The Ubiquitous Grammar Cop

At the end of my last post, Olympic-Sized Inequity , I commented on the outlier on the graph of gender inequity in sport, Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I would like to make the connection between that statement and MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, where I heard about the outrageous circumstances about Women's Olympic ski jumping. When Maddow hosted a news show on the now defunct Air America Radio network, she mentioned about three years ago how Wimbledon (The Championships officially) finally joined modern times and paid the Women's Singles champion the same amount of money as the Men's Singles champion. This put Wimbledon on par with the French Open, U.S. Open, and Australian Open. At first blush I thought, "Cool," when I listened to her reporting on this story on my iPod. Then I thought about it. In these four tournaments (the winners in any case), women tennis players play less for the same amount of money. Women play at most three sets while the men play can ...

I am a fan of the Olympic Games, both Winter and Summer. During the Winter Games presently playing out in Vancouver, I watched a little skiing, some hockey, but my biggest draw has been curling. However, I did hear on The Rachel Maddow Show a little over a week ago an interesting fact about ski jumping. Apparently, all of the participating sports in the Winter Olympics have both men and ladies competitions except ski jumping, despite overwhelming support from the International Ski Federation . Their endorsement could not sway the IOC, even though Lindsey Van set the distance record at Whistler, BC , the same venue where the Olympic ski jumping takes place. The reasons the IOC gave for not allowing womens' ski jumping in the 2010 Games are numerous and asinine, but it sheds more light on the inequities in sport. On the other hand, there is always pro tennis where dollar for dollar the women champions make more than the men (in the Grand Slam tournaments anyway).

This would make an absolutely awesome gag gift. If you sent this as a gag or for real, I'd give good odds the recipient would never speak to you again.

The Flintstones are only partially based on fact. At least that's what some people in Texas believes.