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Junker,
In my mind, one of the important questions in the discussion regards how strongly one must feel before they lend voice (in this case a few keystrokes) to thought.
Now, nobody begrudges Bushref his apparent preference for men's over women's basketball. In terms of pure entertainment value, I happen to share the preference. Where we part company is in how this preference is informed by our thoughts on social politics, and how those thoughts lead us to comment publicly on such matters.
My feelings about women's basketball as an institution differ from my feelings about how much I am entertained by watching it. I think that as a moral matter, women should be given opportunities to play basketball on scholarship equal to the opportunities given to men. The entertainment markets aren't equal, but this is one of the many cases in which I do not choose to let the market be my moral compass.
That said, if ESPN's market research people say that some of their money would be optimally invested in televising women's basketball games, then why not? I may not watch as often as I will watch men's ACC or SEC games, but when it comes to sports, I don't expect much from the networks beyond trying to please their audiences.
I think that the sports-viewing public largely agrees with the above sentiment. This is why most people don't spend much time or energy vocalizing complaints about the content areas of programming. This is where I have a problem with Bushref and his ilk, and why I don't hesitate to label his comments as 'sexist.' My educated guess is that he doesn't write letters to Fox lamenting their shlock primetime programming, or their decidedly partisan political coverage masquerading as "news" (if we indeed share this view). If he doesn't like "The OC" or "Temptation Island," my sense is that he spends a lot less energy complaining about those shows publicly than he does consciously not watching them.
Why is it, then, that he can't simply not watch women's basketball? He has to make snide comments that the very broadcasting of such is a waste of time. Why is the case of women's basketball unique relative to other shows that he considers to be garbage? I won't forcefeed you the answer. If Bushref wants to make the case that two plus two does not in this case equal four, then I am sincere when I write that I am eager to read such an argument. Absent such a rebuttal, however, I will continue to characterize such comments (and I expect that the pattern will continue) from him as the sexist drivel they are.
jb
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