had a team. She’s apparently started watching women’s college ball too. Me, I hate basketball (partly because in high school, the coaches kept trying to get me to play, but I sucked ass at it), I prefer watching football (college mostly, these days) and soccer (mm, soccer).
Seriously–my mother- and sister-in-law go to almost every UConn women’s game, and I think they have season tickets to the Suns.
It’s going to be quite a shock for USC to find out that they no longer have Men’s Swimming and Diving, because they just hired a new assistant coach yesterday.
Debbie had better get on the phone and let USC know they don’t even have a Men’s Swimming and Diving team anymore. They’re going to be so embarrassed to find out they hired someone to coach a team they don’t have anymore.
I was pleased that the stadium initiative failed last November. I’d love to go to a Monarchs game at some point, but I have zero interest in the Kings.
“I’ve been down on Willis and down on this movie because its cyberterrorists are not Muslim. I remain steadfast in that reservation and note that this movie would have been even more fabulous if they were. The identity and motivations of the terrorists in this one are harder to buy into.”
WTF?
Schlussel is an ungrateful brat; Willis is one of the more loyal GOP members of Hollywood.
“Probably, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Debbie’s disdain extended (and extends) to the brainiac girls, the drama club girls, the gothy girls, and the art club girls, and the student government girls - in short, to any female classmate who did more than sit around buffing her nails and making witless, cruel comments.”
Not sure about whether she’d be jealous of the braniac types; dumb people don’t go to Michigan for undergrad AND a joint MBA/JD from U.Wisconsin.
Conservatives do hate the drama club etc. types listed because they hate to see them move up in society to become–gasp!–Hollywood liberal actors.
I once had a conversation with a fellow faculty member, and he mentioned what a former female athlete, and now employee of the athletic department who said that the ascendence of women’s athletics to the big times just gave several women the opportunity to be as assholish as the male athletes.
There’s a huge difference between the big sports and the minor ones. Rowing and golf students never seem to be the trouble that football, hockey and basketball are.
The (cash economy) marketplace is “the only important arena” in sports? Not athletic achievement, not sportsmanship, not encouraging kids to have confidence in themselves, not encouraging kids and adults alike to be active and stay physically fit?
Nope, just making money, that’s “the only important arena”.
Thus does Coulter-without-the-class demonstrate that her understanding of sports is as profound as her understanding of politics, economics, war and filmmaking.
Auguste, I hear you on the Fox News guests are Really.Important.People.
O.K. maybe not. You and I know the Coulter screech owl clones that are starting to queue like it is some sort of turn-key business opportunity. Sure beats stuffing envelopes and selling AmWay to the family at Christmas, no?
I get how the Right Wing Noise Machine works. You show some anorexic leg, flash some blonde hair, fill in your MadCon Libs spaces (”What’s a good adjective before Teddy Kennedy? I know! Drunk!”) and you get called up as an “expert” on Rupie’s shows.
You can sharpen your knives on this stuff, but you MUST have better things to cut on than this carbon copy? I mean, dunking in women’s basketball is SO 1996.
Mnemosyne - spitting wine on keyboard… thanks for the laugh in a not-funny week
My guess is that she’s trying too hard to be Ann Coulter
See, the thing is, she was Ann Coulter back before Ann Coulter was, uh, Ann Coulter. Debbie is the genu-wine article: a really-o truly insane wingnut.
But Ann cottoned on the idea of blonde hair and miniskirts first.
36 years ago some women’s college team played half-court? In the US?
Almost 30 years ago, I was playing full court in jr high and then in high school while practicing half court with the same-aged and older high school guys during my free periods a couple of times a week. In WA state.
My mother did play half-court, during gym only, 45+ years ago. Her Texas school district didn’t have many competative sports, even intermural, for girls. That doesn’t mean they didn’t play hard. She broke her ankle in gym class, playing basketball.
Mister Nice Guy–a lot of people say the high school level and before are where you focus on those petty (sarcasm) non-fiscal matters. Brings us a lot to the debates about jumping from high school to the pros or only going to college 1-3 years for bball or football in particular, and colleges being mere “farm systems” for the elite players.
“I Am Charlotte Simmons” is a super book in dealing with this issue because the fictional DuPont University is both an outstanding academic school and a basketball factory, and has to deal with the conflicts between those (one of the school nerds, Adam Gellin, comments on having “our hired guns against others,” and has to struggle with the ethics of writing a paper for one of the players.) There are a plethora of other topics pertinent to this blog covered by it, too, like socioeconomic class, date-rape, corruption in government, etc…
Fuck college football! and basketball! and hockey!
I’m sick of these three revenue sports and their athletes. They miss more class time than they attend (I’m talking primarily D-1, here…the D-3 schools I’ve been at have been different). The receive special privileges not open to other students (I’m thinking of a case where an athlete accused of rape had a university lawyer in the student disciplinary hearing while the victim had no one).
fuck these sports and the culture of privilege they produce.
Awwww, someone jealous they didn’t make the team?
Were those big nasty jocks mean to you?
saucysaucy,
can’t read very well, can ya?
This is exactly the same argument that was made befor Title IX went in to effect, and it has been very successful. The only way for girls and women to have anything is to take it away from the boys and men, and that just wouldn’t be fair.
To hear the same myth being bleated after thirty five years of reality demonstrating it to be false is proufoundly sad to me.
It was so obvious, to so many people at the time, that it was the right thing to do. It is tragic all these years later to realize that we are going backwards.
I am always astounded at the ways Title IX is misread and the ways in which women’s sports are denigrated. I don’t like the WNBA, where too many open jumpers are missed and the action is too below-the-rim. But I don’t like the NBA either, where the players only play during the playoffs and even those are excruciating. I like college basketball, where I can at least pretend that big money hasn’t corrupted everthing (though I wish it would, since these players work hard enough to be paid handsomely.)
I wish the MLS would have a women’s league that played an opposing schedule: each team’s fans get two teams, twice as many home games, and more opportunities to enjoy soccer. I love soccer and it really isn’t that different whether men or women are playing. Actually, I like watching the women more, since (1) I think they’re often quite hot and (2) the field is often freer for skillful plays because women tend to be smaller than men.
I also think that in a country where professional baseball has an exemption to antitrust laws Congress can easily make college football a separate entity from Title IX. I’m willing to overlook such an idiotic political ploy to assuage tradition, since it would shut up all the assholes who haven’t ever read Title IX in the first place.
“I Am Charlotte Simmons� is a super book
I liked I Am Gene Simmons better.*
*Stolen shamelessly from Scott Lemieux.
I filed a Title IX suit against my school district when I was 14, in 1978. One of my best friends wanted to play soccer, yes, effing soccer, and our preppy Connecticut shoreline school didn’t want to put out for a girl’s high school soccer team. I didn’t even play soccer, but my dear friend asked me anyway, as somehow she thought I was a decent spokesperson. BTW, almost thirty years later, we’re still friends.
The case was decided in our favor (went to the Connecticut Supreme Court) - when we were seniors - in COLLEGE.
Deb Schlussel is a fucking neanderthal (and as a feminist archaeologist, not much worse I can say…)
This column was clearly written by a woman who was stuffed in a locker by the girls’ field hockey team when she was in high school.
(Note to the Culturally Sensitive: I am not mocking field hockey, or the women who play it–they ROCK.)
My mom played field hockey the two seasons her high school had it (it was the ONLY school sport girls had at all, unless you count drill team). She picked goalie so she wouldn’t have to run as much.
Same reason I did shotput and discus when I got it in my head to join the track team.
Mnemosyne - spitting wine on keyboard… thanks for the laugh in a not-funny week
I’d be tempted to e-mail or post and tell her, but she’d just edit the post and pretend she never said it. Better to let other USC alumni read that and go, “What the fuck is she talking about?”
Oh, and it took me approximately two seconds on the USC website to confirm that they do have a men’s swimming and diving team. The website is cunningly concealed at http://www.usc.edu.
Really, how do they expect Debbie to do any research when their website is so hard to find! And the link to Sports is in the second row of links at the top of the page, which is the last place people would look!
Debbie Schlussel: proof positive that a fancy education doesn’t mean you’re smart.
i see. that all explains the huge, ROWDY-ASS crowds at houston comets games every summer. no one cares about that, right? they certainly don’t get TV time…oh, wait.
Seriously, my first thought upon reading the post was “she would be in BIG trouble if she tried to voice that sentiment in Houston”. Houston is damn proud of the Comets…
I know this post was meant to be about title IX, but I’m a big WNBA fan and so I really hate articles like this. If these people hate the WNBA so much, why do they spend so much time writing about it? It’s not like a war or a bad government, no one is dying because of the WNBA. It’s a business, no worse than any other. (I’d say it’s better because it makes sexists mad and provides me much enjoyment and entertainment, but I’m biased.)
Don’t like it? Don’t go. I don’t much like golf or soccer but I don’t bitch about it all the time, I just don’t watch or spend money on those sports.
It doesn’t matter.
Don’t you understand? When the facts undermine a conservative columnist’s argument, they make stuff up. Most of their readers will believe them anyway.
I don’t know how many times John Stossel has railed about the teachers’ unions in South Carolina, despite the fact that public employees in SC, like teachers, have no right to bargain collectively.
When I pointed this out in a response to his column, the conservative response was “There ARE teachers unions in SC, you ignorant fool.” I have relatives who are teachers in the State of South Carolina, and they wish they could join a union, so I think I know the law. But the facts would undermine their ideology, so the facts must be wrong.
The conservative movement is a religion. Even if the individual conservative or conservative group is not religiously based.
Faith in the movement is more important than the facts. That’s all you need to know.
the German word “schussel” (noun) or “schusselig” (adjective) actually translates as “dim-witted,feeble-minded,absent-minded,confused or chaotic”.Go figure!
The assumption that Debbie Slushbrain was either bullied or ignored by jocks as a teenager, while reasonable, isn’t necessarily true.
I was one of those “last one to get picked for a team” kids too, but, while it was a bit of an ego bruise (who wants to be singled out that way?) the truth is, I wasn’t into sports at all, could barely follow the rules to any game, and just did not give a shit how well I played them. Oddly, I never held a grudge against anybody who WAS into sports, or good at it.
I think maybe, just maybe, Debbie Schlussel might not be a very nice person.
Sports? Title IX? You’ve all covered that well enough. Thanks!
When I was a kid and encountered the occasional mention of Shirley Temple Black in the newspaper, I assumed she was a black Shirley Temple type. Like Blacula!
Actually, the US Women’s Rugby Union team is really good too, much better than the men’s team in world rankings (not as good as the NZ Women’s Rugby Union team mind you, WORLD CHAMPIONS BABY!!! *grin*)
Though I am amused that anyone would think of rugby as a “fru-fru dainty” sport (though I realise the above poster was probably being sarcastic), as the hits are harder than in American Foodball, are at speed, and involve no pads.
I played rugby a bit back in NZ, and I’ve played a summer of it here (I stopped as I was playing with women a decade younger than me, so I was just asking to lose a limb or the like). Best sport in the world!! (though I do really enjoy soccer as well).
Personally I’m not a big fan of basketball as it honestly bores me (I find it really hard to get excited about a basket when it’s going to happen something like 100 more times in a game). But from what I have heard from most basketball fans I know, they prefer the WNBA for the same reason they prefer college-basketball over the NBA; because both are more like the sport is supposed to be played.
Most college football teams don’t actually make money for the colleges, there’s really only a minority that do, so that kind of exceptionalism is just bullshit.
A fact which really, really irritates University of South Carolina fans and alums.
Not only haven’t schools closed olympic medal-winning men’s programs, they’ve opened — gasp — olympic medal-winning women’s programs. Of course, for someone like DS that’s meaningless because women’s sports are inherently inferior, but what the heck.
(What amazes me is that this kind of crap is still being written. It was a long time ago when I went to college, and the same arguments were being tried and found wanting back then. It was, however, an interesting experience to be going out with a suitemate of several members of the rowing team and being warned to Do Right By Her or risk their wrath.)
36 years ago some women’s college team played half-court? In the US?
Well, since I know she played half-court basketball, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in high school because I remember her talking about playing half-court in real games, and I also remember her saying that our high school didn’t even have proper sports teams for girls when she went there, just intramural - yeah, I think so.
I may be a few years off, or they may have changed while she was playing at UCR, but I’m pretty sure it was 36 to 39 years ago.
But, well, you know memory.
I’ll ask her when I get the chance.
Debbie Schlussel went to my high school, and she didn’t used to be stupid. She was in AP classes, and did forensics. She did sports, too. (I don’t remember which one–I think it was something like tennis or track, where everyone does it alone instead of being part of a team.) It’s only the last few years, since she started working against the WNBA professionally, that she started advocating for the idea that sports have no value for the participants, only for the spectators.
She also claims that any NBA team could beat any WNBA team in straight-up competition, and therefore the whole WNBA is worthless…everyone should want to watch the better teams. The same reasoning applies to most other women’s sports (other than endurance competitions), and to children’s sports, and adult recreational leagues. It can also be applied to the common custom of forbidding drugs in all kinds of athletic competition, and of having separate races for runners and wheelchair racers. It’s a disturbing thought.
As a fan of rugby and american football both - I actually enjoy watching rugby much more, it’s just on television less over here, as you know - I have to say that this point of comparison is fruitless and dismissive.
First of all, the only at-speed collisions in rugby are the tackles. Not the case in american football; blocking might not be quite at-speed, but two 350 pounders with a 5.5 second 40 can build up a lot of acceleration after the snap, before they crash into each other headon. Tackles in rugby are usually (not always, of course) at the legs, while american football tackles are often at the waist or higher.
I have talked to/read articles by people who have played both sports, and they all agree that calling rugby a rougher, more dangerous game than American football is not true; it’s certainly rough as hell but there’s a reason that American Football players wear pads and get injured anyway. It’s an awful lot more like apples and oranges.
(Of course, american football pads are also a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the heavy pads the players wear turn them into a missile; that’s why it’s too bad that “rugby is played without pads” isn’t even a true statement.)
I guess that explain why college football and basketball are so unpopular - wait what?
Auguste, having grown up in a culture of the sport of Rugby, and having played it myself, and also being a fan of American Football, I am not denigrating the latter in any way, by saying perhaps, in this I may just politely, while agreeing about the differences, disagree with you.
Adrian: “Debbie Schlussel went to my high school, and she didn’t used to be stupid. She was in AP classes, and did forensics. She did sports, too. (I don’t remember which one–I think it was something like tennis or track, where everyone does it alone instead of being part of a team.)….”
Adrian, obviously I would not want you to reveal anything too personal or intrusive, but do you have any clue about what brought Schlussel to her current hateful place? Her writing is so vicious that it gets awesomely disorganized. Plus, it’s always disturbing to see women trying to annihilate other women in such a relentless and public way. I know we all have to deal with self-hatred, but it’s an amazing sub-set of women who appear to be able to split off the hatred and apparently remove themselves from their own defined ground zero. And do it so visibly and so loudly. I mean, literally, who does she think she is? Neither she nor, say, Ann Coulter, will ever really be admitted to the guy club.
Does Schlussel make enough money? Does she hope this career path will eventually make her really wealthy? Is it enough for her that she’s recognized by people she’s never met, regardless of the reason? Would she change targets if the money were better? Does she feel happy more often than not?
Adrian, I know these aren’t questions you can answer. It’s been a while since high school. I think I’m simply venting. But I am hugely curious. Ooh. Any high school reunions coming up?
There’s one player in the WNBA who’s 7′2″ tall, Connecticut’s Margo Dydek. Miss Dydek’s problem is that while she’s extremely tall, she just isn’t an athlete, not in the slightest. She takes up space, and can rebound in the league without having to jump, but she just plain isn’t an athlete.
But get beyond her, and there are some decent athletes in the league; most of the otehr centers in the WNBA are in the 6′3″ to 6′6″ range, and they really can play ball.
Question for the sports fans: Are there any American pro sports besides soccer, football, baseball and ice hockey that women don’t play?
OK, it’s far enough down on the discussion that this won’t be terribly OT. Best post defender I ever played against was a member of the Iowa State women’t varsity team.
So, this is the early ’90s, before Iowa State was actually any good, and for a summer a several of us, some guys and some starters from the women’s team, would hoop every night. I’m 6′5″, so everybody sticks me in the post (even though I was always a better swing player–I’m tall, not big). Well, against a 6′0″ woman I should have an advantage, right? Every time I went in the post, my shorts would get lower and lower. I became a better outside player because of trying to stay clothed.
I’m curious when you graduated from law school, Auguste.
I just have to say, I am not going to pay tax dollars and tuition (in the case of state colleges/universities) to support sports programs that exclude me. Fuck that noise. I was not put on this earth to subsidize the egos of a bunch of entitled little boys.
From the DS column:
Emphasis mine. What the fuck is that phrase supposed to signify? Why do I feel like this “swinging from the chandeliers” comment is code for some sort of racist athletes=blacks=monkeys bullshit? Am I the only one who feels an ugly racist implication in her use of that phrase?
Here in Providence in 1999, Providence College dropped men’s baseball - because of Title IX, they said. I was heartened to see how many people saw through it. (It was also nice to see them go ridiculously far in the Big East tournament in their lame-duck season, and freely acknowledge that embarrassing the administration that axed them was a prime motivator, while never resorting to the false anti-woman bile that comes so easily to Schlussel.)
At the time, someone mentioned that for the money the school spent on housing the NCAA-Tournament-not-making, off-campus-bar-fight-getting-into men’s basketball team overnight in hotels when the poor dears have to travel 60 whole miles to Boston, they could’ve saved the program.
Hi ekf,
“Swinging from the chandeliers” is a rather common, if somewhat old-fashioned, metaphor for wild celebration.
So I don’t think it’s racist, but I do find hilarious the line of reasoning; You’d think they’d be celebrating wildly. But they’re not. But I’m not going to let that fact stop me from acting as though they are.
Thanks for the clarification, Rick. It seemed like a very odd turn of phrase, and since she seemed way too interested in intimating sexist and homophobic shit, it seemed like the racist shit couldn’t be too far behind. I guess her not hitting the trifecta is…good?
Anyway, you’re totally right about her “reasoning” that she needs to react to celebration that she freely admits is not taking place. Oy.
So Jeff, you hold it against the male student for being provided legal council regarding a very serious charge? Even if the accusor was not provided council, is that his fault?
I can sense a very strong anti-athelete streak in you, that dare I say is not that different from the discrimination you claim to seek to fight.
Grilltacular, I’ve dealt with college athletics. I don’t hate the athletes, I hate the system. Some of the athletes have been great kids, some asswipes. But these three sports in particular are part of a system that is, at the D-1 level, wholly corrupt.
I guess I misunderstood you when you said:
I get the feeling that when you see someone who looks like a jock or a frat boy, you lick your chops at an opportunity for perceived payback. As an educator, that is a scary impulse.