Hey there, folks. I'm running a little late today, owing to some editing chores (and a just-concluded ESPN chat), but I wanted to take a slighty closer look some issues raised by the comment posted in the previous thread, at 5:52 AM, by B. I found the last paragraph of B.'s comment telling. She (or perhaps he) wrote:
While I did not have the time to review B.'s earlier suggestion that the women draw better television ratings than the men (and frankly, the entire Us vs. Them gender-war sensibility that informs B.'s approach is something in which I have zippo interest), I did go back to our 1994 archives to try to locate any story in which I might have written anything so preposterous. I cruised through 12 months worth of Tennis magazine tables-of-contents, and came across no by-lined article that might contain any speculations of that nature, so I am just going to have to defend myself with logic, and my own word:
Does anyone really believe that I would make such an absurd pronouncement? Come on, this is the US Open we're talking about, and in 1994, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce, and Martina Navratilova were still Top 10 players. Plus the USTA was already in the habit of awarding wild-cards to top US juniors. It isn't just that I didn't say anything remotely like what B. claims (unless I was using a device which touchy gender warriors, of which B. presumably is one, seem not to understand, which is commonly called "humor"). It would have been impossible to say such a thing - if for no other reason than that we have fact checkers and other editors at Tennis.
So I think you have to take everything else in that comment of B.'s with a shaker of salt as well. But let's not quibble over that; I find this entire discussion far more interesting for what it says about the "market" for tennis (and what that market prefers) than about the festering gender grudges that were so easily teased out of B. by my original post.
Now here's something else that ought to be taken into account in what has become Part 2 of this speculation on the state of women's tennis. B. also wrote:
In terms of this criticism of the media, I will tell you as a person who was present at the time that the media did not "harass" the Virginia Slims folks. In fact, I and most of my colleagues appreciated the sponsor and what a thoroughly professional job its staff did. It didn't hurt the VS cause that they wined and dined the media with impressive frequency and employed a staff of women who were both charming and highly competent. It was always a great pleasure to work with them. One of the problems with the latter-day WTA is that the organization's publicists often acted as a firewall, protecting the players from the media as much as facilitating communication between the two groups.
By contrast, the VS crew always seemed to be there to help, and that they did their work so well is a tribute both them that staff as well as the players of that era, who were far more co-operative and, well, responsible than they are today. Chris Evert, Martina, Evonne Goolagong, Tracy Austin - they understood the need to promote the women's game, as well as Virginia Slims. And in case any of them forgot, VS was there to tell them that the company had certain goals and standards of professionalism; they weren't just giving out all that prize money to tennis players for charitable reasons. I have no wish to trash the WTA on this issue; these are different times, different players, and the Virginia Slims establishment took care of its own people pretty well, salary and perks-wise. Those things can make an enormous difference.
As for literal "harassment" on the issue of a cigarette company sponsoring tennis, what was the media (near the end of the VS run) supposed to do, flat-out ignore the fact that angry protesters gathered outside of Madison Square Garden to demonstrate against tobacco sponsorship? The media did not lead the anti-VS trend, it followed it. Ironically, this was - like feminism itself, a self-described "progressive" and activist-driven campaign. And it led the women players into a horrible conflict - having to defend their engagement with Virginia Slims with what became the heavily-scripted (by Virginia Slims) response that players were urged to make when confronted with the tobacco sponsorship issue: I choose not to smoke, but I don't interfere with the right of others to do so.
That circle-the-wagons strategy was a tough one to sustain and I remember one occasion when I grew so disgusted by Martina Navratilova's absurd and sanctimonious political posturing that I decided to call her on what I thought was a legitimate issue: I asked her how someone who espoused such cutting-edge liberal views could justify profiting so handsomely from the promotion of a product that had been shown to kill people. And bear in mind the term had been shown, because this was long after the evidence on smoking and lung cancer and heart disease were documented and hashed out in public debate. She went right to the script, as if she had it memorized, and delivered the line that the VS folks had drilled into all the women: I choose not to smoke, but I . . . etc. etc.
