SPORTS, WOMEN AND MEDIAS
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 7, 2011
Tonight national public radio has a segment on how women sports reporters are disrespected, and by extension, so are women’s sports. Here’s a case where pro and con, left and right, are beside any political point to me. I can’t understand how so many people can make so many buck and command standard news media time just winning and paying attention to sports, period. Okay, you want to listen to the weather report and gamble on what you clothing you will wear when you go off to work, I can grasp that investment in gambling. I tried playing my granddaughter’s Christmas hi-ho cherrios present with her, and it was fun as long as she paid attention. A friend asked me yesterday how I felt about my daughter’s alma mater, Auburn, playing for the national football championship. (My only rear window sticker in my 1999 car is “Auburn Dad.”) I don’t care, and wonderful as Katy’s Auburn memories are, the sport doesn’t matter to her any more than it does to me. And why should it?
I think it is sick that any sports figure gets paid more than the average stay-at-home parent. I admit to a personal problem: When I managed to letter as a high school wrestler, I lost nearly every match (while winning an occasional wrestle-off to get to the match) imagining that if I beat my opponent, especially a champion, he might carry a grudge enough to meet me in an alley one night and seek revenge. No kidding, that’s how I really thought. I specialized in not getting pinned; I was in great shape; I didn’t want to disgrace my team.
It is said that Roman citizens invested themselves in who would win in wrestling competitions between Christians and lions. It’s okay by me that weather and sports give US something safe to talk about in daily life. It just seems sick to me that people invest themselves further in whether a home team wins or loses. So what? Why isn’t it as simple a game as whether I give my granddaughter revenge in a game of hi-ho cherrios? Aren’t we amazing, incredible creatures? Love and peace--hal
About Me
- Hal
- Worthington, OH, United States
- I retired Jan. 2009 from after 33 years on the criminal justice faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington. I continue not to charge for any form of public service, including speaking and consulting, and now have plenty of free time to do so on request. I do not do social networking. I regularly monitor just one email account: pepinsky@indiana.edu; my home phone number is 1-614-885-6341; my skype name is halpep. My papers and such are archived at http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/findingaids/view?brand=general&docId=InU-Ar-VAA9639.xml&doc.view=entire_text. I am known as a co-founder of "peacemaking criminology." Page proofs of my latest, 2006 U of Ottawa Press book, Peacemaking: Reflections of a Radical Criminologist, are freely available at http://critcrim.org/sites/default/files/Pepinsky_proofs_0.pdf , the end of which lists my publications, nine books and over 80 articles and chapters in all, on a wide range of subjects from the international to the interpersonal level. My preceding book, A Criminologist's Quest for Peace, is also freely available at http://critcrim.org/pepinsky, and a pdf of Myths That Cause Crime is on the critcrim.org home page.
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