Meanwhile in sports news…

I have been, ahem, keeping my eye on the controversy involving sports reporter Ines Sainz and the boys from the NY Jets.  It seems the modestly dressed Ms. Sainz was subjected to demeaning behavior while pursuing her journalistic responsibilities on the gridiron sidelines:

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I know the first word that comes to my mind when I see this photo is “professional”. 

So anyway, the aforementioned incident has now sparked a fascinating debate concerning gender and sports.  Specifically, folks are asking the perhaps unanswerable question:  just who is the hottest foreign sports reporter (female division)?  You can peruse the nominees here.

As for me, I think the whole discussion is sexist and disrespectful to women in general and to the sports reporting profession in particular.  I want to go on record as having said that.  I would also like to nominate a Korean reporter for consideration as world’s hottest:

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I’m bad, I know.

Life’s a beach

Well, Labor Day weekend was for me at least.  Nice little road trip to the East Sea of Korea.  Half the fun was getting there.  Let’s ride!

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It’s always sweet to live the hustle bustle of the city behind…

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Once you hit Route 6 you can’t go wrong…

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When you travel through the mountains in Korea, you travel through the mountains.

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You can’t spend much time on the highway without taking a break for some Korean noodles.  Well, I can.  But I’m not Korean.

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Did I mention there were tunnels?

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And some nice two lane blacktop…

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Arrive safely in Gangnuem where we booked a room in this comfortable place for 50,000 Won.

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And enjoyed ocean views like this…

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…and this.

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The room was small but functional and comfortable.

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Sharing the morning coffee with a butterfly…or is that a moth?

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A rainy morning on the beach was actually quite pleasant…

And now I’m back safe and sound in the city…

Tea Partiers gone wild!

Not.

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash.

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

 

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

A New York Times survey earlier this year occasioned shock when it found that “Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class.” We’re so accustomed to the notion of a revolt of the dispossessed that a revolt of the possessed (in the non-demonic sense, of course) strikes us as a strange offense against the nature of things. But it’s threatening to wash away the Democratic congressional majorities in a historic wipeout.

You can read the rest here if you are so inclined.