Last Sunday was a great, if small, accomplishment for women in the sports world. Michele Smith became the first woman analyst for a baseball broadcast. She was chosen for her accomplishments in the sports world seeing as how shes won multiple gold medals in the olympic games and has three world titles. Overall she is a very successful athlete and a wonderful role model for female athletes around the world. She made history on Sunday and although there were numerous positive responses such as all the tweets that were being posted saying what a good job she was. William Tasker was even quoted saying that she was mature and insightful and that the only complaint he had was the fact that the broadcast team kept trying to bring up her softball benefits. However, there were an unexpected amount of negative feedback for her being on the show. There were tweets being made about her saying things like "I am sorry TBS, I just can't listen to a woman commentate a baseball game...even if she is a former softball player. Ditch the chick", "I hope this is the last time #TBS puts a woman on TV. I bet your ratings are suffering.", "This softball talk on #TBS is a joke. I am no chauvinist but get this woman to stop talking during the #Braves game. Is this a sick joke?"
Saying you're not a chauvinist does not make up for the fact that you just made a chauvinistic remark about a person because she is a woman. The fact that men everywhere were turning off their televisions simply because a woman was a commentator shows just how backwards our society still remains. Why are these men assuming she has no place on a sports show because she is a women? She's a gold medal winner and still can't gain enough respect from TBS viewers to have her input on a baseball game. What does that say about todays society and the role women have even today? We've known for a while now that women are still looked at as a second-class citizen by men everywhere, not just in America. Jokes are always brought up especially when a woman accomplishes a great task. You always hear the same tired jokes being made of the women in the spotlight and how she needs to stay in the kitchen or any generic menstrual cycle joke. I'm not big on sports, I never have been. However, I realize how much of a breakthrough this is for women. We are not typically taken seriously when it comes to sports. We've all heard the jokes made about women's basketball and volleyball. Many jokes about the movie A League of Their Own were made because of Michele Smith.
But there is always a silver lining. During the Dodgers-Braves game broadcast, there were many positive tweets made about Michele Smith. "Enjoying hearing Michele Smith do commentary on the#Braves #Dodgers game on TBS. Extremely knowledgable. #womeninsports" Little things like this give hope for true equality in gender and equality in general.
http://espn.go.com/espnw/blog/post/1260/another-first-great-year-women
http://deadspin.com/5936316/michele-smith-became-the-first-female-analyst-for-a-national-baseball-broadcast-yesterday-heres-how-viewers-reacted
It is a real shame that some people are still caught up in the ideals of a society before womens rights movements. The fact that she had a softball past should have been viewed as a good thing, the rules are similar, so she would have had to know what she was talking about. Plus, men don't seem to mind when there are pretty little cheerleaders bouncing around, but when it comes to women who actually want to do more with themselves, and actually know what they are talking about, men seem to ignore the fact. Why can't they just accept that we have more purpose than to just cater to them?
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